Seeing is as Good as Doing

Given the privileged status claimed for active learning in a variety of domains (visuomotor learning, causal induction, problem solving, education, skill learning), the present study examines whether action-based learning is a necessary, or a suffi cient, means of acquiring the relevant skills needed to perform a task typically described as requiring active learning. To achieve this, the present study compares the effects of action-based and observation-based learning when controlling a complex dynamic task environment (N = 96). Both action- and observation-based individuals learn either by describing the changes in the environment in the form of a conditional statement, or not. The study reveals that for both active and observational learners, advantages in performance (p < .05), accuracy in knowledge of the task (p < .05), and self-insight (p < .05) are found when learning is based on inducing rules from the task environment. Moreover, the study provides evidence suggesting that, given task instructions that encourage rule-based knowledge, both active and observation-based learning can lead to high levels of problem solving skills in a complex dynamic environment

Consciousness complexity

Copyright © 2015 by author and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Cue utilization and strategy application in stable and unstable dynamic environments

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2010.12.004 Copyright © 2011, Elsevie

Moral Judgment: Truth, Order and Consequence

Often we make snap moral judgments based on limited information. For instance upon reading a newspaper headline we very quickly decide on whether the implied outcome is good or bad. However, in situations like this we are also likely to revise our judgments when we read the main story and the conclusion of the article. One question yet to be answered is whether we adjust our moral judgments in a systematic way as we gain more details about a moral scenario. Two experiments (lab-based, online) addressed this question along with the influence of other factors on moral judgments (the origin of the moral scenario, the severity of the consequence of the scenario). Across both experiments, moral judgments were: 1) generally adjusted downwards as more information was presented; 2) more severe for headlines than the main story or the conclusion; 3) more severe for scenarios that were fabricated than real life stories; 4) more severe when the conclusion involved a severe consequence than a non-severe consequence

Effect of high resistive barrier on earthing system

Substation earthing provides a low impedance path and carries current into ground under normal and fault conditions without adversely affecting continuity of service. Under a fault condition, the ground voltage may rise to a level that may endanger the public outside the vicinity of the substation. In such a case a high resistive barrier can be inserted around the vicinity of the substation to reduce the surface potentials immediately beyond the barrier. In this paper the effect of barrier on the overall performance of the earthing system has been investigated experimentally and computationally based on an earthing system consisted of combined grid and rods in a water tank. The effect of the position and depth of the barrier to the resistance of the earthing system and surface potentials in and around the substation have been examined

Utilising semantic technologies for decision support in dementia care

The main objective of this work is to discuss our experience in utilising semantic technologies for building decision support in Dementia care systems that are based on the non-intrusive on the non-intrusive monitoring of the patient’s behaviour. Our approach adopts context-aware modelling of the patient’s condition to facilitate the analysis of the patient’s behaviour within the inhabited environment (movement and room occupancy patterns, use of equipment, etc.) with reference to the semantic knowledge about the patient’s condition (history of present of illness, dependable behaviour patterns, etc.). The reported work especially focuses on the critical role of the semantic reasoning engine in inferring medical advice, and by means of practical experimentation and critical analysis suggests important findings related to the methodology of deploying the appropriate semantic rules systems, and the dynamics of the efficient utilisation of complex event processing technology in order to the meet the requirements of decision support for remote healthcare systems