36 research outputs found
Toward a Phenomenological Pragmatics of Enactive Perception
The enactive approach to perception is generating an extensive amount of interest and debate in the cognitive sciences. One particularly contentious issue has been how best to characterize the perceptual experiences reported by subjects who have mastered the skillful use of a perceptual supplementation (PS) device. This paper argues that this issue cannot be resolved with the use of third-person methodologies alone, but that it requires the development of a phenomenological pragmatics. In particular, it is necessary that the experimenters become skillful in the use of PS devices themselves. The "Enactive Torch" is proposed as an experimental platform which is cheap, non-intrusive and easy to replicate, so as to enable researchers to corroborate reported experiences with their own phenomenology more easily
Artificial Tongue-Placed Tactile Biofeedback for perceptual supplementation: application to human disability and biomedical engineering
The present paper aims at introducing the innovative technologies, based on
the concept of "sensory substitution" or "perceptual supplementation", we are
developing in the fields of human disability and biomedical engineering.
Precisely, our goal is to design, develop and validate practical assistive
biomedical and/technical devices and/or rehabilitating procedures for persons
with disabilities, using artificial tongue-placed tactile biofeedback systems.
Proposed applications are dealing with: (1) pressure sores prevention in case
of spinal cord injuries (persons with paraplegia, or tetraplegia); (2) ankle
proprioceptive acuity improvement for driving assistance in older and/or
disabled adults; and (3) balance control improvement to prevent fall in older
and/or disabled adults. This paper presents results of three feasibility
studies performed on young healthy adults
Effets d'une suppl\'eance perceptive visuelle, auditive et tactile sur le contr\^ole des pressions fessi\`eres en position assise
This article presents a study on different informative modalities of a
perceptual supplementation device aiming at reducing overpressure at the
buttock area. Visual, audio and tactile modalities are analysed and compared
with a non-biofeedback session. In conclusion, modalities have a positive and
equal effect, but they are not equally judged in term of comfort and
disturbance with some other activitie
Pressure Sores Prevention for Paraplegic People: Effects of Visual, Auditory and Tactile Supplementations on Overpressures Distribution in Seated Posture
This paper presents a study on the usage of different informative modalities as biofeedbacks of a perceptual supplementation device aiming at reducing overpressure at the buttock area. Visual, audio and lingual electrotactile modalities are analysed and compared with a non-biofeedback session. In conclusion, sensory modalities have a positive and equal effect, but they are not equally judged in terms of comfort and disturbance with some other activities
Interactive audio-tactile maps for visually impaired people
International audienceVisually impaired people face important challenges related to orientation and mobility. Indeed, 56% of visually impaired people in France declared having problems concerning autonomous mobility. These problems often mean that visually impaired people travel less, which influences their personal and professional life and can lead to exclusion from society. Therefore this issue presents a social challenge as well as an important research area. Accessible geographic maps are helpful for acquiring knowledge about a city's or neighborhood's configuration, as well as selecting a route to reach a destination. Traditionally, raised-line paper maps with braille text have been used. These maps have proved to be efficient for the acquisition of spatial knowledge by visually impaired people. Yet, these maps possess significant limitations. For instance, due to the specificities of the tactile sense only a limited amount of information can be displayed on a single map, which dramatically increases the number of maps that are needed. For the same reason, it is difficult to represent specific information such as distances. Finally, braille labels are used for textual descriptions but only a small percentage of the visually impaired population reads braille. In France 15% of blind people are braille readers and only 10% can read and write. In the United States, fewer than 10% of the legally blind people are braille readers and only 10% of blind children actually learn braille. Recent technological advances have enabled the design of interactive maps with the aim to overcome these limitations. Indeed, interactive maps have the potential to provide a broad spectrum of the population with spatial knowledge, irrespective of age, impairment, skill level, or other factors. To this regard, they might be an efficient means for providing visually impaired people with access to geospatial information. In this paper we give an overview of our research on making geographic maps accessible to visually impaired people
Concurrent Speech Synthesis to Improve Document First Glance for the Blind
International audienceSkimming and scanning are two well-known reading processes, which are combined to access the document content as quickly and efficiently as possible. While both are available in visual reading mode, it is rather difficult to use them in non visual environments because they mainly rely on typographical and layout properties. In this article, we introduce the concept of tag thunder as a way (1) to achieve the oral transposition of the web 2.0 concept of tag cloud and (2) to produce an innovative interactive stimulus to observe the emergence of self-adapted strategies for non-visual skimming of written texts. We first present our general and theoretical approach to the problem of both fast, global and non-visual access to web browsing; then we detail the progress of development and evaluation of the various components that make up our software architecture. We start from the hypothesis that the semantics of the visual architecture of web pages can be transposed into new sensory modalities thanks to three main steps (web page segmentation, keywords extraction and sound spatialization). We note the difficulty of simultaneously (1) evaluating a modular system as a whole at the end of the processing chain and (2) identifying at the level of each software brick the exact origin of its limits; despite this issue, the results of the first evaluation campaign seem promising
Collective Intelligence and the Mapping of Accessible Ways in the City: a Systematic Literature Review
This paper has the objective of assessing how ICTs are being used to provide accessibility in urban mobility, with special interest to collective intelligence approaches. A systematic literature review (SLR) was performed, using several different criteria to filter down the 500+ academic papers that were originally obtained from a search for âaccessible mapsâ to the 43 papers that finally remained in the corpus of the SLR. Among the findings, it was noticed that (i) few studies explored the motivations of users that actively contribute, providing information to feed maps, and they restricted themselves to exploring three techniques: gaming, monetary reward and ranking; (ii) social networks are rarely used as a source of data for building and updating maps; and (iii) the literature does not discuss any initiative that aims to support the needs of physically and visually impaired citizens at the same time
Technical innovation in human science: Examples in cognitive technologies
In order to show how technological innovation and scientific innovation are linked in the course of research in human science, we present an account of a series of innovations made in our laboratory (Distal Glove â Tactos system â Intertact server â Dialtact module). We will thus see how research on the technical constitution of cognitive and perceptual activities can be associated with a process of innovation. Devices which were initially developed for the purposes of performing experiments contributed both to scientific inventions and to developments with a practical and social finality
Une conception universelle mise en oeuvre via des modes d'usages
International audienc
Slaying the chimera: a complementarity approach to the extended mind thesis
Much of the literature directed at the Extended Mind Thesis (EMT) has revolved around
parity issues, focussing on the problem of how to individuate the functional roles and on
the relevance of these roles for the production of human intelligent behaviour.
Proponents of EMT have famously claimed that we shouldnât take the location of a
process as a reliable indicator of the mechanisms that support our cognitive behaviour.
This functionalist understanding of cognition has however been challenged by opponents
of EMT [such as Rupert (2009); Adams & Aizawa (2009)], who have claimed that
differences between internal, biological processes and putatively extended ones not only
exist but are actually crucial to undermine the idea that inner and outer are functionally
equivalent. This debate about how to individuate the functional roles has led to a
treacherous stand-off, in which proponents of EMT have been trapped under the
persistent accusation of causal/constitution conflation. My strategy for responding to this
charge is to look precisely at those functional differences highlighted by critics of EMT. I
reckon that extended cognitive systems are endowed with quite different properties from
systems that are âbrain boundâ and argue that it is precisely these differences that allow
human minds to transcend their biological limitations. I thus defend a complementarity
version of the extended mind, according to which externally located resources and
internal biological elements make a different but complementary contribution to bringing
about intelligent behaviour [Sutton (2010)]. My defence of complementarity is based on
both the phylogeny and the ontogeny of cognitive systems. I initially explore the
interrelation between brain and cognitive development from a neuroconstructivist
perspective [Quartz & Sejnowski (1997); Mareshal et al. (2007)] and then argue that our
brains do not have fixed functional architectures but are sculpted and given form by the
activities we repeatedly engage in. As a result of repeated engagements in socio-cultural
tasks, relevant brain pathways undergo substantial rewiring. Development thus scaffolds
our brains, which become geared into working in symbiotic partnership with external
resources. [Kiverstein & Farina (2011)]. On these grounds, I call into question any
tendency to interpret the human biological nature as fixed and endogenously pre-determined and side with proponents of DST [Oyama (2000); Griffiths & Gray (2001)]
and ontogenetic niche construction [Stotz (2010)] in arguing that we should think of
natural selection as operating on whole developmental systems composed of living
organisms in culturally enriched niches. [Wheeler & Clark(2008)].
Complementarity defences of EMT argue that many of the kinds of cognition humans
excel at can only be accomplished by brains working together with a body that directly
manipulates and acts on the world [Rowlands (2010); Menary (2007)]. I take Sensory
Substitution Devices (SSDs henceforth) as my empirical case study. SSDs exploit the
remarkable plasticity of our brains and with training supply a novel perceptual modality
that compensates for loss or impaired sensory channel. I argue that the coupling with
these devices triggers a new mode of phenomenal access to the world, something I
propose to label as a kind of âartificial synaesthesia [Ward & Meijer (2010)].This new
mode of access to the world transforms our cognitive skills and gives rise to augmented
processes of deep bio-technological symbiosis. SSDs therefore become mind enhancing
tools [Clark (2003)] and a perfect case study for Complementarity. Having shown the
relevance of SSDs for EMT, I then take up the possibility that these devices donât just
relocate the boundaries of cognition but may also stretch the bounds of perceptual
awareness. I explore the possibility that perceivers using SSDs count as extended
cognitive systems and therefore argue that the experiences they enjoy should be counted
as extended conscious experiences.[Kiverstein & Farina, (forthcoming)]. SSDs are quite
often said to involve some form of incorporation.[Clark (2008)]. Rupert has challenged
this idea and its relevance for EMT on the grounds of his embedded approach.
Particularly, he has explained tool-use in terms of the causal interaction between the
subject and its detached tool. In the final chapter of my dissertation I critically look at his
objections and argue that all his arguments fail to apply to SSDs. In SSD perception in
fact the tool becomes geared to work in symbiotic partnership with the active subject and
then get factored into itsâ body schema so that both of them come to form a single system
of cognitive analysis