Uncertainty and Prior Assumptions, Rather Than Innate Logarithmic Encoding, Explain Nonlinear Number-to-Space Mapping

2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762110345
Author(s):  
Guido Marco Cicchini ◽  
Giovanni Anobile ◽  
Eleonora Chelli ◽  
Roberto Arrighi ◽  
David C. Burr

Mapping number to space is natural and spontaneous but often nonveridical, showing a clear compressive nonlinearity that is thought to reflect intrinsic logarithmic encoding of numerical values. We asked 78 adult participants to map dot arrays onto a number line across nine trials. Combining participant data, we confirmed that on the first trial, mapping was heavily compressed along the number line, but it became more linear across trials. Responses were well described by logarithmic compression but also by a parameter-free Bayesian model of central tendency, which quantitatively predicted the relationship between nonlinearity and number acuity. To experimentally test the Bayesian hypothesis, we asked 90 new participants to complete a color-line task in which they mapped noise-perturbed color patches to a “color line.” When there was more noise at the high end of the color line, the mapping was logarithmic, but it became exponential with noise at the low end. We conclude that the nonlinearity of both number and color mapping reflects contextual Bayesian inference processes rather than intrinsic logarithmic encoding.

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 733-741 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Odegaard ◽  
Ladan Shams

Current theoretical accounts of schizophrenia have considered the disorder within the framework of hierarchical Bayesian inference, positing that symptoms arise from a deficit in the brain’s capacity to combine incoming sensory information with preexisting priors. Here, we present the first investigation to examine the relationship between priors governing multisensory perception and subclinical, prodromal features of schizophrenia in the general population. We tested participants in two complementary tasks (one spatial, one temporal) and employed a Bayesian model to estimate both the precision of unisensory encoding and the prior tendency to integrate audiovisual signals (i.e., the “binding tendency”). Results revealed that lower binding tendency scores in the spatial task were associated with higher numbers of self-reported prodromal features. These results indicate decreased binding of audiovisual spatial information may be moderately related to the frequency of prodromal characteristics in the general population.


2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Bahnmueller ◽  
Stefan Huber ◽  
Korbinian Moeller ◽  
Hans-Christoph Nuerk

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rageshawari Munderia ◽  
Rajbala Singh

Social skills play an instrumental role in individuals’ life. It helps individuals to communicate and maintain social relationships. Presently, the smartphone has completely changed the mode of social communication, and social skills may play a crucial role in this regard. Thus, the aim of the present study is to investigate the association between social skills and perceived smartphone usage (both positive and negative usage). The perceived negative usage of the smartphone has been assessed in terms of smartphone addiction. Sample of the present study comprised of (n=509) adult participants. Pearson’s product moment correlation (r) and multiple regression method was employed to assess the relationship between the proposed variables. Findings of the study demonstrated that social skills are significantly related with both perceived positive usage of smartphone and smartphone addiction. Social expressivity and emotional control emerged as significant predictors for both positive usage of smartphone and smartphone addiction. The findings of the study may have important implications for bringing awareness among the individuals regarding the role of social skills for effective usage of smartphone as well as for future researches in this direction. Keywords: social skill, perceived positive smartphone usage, smartphone addiction, emotion expressivity, emotional control


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Andrews

The study of memory for texts has had an long tradition of research in psychology. According to most general accounts, the recognition or recall of items in a text is based on querying a memory representation that is built up on the basis of background knowledge. The objective of this paper is to describe and thoroughly test a Bayesian model of these general accounts. In particular, we present a model that describes how we use our background knowledge to form memories in terms of Bayesian inference of statistical patterns in the text, followed by posterior predictive inference of the words that are typical of those inferred patterns. This provides us with precise predictions about which words will be remembered, whether veridically or erroneously, from any given text. We tested these predictions using behavioural data from a memory experiment using a large sample of randomly chosen texts from a representative corpus of British English. The results show that the probability of remembering any given word in the text, whether falsely or veridically, is well predicted by the Bayesian model. Moreover, compared to nontrivial alternative models of text memory, by every measure used in the analyses, the predictions of the Bayesian model were superior, often overwhelmingly so. We conclude that these results provide strong evidence in favour of the Bayesian account of text memory that we have presented in this paper.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmytro Perepolkin ◽  
Benjamin Goodrich ◽  
Ullrika Sahlin

This paper extends the application of indirect Bayesian inference to probability distributions defined in terms of quantiles of the observable quantities. Quantile-parameterized distributions are characterized by high shape flexibility and interpretability of its parameters, and are therefore useful for elicitation on observables. To encode uncertainty in the quantiles elicited from experts, we propose a Bayesian model based on the metalog distribution and a version of the Dirichlet prior. The resulting “hybrid” expert elicitation protocol for characterizing uncertainty in parameters using questions about the observable quantities is discussed and contrasted to parametric and predictive elicitation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lap-Yan Lo ◽  
Cheuk-Yu Tsang

An object located in the centre position is believed to be the most attended and well remembered, which increases its likelihood of being chosen (i.e., centrality preference). However, the literature has yielded inconsistent evidence. With the support of an eye-tracking technique, this study tried to provide another means of examining the relationship between preference and attention. Thirty undergraduates were asked to choose one of five similar items presented on a horizontal line. The findings on eye fixation points and looking duration positively related to the probability of an item being chosen as the preferred item. Yet performance in a recall test revealed an independence between preference and remembering. Furthermore, an unexpectedly large proportion of the participants also preferred the items on the leftmost side of the array. The mental number line and social norms, together with centrality preference, were used to provide an explanation of our implicit preference in decision making.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
pp. 926-950
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN KAHAN ◽  
MADOKA KISHI

Though Jean Toomer's Cane (1923) is one of the best-known texts of the Harlem Renaissance, it has rarely been discussed with the text alongside which it was initially imagined: Waldo Frank's Holiday (1923). These works were inspired by a joint trip to Spartanburg, South Carolina and were conceptualized as a shared project, what the authors termed “Holiday + Cane.” This essay tracks their coproduction with particular attention to their parallax vision of lynching to theorize what we call, building on Achille Mbembe's work, “sex under necropolitics.” This dispensation does not take shape within a privatized notion of sexuality, but instead is “ungendered” and unindividuated in the ways that Hortense Spillers has described through the notion of the flesh. We take up her work to suggest that black bodily practices and corporeal intimacies are governed by a regime other than sexuality. In this essay, we map the contours of this regime and its effects on both sides of the color line. Our new cartography promises to reconfigure understandings of the sexuality of Toomer and Frank and of the Harlem Renaissance, and to clarify the relationship between (white) queer theory and queer-of-color critique.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Obikane ◽  
Kazuhiro Watanabe ◽  
Daisuke Nishi ◽  
Norito Kawakami

Abstract Background Bonding disorders happen as parents cannot build an affective relationship with children and are associated with their psychological and social conditions. Personal values impact well-being and psychological outcomes; however, how personal values influence bonding relationships is unknown. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between personal values in adolescence recalled by adult participants and impaired bonding using a community-representative database. Methods We conducted a retrospective study using cross-sectional data of adults living with children in Japan. Personal values were evaluated by value priorities measured by 11 items from Personal Value Questionnaires, and commitment to values measured by a Japanese version of the Personal Values Questionnaires II. Impaired bonding was evaluated by five items from a Japanese-version of the Mother-to-Infant Bonding Scale. Odds ratios of value priorities and commitment to values for impaired bonding relationships were calculated after adjusting covariates. Results Of 13,920 people selected by probability proportionate sampling, 466 participants with children under 6 years old were selected for analysis. Personal values on improving society, graduating from school, positive evaluation from others, and pursuing one’s interest were negatively associated with impaired bonding relationship, while personal values on financial success were positively associated with impaired bonding relationship. Commitment to values were negatively associated with bonding problems. Conclusions While a future longitudinal study is needed, the present findings may indicate that personal values in adolescence are associated with their bonding relationship with children.


Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 890
Author(s):  
Sergey Oladyshkin ◽  
Farid Mohammadi ◽  
Ilja Kroeker ◽  
Wolfgang Nowak

Gaussian process emulators (GPE) are a machine learning approach that replicates computational demanding models using training runs of that model. Constructing such a surrogate is very challenging and, in the context of Bayesian inference, the training runs should be well invested. The current paper offers a fully Bayesian view on GPEs for Bayesian inference accompanied by Bayesian active learning (BAL). We introduce three BAL strategies that adaptively identify training sets for the GPE using information-theoretic arguments. The first strategy relies on Bayesian model evidence that indicates the GPE’s quality of matching the measurement data, the second strategy is based on relative entropy that indicates the relative information gain for the GPE, and the third is founded on information entropy that indicates the missing information in the GPE. We illustrate the performance of our three strategies using analytical- and carbon-dioxide benchmarks. The paper shows evidence of convergence against a reference solution and demonstrates quantification of post-calibration uncertainty by comparing the introduced three strategies. We conclude that Bayesian model evidence-based and relative entropy-based strategies outperform the entropy-based strategy because the latter can be misleading during the BAL. The relative entropy-based strategy demonstrates superior performance to the Bayesian model evidence-based strategy.


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