7,429 research outputs found
Binding tactile and visual sensations via unique association by cross-anchoring between double-touching and self-occlusion
Binding is one of the most fundamental cognitive functions, how to find the correspondence of sensations between different modalities such as vision and touch. Without a priori knowledge on this correspondence, binding is regarded to be a formidable issue for a robot since it often perceives multiple physical phenomena in its different modal sensors, therefore it should correctly match the foci of attention in different modalities that may have multiple correspondences each other. We suppose that learning the multimodal representation of the body should be the first step toward binding since the morphological constraints in self-body-observation would make the binding problem tractable. The multimodal sensations are expected to be constrained in perceiving own body so as to configurate the unique parts of the multiple correspondence reflecting its morphology. In this paper, we propose a method to match the foci of attention in vision and touch through the unique association by cross-anchoring different modalities. Simple experiments show the validity of the proposed method
How does an infant acquire the ability of joint attention?: A Constructive Approach
This study argues how a human infant acquires
the ability of joint attention through
interactions with its caregiver from the viewpoint
of a constructive approach. This paper
presents a constructive model by which a
robot acquires a sensorimotor coordination for
joint attention based on visual attention and
learning with self-evaluation. Since visual attention
does not always correspond to joint attention,
the robot may have incorrect learning
situations for joint attention as well as correct
ones. However, the robot is expected to statistically
lose the data of the incorrect ones
as outliers through the learning, and consequently
acquires the appropriate sensorimotor
coordination for joint attention even if the
environment is not controlled nor the caregiver
provides any task evaluation. The experimental
results suggest that the proposed
model could explain the developmental mechanism
of the infant’s joint attention because
the learning process of the robot’s joint attention
can be regarded as equivalent to the
developmental process of the infant’s one
Population–reaction model and microbial experimental ecosystems for understanding hierarchical dynamics of ecosystems
Understanding ecosystem dynamics is crucial as contemporary human societies face ecosystem degradation. One of the challenges that needs to be recognized is the complex hierarchical dynamics. Conventional dynamic models in ecology often represent only the population level and have yet to include the dynamics of the sub-organism level, which makes an ecosystem a complex adaptive system that shows characteristic behaviors such as resilience and regime shifts. The neglect of the sub-organism level in the conventional dynamic models would be because integrating multiple hierarchical levels makes the models unnecessarily complex unless supporting experimental data are present. Now that large amounts of molecular and ecological data are increasingly accessible in microbial experimental ecosystems, it is worthwhile to tackle the questions of their complex hierarchical dynamics. Here, we propose an approach that combines microbial experimental ecosystems and a hierarchical dynamic model named population–reaction model. We present a simple microbial experimental ecosystem as an example and show how the system can be analyzed by a population–reaction model. We also show that population–reaction models can be applied to various ecological concepts, such as predator–prey interactions, climate change, evolution, and stability of diversity. Our approach will reveal a path to the general understanding of various ecosystems and organisms
A Constructive Model of Mother-Infant Interaction towards Infant’s Vowel Articulation
Human infants seem to develop to acquire
common phonemes to adults without the capability
to articulate or any explicit knowledge.
To understand such unrevealed human
cognitive development, building a robot
which reproduces such a developmental process
seems effective. It will also contribute to
a design principle for a robot that can communicate
with human beings. This paper hypothesizes
that the caregiver’s parrotry to the
coo of the robot plays an important role in the
phoneme acquisition process based on the implication
from behavioral studies, and propose
a constructive model for it. We validate the
proposed model by examining whether a real
robot can acquire Japanese vowels through interactions
with its caregiver
Perceived Underemployment, Perceived Accent Discrimination, and Job Attitudes Among Immigrants: The Mediating Role of Perceived Organizational Support
Although immigrants have become an integral part of the U.S. workforce, they are conspicuously absent in diversity research. Immigrants often face underemployment and discrimination, which lead to negative job attitudes, yet, the mechanism of such relationships is hardly understood. Using social exchange theory, the present study tested perceived organizational support (POS) as a potential mediator of a relationship between perceived underemployment and perceived accent discrimination, and job attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction, affective commitment, turnover intention) among 256 immigrant workers. Results showed that POS fully and partially mediated such relationships. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed
Learning from expository text in L2 reading: Memory for casual relations and L2 reading proficiency
This study explored the relation between second-language (L2) readers’ memory for causal relations and their learning outcomes from expository text. Japanese students of English as a foreign language (EFL) with high and low L2 reading proficiency read an expository text. They completed a causal question and a problem-solving test as measures of memory for causal relations and learning from the text, respectively. It was found that memory for causal relations contributed to text learning in high-proficiency readers, but not in low-proficiency readers. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of causal question answers revealed that low-proficiency readers recalled fewer causal relations and made more incorrect inferences than high-proficiency ones. Additionally, low-proficiency readers tended to perform the problem solving using inappropriate causal sequences and irrelevant information. These findings suggest that low-proficiency readers struggled with processes at both textbase and situation-model levels; consequently, they failed to learn causal relations in the text as knowledge
- …