Cross Disciplinary Perceptions of the Computational Thinking among Freshmen Engineering Students

In this paper, we analyzed the perception of Computational Thinking among engineering students from three engineering disciplines (Electrical, Mechanical, and Civil) and correlated their performance with their discipline. The goal of this analysis is to determine whether structuring discipline-specific Computational Thinking courses can improve the retention or having a diverse group of students in this course is more beneficial by allowing multidisciplinary interaction. This analysis was quantitatively verified by assessing the students\u27 performance in over 40 different sections of Computing for Engineers course taught from Fall 2012 to Spring 2014. Our sample consisted of 861 students (142 Civil, 484 Mechanical, and 235 Electrical). Students’ performance was assessed using quizzes, assignments, lab projects, and exams. We statistically analyzed students\u27 performance in this multi-section course to draw our conclusions which can help structuring Computational Thinking courses for engineering students from different engineering disciplines

The Epistemology of Simulation, Computation and Dynamics in Economics Ennobling Synergies, Enfeebling 'Perfection'

Lehtinen and Kuorikoski ([73]) question, provocatively, whether, in the context of Computing the Perfect Model, economists avoid - even positively abhor - reliance on simulation. We disagree with the mildly qualified affirmative answer given by them, whilst agreeing with some of the issues they raise. However there are many economic theoretic, mathematical (primarily recursion theoretic and constructive) - and even some philosophical and epistemological - infelicities in their descriptions, definitions and analysis. These are pointed out, and corrected; for, if not, the issues they raise may be submerged and subverted by emphasis just on the unfortunate, but essential, errors and misrepresentationsSimulation, Computation, Computable, Analysis, Dynamics, Proof, Algorithm

Film, Relay, and System: A Systems Theory Approach to Cinema

Film theory is replete with references to systems, yet no theory has emerged to provide a cohesive explanation of how cinema, as both technology and institution, operates as a relay system. Interdisciplinary in nature, my dissertation proposes a systems theory of cinema deriving largely from the work of social scientist Niklas Luhmann. Systems theory is especially productive for the ways that it intervenes at crucial sites of conflict and irresolution within film studies. With its emphasis on nonhuman agencies, systems theory calls for reappraisal of the significance of the human to the cinema apparatus--a significance long assumed to be simply a given. With its claim that the reasoning adduced by an observer is never in fact the logic of the observed, systems theory has major implications for thinking about the role of narrative in film and film theory. And with its stress on contingency, systems theory can be seen to upset the terms of debates within the field about cultural and technological determinism, and to provide further grounding for recent work on contingency and cinematic time. Chapter one examines a defining staple of early cinema, the chase film, as a quintessential example of the construction of movement, in the evolution of film editing, via a chain of interlinked segments that relay--and tend to abrogate--human figures. Chapter two focuses on a film conceived by Rube Goldberg at the transition from silent to sound cinema, with particular attention to how the coming of sound complicates the visual relays characteristic of silent slapstick\u27s gag structures. Chapter three examines the dynamism of the long take in classical and post-classical cinema, emphasizing the gradual and incremental disclosure of elements by the camera and revealing the cinema recording process itself as a type of Goldbergian contraption. The last chapter reflects on the computerization of film and media, showing that systems theory provides a useful avenue to thinking about the continuity between analog and digital cinema due in part to an unusual but rich and suggestive conception of the notion of medium

Clasp together: composing for mind and machine

This paper will explore questions of agency, control and interaction and the embodied nature of musical performance in relation to the use of human-computer interaction (HCI), through the experimental work Clasp Together (beta) 2 for small ensemble and live electronics by J. Harry Whalley. This practice-led research is situated at the intersection of music neurotechnology for sound synthesis and brain-computer interfaces (BCI), and explores the use of neural patterns from Electroencephalography (EEG) as a control instrument. The composition departed from the traditional composer/performer paradigm by including both non-instrumental physical gestures and cognitive or emotive instructions integrated into the score

Syntax, Recursion & Cognition

Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Thema Rekursion, also der selbstähnlichen Wiederholung, in der menschlichen Kognition bezogen auf natürlich sprachliche Syntax. Da meist nur Sätze, die mehrfache Einbettung von CPs enthalten, insbesondere zentral-eingebettete CPs, als rekursiv angehsehen werden, da von diesen angenommen wird, dass sie eine immer komplexer werdende Einbettung von Konstituenten erzeugen, beschäftigt sich diese Arbeit ebenfalls mit der Frage, was sprachliche Rekursion tatsächlich ist und welche Rolle Rekursion in der menschlichen Kognition spielt, sodass sich Sprache beim Menschen entwickeln konnte. Zu diesem Zweck muss klar sein, inwiefern sich Sprache von anderen Kommunikationssystemen unterscheidet und zudem, was die Mechanismen sind, die diesen Unterschied hervorrufen, wie sie im Gehirn verarbeitet werden und ob sie auch in nicht-sprachlichen Domänen auftauchen und ob sie zudem von anderen Spezies kognitiv verarbeitet werden können. Das erste Kapitel ist eine Einleitung zu dem Begriff Rekursion und zu dem Konzept dahinter. Des Weiteren wird die Anwendung dieses Konzepts in verschiedenen Gebieten veranschaulicht. Dieses Kapitel zeigt und diskutiert ebenfalls mögliche Abgrenzungen von Rekursion zu anderen Mechanismen der Wiederholung, wie Iteration. Zusammenfassend wird in diesem Kapitel geschlussfolgert, dass eine Unterscheidung zwischen Rekursion, Iteration und „einfacher Wiederholung“, oder „einfacher Einbettung weder notwendig noch plausibel ist. Auch die Annahme, dass rekursive Prozesse und Strukturen voneinander zu trennen sind, ist nicht nachvollziehbar, da folgend der X‘-Theorie jeder Satz, auch wenn er nur eine CP enthält, eingebettet ist, und somit jeder Satz, der laut Phrasenstrukturregeln rekursiv durch seine Ersetzungsregeln ist, auch eine rekursive Struktur mit Einbettungen erzeugt. Kapitel 2 hat Rekursion innerhalb linguistischer generativer Theorien zum Thema. In diesem Kapitel geht es unter anderem darum, was der Mechanismus ist, der Sprache rekursiv macht, wobei die Schlussfolgerung ist, dass jeder Satz gleichermaßen rekursiv ist, dadurch, dass die Operation Merge rekursive Eigenschaften besitzt und für die Indefinitheit natürlicher Sprache sorgt. Des Weiteren wird begutachtet, ob es Gründe gibt, anzunehmen, dass nur Sätze mit mehreren CPs rekursiv sein können, wobei darauf geschlossen wird, dass der einzige wichtige Unterschied darin liegt, dass bei Sätzen mit mehreren CPs mehr Arbeitsgedächtniskapazität gefordert wird. In Kapitel 3 werden die neuronalen Mechanismen, die für Syntax, bzw. Rekursion verantwortlich sind, betrachtet. Dabei wird ebenfalls die Rolle, die das Arbeitsgedächtnis einnimmt, berücksichtigt, da es eine wichtige in diesem Belang zu spielen scheint. Kapitel 4 beschäftigt sich mit Rekursion im menschlichen Denken außerhalb der Sprache und mit der Wichtigkeit, die Rekursion als menschliche Universal für natürliche Sprache hat. Dies geschieht am Beispiel der indigenen Sprache Pirahã, die laut Daniel Everett nicht rekursiv ist, was jedoch durchaus umstritten ist. Im zweiten Teil des Kapitels geht es um die Kognition nicht-menschlichen Spezies in Bezug auf Rekursion und Sprache. Hierbei werden Singvögel und nicht-menschliche Primaten als Beispiel näher betrachtet. Das fünfte Kapitel widmet sich der Frage, welche Rolle Rekursion bei der Entstehung der Sprache beim Menschen spielt, wobei festgestellt wird, dass Rekursion vermutlich eine wichtige Rolle gespielt, da die Fähigkeit, rekursiv zu denken nicht nur zu der Möglichkeit geführt hat, abstrakte Regel anzuwenden und somit unendlich lange, immer neue Äußerungen zu produzieren, sondern auch die hauptsächliche Rolle dabei spielt, dass menschliche Sprache, im Gegensatz zu Kommunikationsformen anderer Tiere, dazu in der Lage ist, sich nicht auf das Hier und Jetzt zu beziehen, sondern neben Vergangenheit und Zukunft auch auf mögliche Welten. Eine wichtige Frage diesbezüglich ist natürlich, wieso Menschen, nicht aber andere Spezies diese Fähigkeit der Kommunikation entwickelt haben, da einige Tiere gute kognitive Fähigkeiten sogar innerhalb der gleichen Domänen wie Menschen zeigen.This thesis concerns the topic of recursion in human cognition with respect to natural language syntax. Since mostly only sentences with multiple CP-embedding, especially center-embedding, and thus the embedding of clauses, are considered recursive, this thesis considers the question, what recursion in language exactly is, as well as the question, which role recursion plays within human cognition, such that language in humans could evolve. For this purpose it has to come clear in how far language differs from other communication systems and what exactly these mechanisms are, how they are processed in the brain, whether and where they appear in non-linguistic domains and in how far other species than humans are capable of these mechanisms. The 1st chapter introduces the term recursion and the concept that stands behind it, and moreover shows its application in different fields. Further, this chapter presents and discusses possible differences between recursion and other types of repetition, such as iteration. In the 1st chapter it is concluded that a differentiation between recursion, iteration and “simple repetition” is not useful, or rather doesn’t make any sense, since, as I argued, recursion in natural language syntax is evident in every sentence, since recursion is represented by a combining operation like Merge, which is always recursion. Furthermore, it is sometimes argued that a recursive process does not always yield a recursive structure, or rather embedding. Here again, I argued that this differentiation is not plausible, since, according to X’-Theory a sentence with more than one clause as well as a sentence with only one clause is represented hierarchical and thus yields an embedded structure. Chapter 2 presents recursion in linguistic theory, particularly generative theories as phrase structure grammar and the Minimalist Program. Moreover, within this chapter, it is discussed, what the mechanism is, that makes syntax recursive, and whether there is good reason to believe that all sentences yield recursion, or if there are special properties that make only sentences recursive that contain subordinated clauses. In the 2nd chapter it is argued that every sentence is equally recursive, since it is generated by the same rules, independent of whether multiple CP-embedding occurs or not. CP-embedded sentences seem to differ from other sentence in they need more working-memory to be processed. In Chapter 3, brain structures that are considered to represent the activation pattern during syntactic and recursive processing, within and outside the linguistic domain, are looked at more closely. Additionally, it is investigated which role has to be dedicated to working-memory, since it seems to play a crucial role within this issue. Chapter 4 is about recursion within human cognition and the cognition of non-human species. More particular, the first part of this chapter is concerned with the role recursion plays within domains outside language, and what this means for recursion in linguistic syntax and for the human language ability as a whole. Moreover, this part of the chapter also discusses the need for recursion in human language on the example of the language Pirahã, which had been considered by Daniel Everett to be a non-recursive language, which is, however, rather controversial. The second part of the 4th chapter is concerned with probable language-like processing and general cognition in non-human species. As an example for this, songbirds and non-human primates are looked at in particular. The 5th chapter investigates recursion within the framework of language evolution and especially the evolution of syntax. For this purpose, different theories on language evolution are discussed as well as the evolution of the human brain with respect to syntax. Moreover, the role of recursion for the human language ability is looked at more closely. Concerning the question why and how language evolved in humans, different theories are available, as it is for the evolution of syntax in particular. Moreover, there exist different theories on how the human brain evolved to be capable of syntactic language. One possibility is, however, that factors from different theories have interacted with each other, such that language-like utterances, that probably did not serve communication, but rather the avoidance of inbreeding, made linguistic units, like words, to appear, which probably lead to social interaction, which in turn affected the development of the human brain and thus the emergence of language. Recursion plays a crucial role here, since it is the basic mechanism that makes it possible to combine linguistic units by abstract rules, such that they yield a concatenated new one, as well as it is basically responsible for the human ability to use language as not only referring to the here-and-now, but also as referring to past, future and imaginary events. Moreover, the recursive ability in humans is probably also responsible for the complex social interactions in humans, which are often considered to be linked to the evolution of language in humans. One of the main questions within this concern is, of course, why only humans developed such a complex communicative system, like language, if some animal species show rather complex cognitive behavior, partly even within the same domains as humans

Language evolution and recursion : an empirical investigation of human hierarchical processing

Tese de doutoramento, Ciências Biomédicas (Neurociências), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Medicina, 2014Humans generate complex hierarchical structures in a variety of domains such as in language, social organization, music, action sequencing and visual arts. One cognitive capacity associated with this extraordinary generative power is recursion. Recursion is a very efficient method to process hierarchies and it allows the generation of unbounded hierarchical depth from finite means. Recursion can be defined as the ability to represent the embedding of hierarchies within hierarchies of the same kind. Although recursion has been hypothesized as uniquely human and primarily linguistic, the empirical investigation of these hypotheses has been hindered by the absence of methods to test for recursive capabilities outside the domain of language. In this thesis I present a novel task that can be used to investigate the ability to represent recursion (hierarchical self-similarity) in the visuo-spatial domain. I will describe a set of experiments in which I attempt to characterize recursion as a psychological entity by describing its relationship with other cognitive abilities, as well as its developmental patterns and neural underpinnings. The conclusions of this research program are the following: 1) humans can represent recursion in the visuo-spatial domain; 2) this ability requires the acquisition of abstract rules; 3) recursion can be efficiently used to represent information common to different levels of a hierarchy, and it enhances the ability to detect fine-grained hierarchical mistakes, 4) linguistic resources are not specifically active while processing visual recursion neither behaviorally nor at the neural level, however recursion seems to require the integration of spatial and categorical information. The novel task and results presented here open up exciting pathways in the investigation of recursion as a cognitive ability. Because it is a visual task, not requiring verbal instructions or responses, it can also be used to test non-human primates and clinical populations with language impairment.A espécie humana é capaz de produzir hierarquias complexas na linguagem, organização social, música, actividade motora e nas artes visuais. O poder generativo da cognição humana tem sido associado a um módulo computacional designado recursividade, que pode ser definido como a capacidade de representar a incorporação de hierarquias dentro de hierarquias do mesmo tipo. A recursividade pode ser usada de modo eficiente no processamento de hierarquias, permitindo a geração de estruturas infinitamente profundas partindo de um número finito de elementos. Esta capacidade tem sido postulada como exclusivamente humana e primariamente linguística. No entanto, a investigação empírica destas hipóteses tem sido dificultada pela ausência de um método para testar capacidades recursivas fora do domínio linguístico. Nesta tese irei apresentar um novo método para testar a capacidade de representar a recursividade no domínio visuo-espacial. Irei descrever uma série de experiências nas quais caracterizarei a recursividade como uma entidade psicológica, descrevendo de que forma se relaciona com outras capacidades cognitivas, o seu padrão de desenvolvimento e correlatos neurais. As conclusões deste programa de investigação são as seguintes: 1) a espécie humana é capaz de representar recursividade visuo-espacial; 2) esta capacidade requer a aquisição de regras abstractas; 3) a recursividade é usada para representar informação comum a vários níveis hierárquicos e melhora a capacidade de detectar erros estruturais ao nível dos pequenos detalhes; 4) o processamento de recursividade visual não activa especificamente recursos verbais, quer ao nível do comportamento quer ao nível neural, contudo esta capacidade requer a integração de informação espacial e categorial. A tarefa e os resultados inovadores aqui apresentados abrem novas vias de investigação relativamente à capacidade de utilizar recursividade ao nível cognitivo. Por ser uma tarefa visual não requer instruções nem respostas verbais, pelo que pode ser usada para testar primatas não humanos e populações clínicas com defeitos de linguagem.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT); European Research Council (ERC

Always One Bit More, Computing and the Experience of Ambiguity

Fun is often understood to be non-conceptual and indeed without rigour, without relation to formal processes of thought, yielding an intense and joyous informality, a release from procedure. Yet, as this book argues, fun may also be found, alongside other kinds of pleasure, in the generation, iteration and imagination of operations and procedures. This chapter aims to develop a means of drawing out an understanding of fun in relation to concepts of experience in the culture of mathematics and in the machinic fun of certain computer games. Mathematical concepts of experience, as something to be effaced, in terms of the grind of churning out calculations, understood as an acme of human knowledge bordering on the mystical or something both prosaic, peculiar and thrillingly abstract have been crucial to the motivation and genesis of computing. Experience may be figured as something innate to the computing person, or that is abstractable and thus mobile, shifting heterogeneously from one context to another, producing strange affinities between scales – residues and likeness among computational forms that can occasionally link the most austere and mundane or cacophonous of aesthetics. Among such, the fine and perplexing fun of paradox and ambiguity arises not simply in the interplay between formalisms and other kinds of life but as formalisms interweave releasing and congealing further dynamics. There are many ways in which mathematics has been linked to culture as a means of ordering, describing, inspiring or explaining ways of being in the world, but it is less often that mathematics thinks about itself as producing figurations of existence, and such moments are useful to turn to in gaining a sense of some of the patternings of computational culture