Putting semantics back into the semantic representation of living things

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 496-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Zaitchik ◽  
Gregg E. A. Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Semantic Representation ◽  
Conceptual Representation ◽  
Single Node ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Descriptive Account ◽  
Development Literature

The authors' model reduces the literature on conceptual representation to a single node: “encyclopedic knowledge.” The structure of conceptual knowledge is not so trivial. By ignoring the phenomena central to reasoning about living things, the authors base their dismissal of semantic systems on inadequate descriptive ground. A better descriptive account is available in the conceptual development literature. Neuropsychologists could import the insights and tasks from cognitive development to improve their studies.

scholarly journals Bayesian Models of Conceptual Development: Learning as Building Models of the World

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 533-558
Author(s):  
Tomer D. Ullman ◽  
Joshua B. Tenenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Model Building ◽  
Core Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Potential Models ◽  
Building Models ◽  
Descriptive Account ◽  
The World

A Bayesian framework helps address, in computational terms, what knowledge children start with and how they construct and adapt models of the world during childhood. Within this framework, inference over hierarchies of probabilistic generative programs in particular offers a normative and descriptive account of children's model building. We consider two classic settings in which cognitive development has been framed as model building: ( a) core knowledge in infancy and ( b) the child as scientist. We interpret learning in both of these settings as resource-constrained, hierarchical Bayesian program induction with different primitives and constraints. We examine what mechanisms children could use to meet the algorithmic challenges of navigating large spaces of potential models, in particular the proposal of the child as hacker and how it might be realized by drawing on recent computational advances. We also discuss prospects for a unifying account of model building across scientific theories and intuitive theories, and in biological and cultural evolution more generally.

Minimodel of semantic synthesis of Russian sentences

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-136
Author(s):  
Lidija Iordanskaja ◽  
Igor Mel’čuk
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Representation ◽  
Conceptual Representation ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Approximate Matching ◽  
Sufficient Detail

Abstract A formal linguistitic model is presented, which produces, for a given conceptual representation of an extralinguistic situation, a corresponding semantic representation [SemR] that, in its turn, underlies the deep-syntactic representations of four near-synonymous Russian sentences expressing the starting information. Two full-fledged lexical entries are given for the lexemes besporjadki ‘disturbance’ and stolknovenie ‘clash(N)’, appearing in these sentences. Some principles of lexicalization – that is, matching the formal lexicographic definitions to the starting semantic representation in order to produce the deep-syntactic structures of the corresponding sentences – are formulated and illustrated; the problem of approximate matching is dealt with in sufficient detail.

A Systemic Approach for the Formalization of the Information Systems Concept

2011 ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Mora ◽  
Ovsei Gelman ◽  
Francisco Cervantes ◽  
Marcelo MejIa ◽  
Alfredo Weitzenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Formal Definition ◽  
Problematic Situation ◽  
Knowledge Resources ◽  
Concept System ◽  
The Core ◽  
Definition Of

In the new economic context, based on Information and Knowledge resources, the concepts of Information Systems and Information Technology (IS&IT) are fundamental to understand the organizational and managerial process in all levels: strategic, tactic and operational. From an academic and practitioner perspective, we pose that the correct use of the concept of IS&IT, and in specific of Information Systems, is critical. First ones need to study the same object and second ones need to use the same common conceptual knowledge about what are Information Systems. Nevertheless, uniquely informal and semiformal definitions of Information Systems have been reported in the literature and thus a formal definition based on core systemic foundations is missing. For these reasons, the conceptualization and formal definition of what are Information Systems acquires a relevant research and praxis status. This chapter addresses this problematic situation posing a formal definition of the term Information Systems based on core theoretical principles of the Systems Approach. For that, we firstly review the foundations of Systems Approach to establish the basis for our conceptual development. Then, an updated formal definition of the core concept System originally developed by Gelman and Garcia (1989) and that incorporates new insights from other systemic researchers is presented. With these theoretical bases, we proceed to review the contributions and limitations of main informal and semiformal definitions of the term Information Systems reported at the literature. Then the new formal definition of this term is developed using the updated formal definition of the term System. We continue with a discussion of how the definition posed formalizes systemic concepts of previous definitions, of how these are partial cases of the new definition and of how it can be used to model and study Information Systems in organizations. Finally, we conclude with main remarks and implications of this definition and with directions for further research.

Spatial Relations

2019 ◽  
pp. 179-216
Author(s):  
David Kemmerer
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Semantic Representation ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Linguistic Representation ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Brain

Ever since the 1980s, research on the cross-linguistic representation of spatial relations has burgeoned. Surprisingly, however, very little of this work has had any impact on cognitive neuroscience, and most researchers who study the cortical underpinnings of concrete conceptual knowledge have ignored spatial relations completely, preferring to focus on objects and actions instead. Due to this rather stark asymmetry, this chapter has a different organization than the previous two. The first section focuses entirely on cross-linguistic similarities and differences in the grammatical-semantic representation of three main types of spatial relations: topological, projective, and deictic. Then the last section addresses a number of neuroscientific issues, including a review of what has been learned so far about the implementation of these kinds of concepts in the brain, and a discussion of how the typological literature can both inspire and guide future research in this important but relatively neglected area of inquiry.

scholarly journals Form-Independent Meaning Representation for Eventualities

2019 ◽  
pp. 604-623
Author(s):  
Mark Steedman
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Semantic Representation ◽  
Logical Form ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Conceptual Representation ◽  
Natural Language Semantics ◽  
Language Semantics ◽  
Representation Language ◽  
Meaning Representation

Linguists and philosophers since Aristotle have attempted to reduce natural language semantics in general, and the semantics of eventualities in particular, to a ‘language of mind’, expressed in terms of various collections of underlying language-independent primitive concepts. While such systems have proved insightful enough to suggest that such a universal conceptual representation is in some sense psychologically real, the primitive relations proposed, based on oppositions like agent-patient, event-state, etc., have remained incompletely convincing. This chapter proposes that the primitive concepts of the language of mind are ‘hidden’, or latent, and must be discovered automatically by detecting consistent patterns of entailment in the vast amounts of text that are made available by the internet using automatic syntactic parsers and machine learning to mine a form- and language-independent semantic representation language for natural language semantics. The representations involved combine a distributional representation of ambiguity with a language of logical form.

scholarly journals Making it harder to 'see' meaning: The more you see something, the more its conceptual representation is susceptible to visual interference

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles P. Davis ◽  
Gitte H. Joergensen ◽  
Peter Boddy ◽  
Caitlin Dowling ◽  
Eiling Yee
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Perceptual System ◽  
Conceptual System ◽  
Conceptual Representation ◽  
Manual Task ◽  
Visual Interference ◽  
The World ◽  
Functional Part

Does the perceptual system for looking at the world overlap with the conceptual system for thinking about it? In two experiments (N = 403), we show that (1) when making simple semantic judgments on words, interference from a concurrent visual task scales in proportion to how much visual experience people have with the things the words refer to, and (2) when making the same judgments on the very same words, interference from a concurrent manual task scales in proportion to how much manual (but critically, not visual) experience people have with those same things. These results suggest that the meanings of frequently visually-experienced things are represented (in part) in the visual system used for actually seeing them, that this visually represented information is a functional part of conceptual knowledge, and that the extent of these visual representations is influenced by visual experience.

The interplay between control processes and feature relevance: Evidence from dual-task methodology

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-395
Author(s):  
Maria Montefinese ◽  
Glyn Hallam ◽  
Hannah Elizabeth Thompson ◽  
Elizabeth Jefferies
Keyword(s):  
Divided Attention ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Semantic Representation ◽  
Semantic Knowledge ◽  
Semantic Retrieval ◽  
Semantic Cognition ◽  
Control Processes ◽  
And Control ◽  
Healthy Participants

Neuropsychological studies suggest a distinction between (a) semantic knowledge and (b) control processes that shape the retrieval of conceptual information to suit the task or context. These aspects of semantic cognition are specifically impaired in patients with semantic dementia and semantic aphasia, respectively. However, interactions between the structure of knowledge and control processes that are expected during semantic retrieval have not been fully characterised. In particular, domain-general executive resources may not have equal relevance for the capacity to promote weak yet task relevant features (i.e., “controlled retrieval) and to ignore or suppress distracting information (i.e., “selection”). Here, using a feature selection task, we tested the contribution of featural relevance to semantic performance in healthy participants under conditions of divided attention. Healthy participants showed greater dual-task disruption as the relevance value of the distractor feature linearly increased, supporting the emerging view that semantic relevance is one of the organising principles of the structure of semantic representation. Moreover, word frequency, and inter-correlational strength affected overall performance, but they did not show an interaction with dual-task conditions. These results suggest that domain-general control processes, disrupted by divided attention, are more important to the capacity to efficiently avoid distracting information during semantic decision-making than to the promotion of weak target features. The present study therefore provides novel information about the nature of the interaction between structured conceptual knowledge and control processes that support the retrieval of appropriate information and relates these results to a new theoretical framework, termed controlled semantic cognition.

scholarly journals At the Edge of Semantic Space: The Breakdown of Coherent Concepts in Semantic Dementia Is Constrained by Typicality and Severity but Not Modality

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 2240-2251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily J. Mayberry ◽  
Karen Sage ◽  
Matthew A. Lambon Ralph
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Information Sources ◽  
Semantic Representation ◽  
Semantic Space ◽  
Semantic Dementia ◽  
Feature Integration ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Hub And Spoke ◽  
Invariant Representations ◽  
Multiple Modality

Hub-and-spoke models of semantic representation suggest that coherent concepts are formed from the integration of multiple, modality-specific information sources with additional modality-invariant representations—most likely stored in the ventrolateral anterior temporal lobe (vATL). As well as providing the necessary computational mechanisms for the complexities of feature integration, these modality-invariant representations also license a key aspect of semantic memory—semantic-based generalization. Semantic dementia allows us to investigate this aspect of conceptual knowledge because (a) the patients have a selective and progressive semantic degradation and (b) this is associated with profound ventrolateral ATL atrophy. Specifically, the boundaries between concepts become degraded in semantic dementia and, when tested using the appropriate materials, the patients make simultaneous under- and overgeneralization errors. We found that the rate of these errors were a function of typicality and psuedotypicality of the items as well as the severity of the patients' semantic impairment. Following the modality-invariant nature of the vATL hub representation, we also confirmed that the patients were impaired on both verbal- and picture-based versions of the same task.

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