ROLE OF THINKING ON TEACHING COMPETENCY - PRE SERVICE TEACHERS PERSPECTIVE

The teacher competence includes a thorough knowledge of the content.A teacher competence mainly includes the strategies, understanding of student psychology and the process of thinking.With regard to the former, plenty of resource material is available.But, the latter has been a continuous experimentation throughout the world. Cognitive Psychology contributes substantially in enhancing teaching competence.In recent times, cognitive neuroscience researches have demanded the teaching competence to be redefined to meet the challenges.Naturally, the learning process depends on the effective functioning of the brain. Thinking refers to the process of thought. To consider, judge or believe. The process of exercising the mind in order to make a decision, to remember or recollect, to make the mental choice between options.A focus on the development of thinking competencies within specific areas of the curriculum and across it not only serves as a core integrative function, it also has the potential to provide continuity in approaches to learning ,the view that such knowledge, skills and behaviours are important to lifelong learning. To emphasis' this, teachers model skilful and , and make their own thinking explicit as part of their everyday practice.The impact of thinking on class room activities and other educational activities is more to enhancing the teaching competency

Interactive Lossy Compression for Images and Video

Abstract—In any given scene, a human observer is typically more interested in some objects than others, and will pay more at-tention to those objects they are interested in. This paper aims to capture this attention focusing behavior by selectively merging a fine-scale oversegmentation of a frame so that interesting regions are segmented into smaller regions than uninteresting regions. This results in a new type of image partitioning which reflects in the image the amount of attention we pay to a particular image region. This is done using a novel, interactive method for learning merging rules for images and videos based on defining a weighted distance metric between adjacent oversegments. We present as an example application of this technique a new lossy image and video stream compression method which attempts to minimize the loss in areas of interest. I

EEG Correlates of Attentional Load during Multiple Object Tracking

While human subjects tracked a subset of ten identical, randomly-moving objects, event-related potentials (ERPs) were evoked at parieto-occipital sites by task-irrelevant flashes that were superimposed on either tracked (Target) or non-tracked (Distractor) objects. With ERPs as markers of attention, we investigated how allocation of attention varied with tracking load, that is, with the number of objects that were tracked. Flashes on Target discs elicited stronger ERPs than did flashes on Distractor discs; ERP amplitude (0–250 ms) decreased monotonically as load increased from two to three to four (of ten) discs. Amplitude decreased more rapidly for Target discs than Distractor discs. As a result, with increasing tracking loads, the difference between ERPs to Targets and Distractors diminished. This change in ERP amplitudes with load accords well with behavioral performance, suggesting that successful tracking depends upon the relationship between the neural signals associated with attended and non-attended objects

Object-based attention without awareness

Attention and awareness are often considered to be related. Some forms of attention can, however, facilitate the processing of stimuli that remain unseen. It is unclear whether this dissociation extends beyond selection on the basis of primitive properties, such as spatial location, to situations in which there are more complex bases for attentional selection. The experiment described here shows that attentional selection at the level of objects can take place without giving rise to awareness of those objects. Pairs of objects were continually masked, which rendered them invisible to participants performing a cued-target-discrimination task. When the cue and target appeared within the same object, discrimination was faster than when they appeared in different objects at the same spatial separation. Participants reported no awareness of the objects and were unable to detect them in a signal-detection task. Object-based attention, therefore, is not sufficient for object awareness

Intermediate Levels of Hippocampal Activity Appear Optimal for Associative Memory Formation

Contains fulltext : 87971.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

Parallel attentional facilitation of features and objects in early visual cortex

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was supported by a stipend from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (AN 841/1‐1) and a grant from the BBSRC (BB/P002404/1) to S.K.A. We thank Jennifer Padwal for help with data collection and Matt Marlow for technical support.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Object-based attentional facilitation and inhibition are neuropsychologically dissociated

Salient peripheral cues produce a transient shift of attention which is superseded by a sustained inhibitory effect. Cueing part of an object produces an inhibitory cueing effect (ICE) that spreads throughout the object. In dynamic scenes the ICE stays with objects as they move. We examined object-centred attentional facilitation and inhibition in a patient with visual form agnosia. There was no evidence of object-centred attentional facilitation. In contrast, object-centred ICE was observed in 3 out of 4 tasks. These inhibitory effects were strongest where cues to objecthood were highly salient. These data are evidence of a neuropsychological dissociation between the facilitatory and inhibitory effects of attentional cueing. From a theoretical perspective the findings suggest that ‘grouped arrays’ are sufficient for object-based inhibition, but insufficient to generate object-centred attentional facilitation

Perceptual organization and its influence upon attention

Humans are able to control so much of their environment not through brute strength or enhanced sensory receptors, but through our ability to understand the world around us. In order to make sense of the world around us we need to organize the information that our sensory systems receive. One of the most fundamental steps in this organizational process lies in the construction of objects. By breaking down our sensory input into objects the mind provides a basis upon which it can begin to scaffold our understanding of the world. This thesis therefore explores the basic stages at which the visual system organizes our sensory input into distinct objects. It explores these stages by exploiting the fact that the brain’s limited processing resources can be selectively allocated on the basis of ‘object-hood’. This allocation of processing resources, or attention, on the basis of these early stages of segmentation is commonly referred to as ‘object based attention’. ‘Object based attention’ and perceptual organisation are explored in three sections in this thesis: Understanding the Phenomenon of Object Based Attention. The first three chapters of this thesis seeks to further our understanding of the phenomenon of ‘object based attention’, for example, chapter 3 explores whether the visual system can simultaneously parse several objects as potential units of attention, or whether it can only segment one or two objects at a time. Object Based Attention, a Tool to Explore the Nature of Perceptual Organisation The second section of this thesis attempts to use the phenomenon of ‘object based attention’ as a tool to explore the nature of perceptual representations, for example chapter 5 tests whether different modalities (in particular vision and touch) are able to directly share information about objects in order to build up an integrated model of the external world. Object Based Attention, Perceptual Organisation and Shape Processing Area LO. In the final section of this thesis the nature of perceptual organization is explored in a patient with a very specific form of brain damage that enables us to ask what areas of the brain are critically required for different aspects of perceptual organization

Electrophysiological evidence of sustained spatial attention effects over anterior cortex:Possible contribution of the anterior insula

Spatial attention can improve performance in terms of speed and accuracy; this advantage may be mediated by brain processes at both poststimulus (reactive) and prestimulus (proactive) stages. Here, we studied how visuospatial attention affects both proactive and reactive brain functions using event-related potentials (ERPs). At reactive stage, effects of attention on parietal-occipital components are well documented; little data are available on anterior components. Seventeen participants performed simple and discriminative response tasks, while voluntarily and steadily attending either the left or right visual hemifield throughout one block. Response speed was faster for the attended side. At ERP level, attending to one hemifield did not produce lateralization of proactive components—that is, the BP and the pN. As for poststimulus components, we confirmed the well-known amplitude effects on the P1, N1, and P3. More interesting are results for the prefrontal components previously neglected in tasks modulating spatial attention. Previous studies suggest that these components reflect perceptual and sensory-motor awareness (pN1 and pP1 components), and stimulus-response mapping (pP2 component) associated to anterior insular activity. Spatial attention enhanced the pN1 and the pP1 amplitude but had no effect on the pP2. Overall, results extend knowledge on spatial attention, showing that sustained spatial attention affects the activity of anterior areas, such as the anterior insula, in addition to the known influence on occipital-parietal areas. Top-down spatial attention is likely mediated by increased sensory and sensory-motor awareness for attended events; this effect is evident in reactive, not proactive, brain activity.</p

Threat modulates neural responses to looming visual stimuli

Objects on a collision course with an observer produce a specific pattern of optical expansion on the retina known as looming, which in theory exactly specifies the time-to-collision (TTC) of approaching objects. We recently demonstrated that the affective content of looming stimuli influences perceived TTC, with threatening objects judged as approaching sooner than non-threatening objects. Here, we investigated the neural mechanisms by which perceived threat modulates spatiotemporal perception. Participants judged the TTC of threatening (snakes, spiders) or non-threatening (butterflies, rabbits) stimuli, which expanded in size at a rate indicating one of five TTCs. We analysed visual-evoked potentials (VEPs) and oscillatory neural responses measured with electroencephalography (EEG). The arrival time of threatening stimuli was underestimated compared to non-threatening stimuli, though an interaction suggested that this underestimation was not constant across TTCs. Further, both speed of approach and threat modulated both VEPs and oscillatory responses. Speed of approach modulated the N1 parietal and oscillations in the beta band. Threat modulated several VEP components (P1, N1 frontal, N1 occipital, EPN and LPP) and oscillations in the alpha and high gamma band. The results for the high gamma band suggest an interaction between these two factors. Previous evidence suggests that looming stimuli activate sensorimotor areas, even in absence of an intended action. Our results show that threat disrupts the synchronization over the sensorimotor areas that are likely activated by the presentation of a looming stimulus