Psychological principles of successful aging technologies: A mini-review

Based on resource-oriented conceptions of successful life-span development, we propose three principles for evaluating assistive technology: (a) net resource release; (b) person specificity, and (c) proximal versus distal frames of evaluation. We discuss how these general principles can aid the design and evaluation of assistive technology in adulthood and old age, and propose two technological strategies, one targeting sensorimotor and the other cognitive functioning. The sensorimotor strategy aims at releasing cognitive resources such as attention and working memory by reducing the cognitive demands of sensory or sensorimotor aspects of performance. The cognitive strategy attempts to provide adaptive and individualized cuing structures orienting the individual in time and space by providing prompts that connect properties of the environment to the individual's action goals. We argue that intelligent assistive technology continuously adjusts the balance between `environmental support' and `self-initiated processing' in person-specific and aging-sensitive ways, leading to enhanced allocation of cognitive resources. Furthermore, intelligent assistive technology may foster the generation of formerly latent cognitive resources by activating developmental reserves (plasticity). We conclude that `lifespan technology', if co-constructed by behavioral scientists, engineers, and aging individuals, offers great promise for improving both the transition from middle adulthood to old age and the degree of autonomy in old age in present and future generations. Copyright (C) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel

Solving the detour problem in navigation: a model of prefrontal and hippocampal interactions.

Adapting behavior to accommodate changes in the environment is an important function of the nervous system. A universal problem for motile animals is the discovery that a learned route is blocked and a detour is required. Given the substantial neuroscience research on spatial navigation and decision-making it is surprising that so little is known about how the brain solves the detour problem. Here we review the limited number of relevant functional neuroimaging, single unit recording and lesion studies. We find that while the prefrontal cortex (PFC) consistently responds to detours, the hippocampus does not. Recent evidence suggests the hippocampus tracks information about the future path distance to the goal. Based on this evidence we postulate a conceptual model in which: Lateral PFC provides a prediction error signal about the change in the path, frontopolar and superior PFC support the re-formulation of the route plan as a novel subgoal and the hippocampus simulates the new path. More data will be required to validate this model and understand (1) how the system processes the different options; and (2) deals with situations where a new path becomes available (i.e., shortcuts)

Exploring cognitive issues in visual information retrieval

A study was conducted that compared user performance across a range of search tasks supported by both a textual and a visual information retrieval interface (VIRI). Test scores representing seven distinct cognitive abilities were examined in relation to user performance. Results indicate that, when using VIRIs, visual-perceptual abilities account for significant amounts of within-subjects variance, particularly when the relevance criteria were highly specific. Visualisation ability also seemed to be a critical factor when users were required to change topical perspective within the visualisation. Suggestions are made for navigational cues that may help to reduce the effects of these individual differences

Self-directedness, integration and higher cognition

In this paper I discuss connections between self-directedness, integration and higher cognition. I present a model of self-directedness as a basis for approaching higher cognition from a situated cognition perspective. According to this model increases in sensorimotor complexity create pressure for integrative higher order control and learning processes for acquiring information about the context in which action occurs. This generates complex articulated abstractive information processing, which forms the major basis for higher cognition. I present evidence that indicates that the same integrative characteristics found in lower cognitive process such as motor adaptation are present in a range of higher cognitive process, including conceptual learning. This account helps explain situated cognition phenomena in humans because the integrative processes by which the brain adapts to control interaction are relatively agnostic concerning the source of the structure participating in the process. Thus, from the perspective of the motor control system using a tool is not fundamentally different to simply controlling an arm

Memory Structure and Cognitive Maps

A common way to understand memory structures in the cognitive sciences is as a cognitive map​. Cognitive maps are representational systems organized by dimensions shared with physical space. The appeal to these maps begins literally: as an account of how spatial information is represented and used to inform spatial navigation. Invocations of cognitive maps, however, are often more ambitious; cognitive maps are meant to scale up and provide the basis for our more sophisticated memory capacities. The extension is not meant to be metaphorical, but the way in which these richer mental structures are supposed to remain map-like is rarely made explicit. Here we investigate this missing link, asking: how do cognitive maps represent non-spatial information?​ We begin with a survey of foundational work on spatial cognitive maps and then provide a comparative review of alternative, non-spatial representational structures. We then turn to several cutting-edge projects that are engaged in the task of scaling up cognitive maps so as to accommodate non-spatial information: first, on the spatial-isometric approach​ , encoding content that is non-spatial but in some sense isomorphic to spatial content; second, on the ​ abstraction approach​ , encoding content that is an abstraction over first-order spatial information; and third, on the ​ embedding approach​ , embedding non-spatial information within a spatial context, a prominent example being the Method-of-Loci. Putting these cases alongside one another reveals the variety of options available for building cognitive maps, and the distinctive limitations of each. We conclude by reflecting on where these results take us in terms of understanding the place of cognitive maps in memory

The development of path integration: combining estimations of distance and heading

Efficient daily navigation is underpinned by path integration, the mechanism by which we use self-movement information to update our position in space. This process is well-understood in adulthood, but there has been relatively little study of path integration in childhood, leading to an underrepresentation in accounts of navigational development. Previous research has shown that calculation of distance and heading both tend to be less accurate in children as they are in adults, although there have been no studies of the combined calculation of distance and heading that typifies naturalistic path integration. In the present study 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds took part in a triangle-completion task, where they were required to return to the startpoint of a multi-element path using only idiothetic information. Performance was compared to a sample of adult participants, who were found to be more accurate than children on measures of landing error, heading error, and distance error. 7-year-olds were significantly more accurate than 5-year-olds on measures of landing error and heading error, although the difference between groups was much smaller for distance error. All measures were reliably correlated with age, demonstrating a clear development of path integration abilities within the age range tested. Taken together, these data make a strong case for the inclusion of path integration within developmental models of spatial navigational processing

Disciplining the body? Reflections on the cross disciplinary import of ‘embodied meaning’ into interaction design

The aim of this paper is above all critically to examine and clarify some of the negative implications that the idea of ‘embodied meaning’ has for the emergent field of interaction design research. Originally, the term ‘embodied meaning’ has been brought into HCI research from phenomenology and cognitive semantics in order to better understand how user’s experience of new technological systems relies to an increasing extent on full-body interaction. Embodied approaches to technology design could thus be found in Winograd & Flores (1986), Dourish (2001), Lund (2003), Klemmer, Hartman & Takayama (2006), Hornecker & Buur (2006), Hurtienne & Israel (2007) among others. However, fertile as this cross-disciplinary import may be, design research can generally be criticised for being ‘undisciplined’, because of its tendency merely to take over reductionist ideas of embodied meaning from those neighbouring disciplines without questioning the inherent limitations it thereby subscribe to. In this paper I focus on this reductionism and what it means for interaction design research. I start out by introducing the field of interaction design and two central research questions that it raises. This will serve as a prerequisite for understanding the overall intention of bringing the notion of ‘embodied meaning’ from cognitive semantics into design research. Narrowing my account down to the concepts of ‘image schemas’ and their ‘metaphorical extension’, I then explain in more detail what is reductionistic about the notion of embodied meaning. Having done so, I shed light on the consequences this reductionism might have for design research by examining a recently developed framework for intuitive user interaction along with two case examples. In so doing I sketch an alternative view of embodied meaning for interaction design research. Keywords: Interaction Design, Embodied Meaning, Tangible User Interaction, Design Theory, Cognitive Semiotics</p

A half century of progress towards a unified neural theory of mind and brain with applications to autonomous adaptive agents and mental disorders

Invited article for the book Artificial Intelligence in the Age of Neural Networks and Brain Computing R. Kozma, C. Alippi, Y. Choe, and F. C. Morabito, Eds. Cambridge, MA: Academic PressThis article surveys some of the main design principles, mechanisms, circuits, and architectures that have been discovered during a half century of systematic research aimed at developing a unified theory that links mind and brain, and shows how psychological functions arise as emergent properties of brain mechanisms. The article describes a theoretical method that has enabled such a theory to be developed in stages by carrying out a kind of conceptual evolution. It also describes revolutionary computational paradigms like Complementary Computing and Laminar Computing that constrain the kind of unified theory that can describe the autonomous adaptive intelligence that emerges from advanced brains. Adaptive Resonance Theory, or ART, is one of the core models that has been discovered in this way. ART proposes how advanced brains learn to attend, recognize, and predict objects and events in a changing world that is filled with unexpected events. ART is not, however, a “theory of everything” if only because, due to Complementary Computing, different matching and learning laws tend to support perception and cognition on the one hand, and spatial representation and action on the other. The article mentions why a theory of this kind may be useful in the design of autonomous adaptive agents in engineering and technology. It also notes how the theory has led to new mechanistic insights about mental disorders such as autism, medial temporal amnesia, Alzheimer’s disease, and schizophrenia, along with mechanistically informed proposals about how their symptoms may be ameliorated

Neural systems supporting navigation

Highlights: • Recent neuroimaging and electrophysiology studies have begun to shed light on the neural dynamics of navigation systems. • Computational models have advanced theories of how entorhinal grid cells and hippocampal place cells might serve navigation. • Hippocampus and entorhinal cortex provide complementary representations of routes and vectors for navigation. Much is known about how neural systems determine current spatial position and orientation in the environment. By contrast little is understood about how the brain represents future goal locations or computes the distance and direction to such goals. Recent electrophysiology, computational modelling and neuroimaging research have shed new light on how the spatial relationship to a goal may be determined and represented during navigation. This research suggests that the hippocampus may code the path to the goal while the entorhinal cortex represents the vector to the goal. It also reveals that the engagement of the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex varies across the different operational stages of navigation, such as during travel, route planning, and decision-making at waypoints