Experimental Narratives: A Comparison of Human Crowdsourced Storytelling and AI Storytelling

The paper proposes a framework that combines behavioral and computational experiments employing fictional prompts as a novel tool for investigating cultural artifacts and social biases in storytelling both by humans and generative AI. The study analyzes 250 stories authored by crowdworkers in June 2019 and 80 stories generated by GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 in March 2023 by merging methods from narratology and inferential statistics. Both crowdworkers and large language models responded to identical prompts about creating and falling in love with an artificial human. The proposed experimental paradigm allows a direct comparison between human and LLM-generated storytelling. Responses to the Pygmalionesque prompts confirm the pervasive presence of the Pygmalion myth in the collective imaginary of both humans and large language models. All solicited narratives present a scientific or technological pursuit. The analysis reveals that narratives from GPT-3.5 and particularly GPT-4 are more more progressive in terms of gender roles and sexuality than those written by humans. While AI narratives can occasionally provide innovative plot twists, they offer less imaginative scenarios and rhetoric than human-authored texts. The proposed framework argues that fiction can be used as a window into human and AI-based collective imaginary and social dimensions

Motor activation during the prediction of nonexecutable actions in infants

Although it is undeniable that the motor system is recruited when people observe others’ actions, the inferences that the brain generates from motor activation and the mechanisms involved in the motor system’s recruitment are still unknown. Here, we challenged the popular hypothesis that motor involvement in action observation enables the observer to identify and predict an agent’s goal by matching observed actions with existing and corresponding motor representations. Using a novel neural indication of action prediction—sensorimotor-cortex activation measured by electroencephalography—we demonstrated that 9-month-old infants recruit their motor system whenever a context suggests an impending action, but that this recruitment is not dependent on being able to match the observed action with a corresponding motor representation. Our data are thus inconsistent with the view that action prediction depends on motor correspondence; instead, they support an alternative view in which motor activation is the result of, rather than the cause of, goal identification

Neural mechanisms of infant learning: differences in frontal theta activity during object exploration modulate subsequent object recognition

Investigating learning mechanisms in infancy relies largely on behavioural measures like visual attention, which often fail to predict whether stimuli would be encoded successfully. This study explored EEG activity in the theta frequency band, previously shown to predict successful learning in adults, to directly study infants' cognitive engagement, beyond visual attention. We tested 11-month-old infants (N = 23) and demonstrated that differences in frontal theta-band oscillations, recorded during infants' object exploration, predicted differential subsequent recognition of these objects in a preferential-looking test. Given that theta activity is modulated by motivation to learn in adults, these findings set the ground for future investigation into the drivers of infant learning

Infants learn what they want to learn: responding to infant pointing leads to superior learning

The majority of current developmental models prioritise a pedagogical approach to knowledge acquisition in infancy, in which infants play a relatively passive role as recipients of information. In view of recent evidence, demonstrating that infants use pointing to express interest and solicit information from adults, we set out to test whether giving the child the leading role in deciding what information to receive leads to better learning. Sixteen-month-olds were introduced to pairs of novel objects and, once they had pointed to an object, were shown a function for either the object they had chosen, or the object they had ignored. Ten minutes later, infants replicated the functions of chosen objects significantly more than those of un-chosen objects, despite having been equally visually attentive during demonstrations on both types of objects. These results show that offering information in response to infants’ communicative gestures leads to superior learning (Experiment 1) and that this difference in performance is due to learning being facilitated when infants’ pointing was responded to, not hindered when their pointing was ignored (Experiment 2), highlighting the importance of infants’ own active engagement in acquiring information

Infants’ preferences for native speakers are associated with an expectation of information

Humans’ preference for others who share our group membership is well documented, and this heightened valuation of in-group members seems to be rooted in early development. Before 12 mo of age, infants already show behavioral preferences for others who evidence cues to same-group membership such as race or native language, yet the function of this selectivity remains unclear. We examine one of these social biases, the preference for native speakers, and propose that this preference may result from infants’ motivation to obtain information and the expectation that interactions with native speakers will provide better opportunities for learning. To investigate this hypothesis, we measured EEG theta activity, a neural rhythm shown to index active and selective preparation for encoding information in adults. In study 1, we established that 11-mo-old infants exhibit an increase in theta activation in situations when they can expect to receive information. We then used this neural measure of anticipatory theta activity to explore the expectations of 11-mo-olds when facing social partners who either speak the infants’ native language or a foreign tongue (study 2). A larger increase in theta oscillations was observed when infants could expect to receive information from the native speaker, indicating that infants were preparing to learn information from the native speaker to a greater extent than from the foreign speaker. While previous research has demonstrated that infants prefer to interact with knowledgeable others, the current experiments provide evidence that such an information-seeking motive may also underpin infants’ demonstrated preference for native speakers

Multisensory Uncertainty Reduction for Hand Localization in Children and Adults

Adults can integrate multiple sensory estimates to reduce their uncertainty in perceptual and motor tasks. In recent studies, children did not show this ability until after 8 years. Here we investigated development of the ability to integrate vision with proprioception to localize the hand. We tested 109 4- to 12-year-olds and adults on a simple pointing task. Participants used an unseen hand beneath a table to point to targets presented on top of the table to vision alone, proprioception alone, or both together. Overall, 7- to 9-year-olds’ and adults’ points were significantly less variable given vision and proprioception together compared with either alone. However, this variance reduction was present at all ages in the subset of participants whose proprioceptive estimates were less than two times more variable than their visual. These results, together with analyses of cue weighting, indicate that all groups integrated vision and proprioception, but only 7- to 9-year-olds and adults consistently selected cue weights that were appropriate to their own single-cue reliabilities. Cue weights used at 4–6 and 10–12 years still allowed over half of participants at these ages to reduce their pointing variability. One explanation for poorer group-level cue weighting at 10–12 years is that this ages represents a period of relatively rapid physical growth. An existing Bayesian model of hand localization did not describe either adults’ or children’s data well, but the results suggest future improvements to the model

Pointing as epistemic request: 12-month-olds point to receive new information

Infants start pointing systematically to objects or events around their first birthday. It has been proposed that infants point to an event to share their appreciation of it with others. In this study, we tested another hypothesis, according to which infants’ pointing could also serve as an epistemic request directed to the adult. Thus, infants’ motivation for pointing could include the expectation that adults would provide new information about the referent. In two experiments, an adult reacted to 12-month-olds’ pointing gestures by exhibiting “Informing” or “Sharing” behavior. In response, infants pointed more frequently across trials in the Informing than in the Sharing condition. This suggests that the feedback that contained new information matched infants’ expectations more than mere attention sharing. Such a result is consistent with the idea that not just the comprehension but also the production of early communicative signals is tuned to assist infants’ learning from others

The histone H2B monoubiquitination regulatory pathway is required for differentiation of multipotent stem cells.

Extensive changes in posttranslational histone modifications accompany the rewiring of the transcriptional program during stem cell differentiation. However, the mechanisms controlling the changes in specific chromatin modifications and their function during differentiation remain only poorly understood. We show that histone H2B monoubiquitination (H2Bub1) significantly increases during differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) and various lineage-committed precursor cells and in diverse organisms. Furthermore, the H2B ubiquitin ligase RNF40 is required for the induction of differentiation markers and transcriptional reprogramming of hMSCs. This function is dependent upon CDK9 and the WAC adaptor protein, which are required for H2B monoubiquitination. Finally, we show that RNF40 is required for the resolution of the H3K4me3/H3K27me3 bivalent poised state on lineage-specific genes during the transition from an inactive to an active chromatin conformation. Thus, these data indicate that H2Bub1 is required for maintaining multipotency of hMSCs and plays a central role in controlling stem cell differentiation