Beyond Gazing, Pointing, and Reaching: A Survey of Developmental Robotics

Developmental robotics is an emerging field located at the intersection of developmental psychology and robotics, that has lately attracted quite some attention. This paper gives a survey of a variety of research projects dealing with or inspired by developmental issues, and outlines possible future directions

The Neural Development of Visuohaptic Object Processing

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Cognitive Science, 2015Object recognition is ubiquitous and essential for interacting with, as well as learning about, the surrounding multisensory environment. The inputs from multiple sensory modalities converge quickly and efficiently to guide this interaction. Vision and haptics are two modalities in particular that offer redundant and complementary information regarding the geometrical (i.e., shape) properties of objects for recognition and perception. While the systems supporting visuohaptic object recognition in the brain, including the lateral occipital complex (LOC) and the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), are well-studied in adults, there is currently a paucity of research surrounding the neural development of visuohaptic processing in children. Little is known about how and when vision converges with haptics for object recognition. In this dissertation, I investigate the development of neural mechanisms involved in multisensory processing. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and general psychophysiological interaction (gPPI) methods of functional connectivity analysis in children (4 to 5.5 years, 7 to 8.5 years) and adults, I examine the developmental changes of the brain regions underlying the convergence of visual and haptic object perception, the neural substrates supporting crossmodal processing, and the interactions and functional connections between visuohaptic systems and other neural regions. Results suggest that the complexity of sensory inputs impacts the development of neural substrates. The more complicated forms of multisensory and crossmodal object processing show protracted developmental trajectories as compared to the processing of simple, unimodal shapes. Additionally, the functional connections between visuohaptic areas weaken over time, which may facilitate the fine-tuning of other perceptual systems that occur later in development. Overall, the findings indicate that multisensory object recognition cannot be described as a unitary process. Rather, it is comprised of several distinct sub-processes that follow different developmental timelines throughout childhood and into adulthood

Diagnostic Palpation in Osteopathic Medicine: A Putative Neurocognitive Model of Expertise

This thesis examines the extent to which the development of expertise in diagnostic palpation in osteopathic medicine is associated with changes in cognitive processing. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 review, respectively, the literature on the role of analytical and non-analytical processing in osteopathic and medical clinical decision making; and the relevant research on the use of vision and haptics and the development of expertise within the context of an osteopathic clinical examination. The two studies reported in Chapter 4 examined the mental representation of knowledge and the role of analogical reasoning in osteopathic clinical decision making. The results reported there demonstrate that the development of expertise in osteopathic medicine is associated with the processes of knowledge encapsulation and script formation. The four studies reported in Chapters 5 and 6 investigate the way in which expert osteopaths use their visual and haptic systems in the diagnosis of somatic dysfunction. The results suggest that ongoing clinical practice enables osteopaths to combine visual and haptic sensory signals in a more efficient manner. Such visuo-haptic sensory integration is likely to be facilitated by top-down processing associated with visual, tactile, and kinaesthetic mental imagery. Taken together, the results of the six studies reported in this thesis indicate that the development of expertise in diagnostic palpation in osteopathic medicine is associated with changes in cognitive processing. Whereas the experts’ diagnostic judgments are heavily influenced by top-down, non-analytical processing; students rely, primarily, on bottom-up sensory processing from vision and haptics. Ongoing training and clinical practice are likely to lead to changes in the clinician’s neurocognitive architecture. This thesis proposes an original model of expertise in diagnostic palpation which has implications for osteopathic education. Students and clinicians should be encouraged to appraise the reliability of different sensory cues in the context of clinical examination, combine sensory data from different channels, and consider using both analytical and nonanalytical reasoning in their decision making. Importantly, they should develop their skills of criticality and their ability to reflect on, and analyse their practice experiences in and on action

Are Visual Texture-selective Areas Recruited During Haptic Texture Discrimination?

Shape and texture provide cues to object identity, both when objects are explored using vision and via touch (haptics). Visual shape information is processed within the lateral occipital complex (LOC), while texture is processed in medial regions of the collateral sulcus (CoS). Evidence indicates that the LOC is consistently recruited during both visual and haptic shape processing. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine whether \u27visual\u27 texture-selective areas are similarly recruited when observers discriminate texture via touch. We used a blocked design in which participants attended to either the texture or shape of a number of 3-dimensional (3D) objects, via vision or touch. We observed significant haptic texture-selective fMRI responses in medial occipitotemporal cortex within areas adjacent to, but not overlapping, those recruited during visual texture discrimination. Our data demonstrate that occipitotemporal areas typically associated with visual processing are recruited during the perception of surface texture via touch

Tactual perception: a review of experimental variables and procedures

This paper reviews literature on tactual perception. Throughout this review we will highlight some of the most relevant variables in touch literature: interaction between touch and other senses; type of stimuli, from abstract stimuli such as vibrations, to two- and three-dimensional stimuli, also considering concrete stimuli such as the relation between familiar and unfamiliar stimuli or the haptic perception of faces; type of participants, separating studies with blind participants, studies with children and adults, and an analysis of sex differences in performance; and finally, type of tactile exploration, considering conditions of active and passive touch, the relevance of movement in touch and the relation between exploration and time. This review intends to present an organised overview of the main variables in touch experiments, attending to the main findings described in literature, to guide the design of future works on tactual perception and memory.This work was funded by the Portuguese “Foundation for Science and Technology” through PhD scholarship SFRH/BD/35918/2007

Early cross-modal interactions and adult human visual cortical plasticity revealed by binocular rivalry

In this research binocular rivalry is used as a tool to investigate different aspects of visual and multisensory perception. Several experiments presented here demonstrated that touch specifically interacts with vision during binocular rivalry and that the interaction likely occurs at early stages of visual processing, probably V1 or V2. Another line of research also presented here demonstrated that human adult visual cortex retains an unexpected high degree of experience-dependent plasticity by showing that a brief period of monocular deprivation produced important perceptual consequences on the dynamics of binocular rivalry, reflecting a homeostatic plasticity. In summary, this work shows that binocular rivalry is a powerful tool to investigate different aspects of visual perception and can be used to reveal unexpected properties of early visual cortex

Multisensory visual–tactile object related network in humans: insights gained using a novel crossmodal adaptation approach

Neuroimaging techniques have provided ample evidence for multisensory integration in humans. However, it is not clear whether this integration occurs at the neuronal level or whether it reflects areal convergence without such integration. To examine this issue as regards visuo-tactile object integration we used the repetition suppression effect, also known as the fMRI-based adaptation paradigm (fMR-A). Under some assumptions, fMR-A can tag specific neuronal populations within an area and investigate their characteristics. This technique has been used extensively in unisensory studies. Here we applied it for the first time to study multisensory integration and identified a network of occipital (LOtv and calcarine sulcus), parietal (aIPS), and prefrontal (precentral sulcus and the insula) areas all showing a clear crossmodal repetition suppression effect. These results provide a crucial first insight into the neuronal basis of visuo-haptic integration of objects in humans and highlight the power of using fMR-A to study multisensory integration using non-invasinve neuroimaging techniques

Time course of information processing in visual and haptic object classification

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

How do humans mediate with the external physical world? From perception to control of articulated objects

Many actions in our daily life involve operation with articulated tools. Despite the ubiquity of articulated objects in daily life, human ability in perceiving the properties and control of articulated objects has been merely studied. Articulated objects are composed of links and revolute or prismatic joints. Moving one part of the linkage results in the movement of the other ones. Reaching a position with the tip of a tool requires adapting the motor commands to the change of position of the endeffector different from the action of reaching the same position with the hand. The dynamic properties are complex and variant in the movement of articulated bodies. For instance, apparent mass, a quantity that measures the dynamic interaction of the articulated object, varies as a function of the changes in configuration. An actuated articulated system can generate a static, but position-dependent force field with constant torques about joints. There are evidences that internal models are involved in the perception and control of tools. In the present work, we aim to investigate several aspects of the perception and control of articulated objects and address two questions, The first question is how people perceive the kinematic and dynamic properties in the haptic interaction with articulated objects? And the second question is what effect has seeing the tool on the planning and execution of reaching movements with a complex tool? Does the visual representation of mechanism structures help in the reaching movement and how? To address these questions, 3D printed physical articulated objects and robotic systems have been designed and developed for the psychophysical studies. The present work involves three studies in different aspects of perception and control of articulated objects. We first did haptic size discrimination tasks using three different types of objects, namely, wooden boxes, actuated apparatus with two movable flat surfaces, and large-size pliers, in unimanual, bimanual grounded and bimanual free conditions. We found bimanual integration occurred in particular in the free manipulation of objects. The second study was on the visuo-motor reaching with complex tools. We found that seeing the mechanism of the tool, even briefly at the beginning of the trial, improved the reaching performance. The last study was about force perception, evidences showed that people could take use of the force field at the end-effector to induce the torque about the joints generated by the articulated system

Grounded Learning Experience: Helping Students Learn Physics through Visuo-Haptic Priming and Instruction

In this dissertation, I investigate the effects of a grounded learning experience on college students' mental models of physics systems. The grounded learning experience consisted of a priming stage and an instruction stage, and within each stage, one of two different types of visuo-haptic representation was applied: visuo-gestural simulation (visual modality and gestures) and visuo-haptic simulation (visual modality, gestures, and somatosensory information). A pilot study involving N = 23 college students examined how using different types of visuo-haptic representation in instruction affected people's mental model construction for physics systems. Participants' abilities to construct mental models were operationalized through their pretest-to-posttest gain scores for a basic physics system and their performance on a transfer task involving an advanced physics system. Findings from this pilot study revealed that, while both simulations significantly improved participants' mental modal construction for physics systems, visuo-haptic simulation was significantly better than visuo-gestural simulation. In addition, clinical interviews suggested that participants' mental model construction for physics systems benefited from receiving visuo-haptic simulation in a tutorial prior to the instruction stage. A dissertation study involving N = 96 college students examined how types of visuo-haptic representation in different applications support participants' mental model construction for physics systems. Participant's abilities to construct mental models were again operationalized through their pretest-to-posttest gain scores for a basic physics system and their performance on a transfer task involving an advanced physics system. Participants' physics misconceptions were also measured before and after the grounded learning experience. Findings from this dissertation study not only revealed that visuo-haptic simulation was significantly more effective in promoting mental model construction and remedying participants' physics misconceptions than visuo-gestural simulation, they also revealed that visuo-haptic simulation was more effective during the priming stage than during the instruction stage. Interestingly, the effects of visuo-haptic simulation in priming and visuo-haptic simulation in instruction on participants' pretest-to-posttest gain scores for a basic physics system appeared additive. These results suggested that visuo-haptic simulation is effective in physics learning, especially when it is used during the priming stage