The Strong Story Hypothesis and the Directed Perception Hypothesis

I ask why humans are smarter than other primates, and I hypothesize that an important part of the answer lies in what I call the Strong Story Hypothesis, which holds that story telling and understanding have a central role in human intelligence. Next, I introduce another hypothesis, the Driven Perception Hypothesis, which holds that we derive much of our commonsense, including the commonsense required in story understanding, by deploying our perceptual apparatus on real and imagined events. Then, after discussing methodology, I describe the representations and methods embodied in the Genesis system, a story-understanding system that analyzes stories ranging from precis of Shakespeare's plots to descriptions of conflicts in cyberspace. The Genesis system works with short story summaries, provided in English, together with low-level commonsense rules and higher-level reflection patterns, likewise expressed in English. Using only a small collection of commonsense rules and reflection patterns, Genesis demonstrates several story-understanding capabilities, such as determining that both Macbeth and the 2007 Russia-Estonia Cyberwar involve revenge, even though neither the word revenge nor any of its synonyms are mentioned. Finally, I describe Rao's Visio-Spatial Reasoning System, a system that recognizes activities such as approaching, jumping, and giving, and answers commonsense questions posed by Genesis.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (IIS-0413206)United States. Office of Naval Research (N00014-09-1-0597)United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (A9550-05-1-0321)United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (FA8750-10-1-0076

The Right Way

I ask why humans are smarter than other primates, and I hypothesize that an important part of the answer lies in the Inner Language Hypothesis, a prerequisite to what I call the Strong Story Hypothesis, which holds that story telling and understanding have a central role in human intelligence. Next, I introduce the Directed Perception Hypothesis, which holds that we derive much of our common sense, including the common sense required in story understanding, by deploying our perceptual apparatus on real and imagined events. Both the Strong Story Hypothesis and the Directed Perception Hypothesis become more valuable in light of our social nature, an idea captured in the Social Animal Hypothesis. Then, after discussing methodology, I describe the representations and methods embodied in Genesis, a story-understanding system that analyzes stories ranging from pr´ecis of Shakespeare’s plots to descriptions of conflicts in cyberspace. Genesis works with short story summaries, provided in English, together with low-level common-sense rules and higher-level concept patterns, likewise expressed in English. Using only a small collection of common-sense rules and concept patterns, Genesis demonstrates several story-understanding capabilities, such as determining that both Macbeth and the 2007 Russia-Estonia Cyberwar involve revenge, even though neither the word revenge nor any of its synonyms are mentioned

The Effects of Emotional Versus Rational Message Framing on Brand Attachment and Brand Loyalty

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship among message framing in social media, brand attachment, and brand loyalty for higher education institutions. In particular, this study compares the effectiveness of rational versus emotional message framing in different message contexts, such as sports or academic-related stories. Furthermore, this study examines the congruent effect between message framing and contents in higher education. Specifically, this study predicts that the more message framing and contents are congruent, the greater brand attachment and brand loyalty consumers will have. To analyze the effects of message framing and type of contents, this study adopts experimental design method. The findings of this research indicate that previous involvement with a brand predicts high brand attachment and brand loyalty and needs to be present prior to the strengthening process of brand attachment and brand loyalty. Therefore, previous brand involvement can be measured and related to the effectiveness of strengthening brand attachment and brand loyalty

Egocentric Spatial Representation in Action and Perception

Neuropsychological findings used to motivate the “two visual systems” hypothesis have been taken to endanger a pair of widely accepted claims about spatial representation in visual experience. The first is the claim that visual experience represents 3-D space around the perceiver using an egocentric frame of reference. The second is the claim that there is a constitutive link between the spatial contents of visual experience and the perceiver’s bodily actions. In this paper, I carefully assess three main sources of evidence for the two visual systems hypothesis and argue that the best interpretation of the evidence is in fact consistent with both claims. I conclude with some brief remarks on the relation between visual consciousness and rational agency

Minds, Brains and Programs

This article can be viewed as an attempt to explore the consequences of two propositions. (1) Intentionality in human beings (and animals) is a product of causal features of the brain I assume this is an empirical fact about the actual causal relations between mental processes and brains It says simply that certain brain processes are sufficient for intentionality. (2) Instantiating a computer program is never by itself a sufficient condition of intentionality The main argument of this paper is directed at establishing this claim The form of the argument is to show how a human agent could instantiate the program and still not have the relevant intentionality. These two propositions have the following consequences (3) The explanation of how the brain produces intentionality cannot be that it does it by instantiating a computer program. This is a strict logical consequence of 1 and 2. (4) Any mechanism capable of producing intentionality must have causal powers equal to those of the brain. This is meant to be a trivial consequence of 1. (5) Any attempt literally to create intentionality artificially (strong AI) could not succeed just by designing programs but would have to duplicate the causal powers of the human brain. This follows from 2 and 4

Maladaptive cognitive appraisals in children with high-functioning autism : associations with fear, anxiety and theory of mind

Despite the well-documented success of cognitive restructuring techniques in the treatment of anxiety disorders, there is still little clarity on which cognitions underpin fear and anxiety in children with high-functioning spectrum disorders (HFASD). This study examined whether certain cognitive appraisals, known to be associated with fear and anxiety in non-HFASD groups, may help explain these emotions in children with HFASD. It also investigated relations between these cognitive appraisals and theory-of-mind (TOM). Using a vignette approach, appraisals, fear and anxiety were assessed in 22 children with HFASD and 22 typically developing (TD) children. The two groups differed significantly on all four appraisal types. Anxiety was negatively correlated with future expectancy and positively with problem-focused coping potential in the HFASD group, but was not correlated with appraisals in the TD group. Emotion-focused coping potential was the only appraisal correlated with fear in the HFASD group and only self-accountability in the TD group. Linear regression analysis found appraisals of emotion-focused coping potential, problem-focused coping potential and future expectancy to be significant predictors of TOM ability in the HFASD group. These findings indicate that specific, problematic patterns of appraisal may characterise children with HFASD

Psychological Climate and Work Attitudes: The Importance of Telling the Right Story

In this field study, the authors explore how choosing one context over another influences both research results and implications. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, the authors examine context from both an organizational and a business-unit perspective by studying relationships between five psychological climate variables and outcomes of job satisfaction, affective commitment, and intent to leave. Results show different contextual influences between the organization and two business units, suggesting that different bundles of psychological climate variables yield similar outcomes depending on the context studied. These results bolster the contention that researchers need to identify the right context in field research