INSTRUCTIONS TO PROMOTE MENTAL REPRESENTATION OF GEOMETRIC SHAPES IN CHILDREN WITH VISUAL IMPAIRMENT WHEN CONSTRUCTING A MOVING TOY: AN EXAMPLE FROM AUTOSTEM PROJECT

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piedade Vaz-Rebelo ◽  
Conceição Costa ◽  
Graça Bidarra ◽  
Joel Josephson ◽  
Oliver Thiel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Impairment ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Geometric Shapes

scholarly journals Investigating key functions of hand movements by individuals with visual impairment: Improving teaching practices in special education through research

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 02 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vassilios Sotirios Argyropoulos ◽  
Sofia Chamonikolaou
Keyword(s):  
Visual Impairment ◽  
Teaching Practices ◽  
Active Touch ◽  
Hand Movements ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Geometric Shapes ◽  
Think Aloud Protocols ◽  
Global Properties ◽  
Exploratory Movement ◽  
Active Exploration

AbstractResearch is still ongoing with regard to types of exploratory movement by active touch and its key functions in individuals with visual impairment. The aim of the present study was to describe and identify different types of exploratory movement performed by individuals with visual impairment in their exploration of geometric shapes. A total of twelve participants were asked to explore a number of simple and complex geometric shapes. The research design consisted of two research phases. In the first phase, the participants were asked to describe and, if possible, to identify the properties of each shape. In the second phase, the participants were asked to describe their hand movements during active exploration. The findings indicated that the participants utilized different movements to extract the featural and global properties of the shapes. It was also observed that some patterns of exploratory movement were present in all of the participants’ strategies, which indicated issues of laterality. Finally, the research highlighted that by observing patterns of exploratory movement, educators of students with visual impairment can determine which strategies may be worth exploring with a view to their adoption in teaching practices and instruction. Keywords: visual impairment, active touch, geometric shapes, think -aloud protocols, laterality, teaching practices

scholarly journals A language of thought for the mental representation of geometric shapes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Sablé-Meyer ◽  
Kevin Ellis ◽  
Joshua Tenenbaum ◽  
Stanislas Dehaene
Keyword(s):  
Programming Language ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Minimum Description Length ◽  
Language Of Thought ◽  
Minimal Set ◽  
Geometric Shapes ◽  
Line Drawings ◽  
Compositional Language ◽  
Produce Line ◽  
Geometric Primitives

Why do geometric shapes such as lines, circles, zig-zags or spirals appear in all human cultures, but are never produced by other animals? Here, we formalize and test the hypothesis that all humans possess a compositional language of thought that can produce line drawings as recursive combinations of a minimal set of geometric primitives. We present a programming language, similar to Logo, that combines discrete numbers and continuous integration in higher-level structures based on repetition, concatenation and embedding, and show that the simplest programs in this language generate the fundamental geometric shapes observed in human cultures. On the perceptual side, we propose that shape perception in humans involves searching for the shortest program that correctly draws the image (program induction). A consequence of this framework is that the mental difficulty of remembering a shape should depend on its minimum description length (MDL) in the proposed language. In two experiments, we show that encoding and processing of geometric shapes is well predicted by MDL. Furthermore, our hypotheses predict additive laws for the psychological complexity of repeated, concatenated or embedded shapes, which are experimentally validated.

Mental Representation of Spaces and Objects in a Historic Site: Influence of Visual Impairment

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (3) ◽  
pp. 172-175
Author(s):  
Marie-Chantal Wanet-Defalque ◽  
Annick Vanlierde ◽  
Géraldine Michaux
Keyword(s):  
Visual Impairment ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Historic Site

Above and beyond the content: Feelings influence mental simulations

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kellen Mrkva ◽  
Luca Cian ◽  
Leaf Van Boven
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Mental Simulation ◽  
Past Experience ◽  
Prediction Errors

Abstract Gilead et al. present a rich account of abstraction. Though the account describes several elements which influence mental representation, it is worth also delineating how feelings, such as fluency and emotion, influence mental simulation. Additionally, though past experience can sometimes make simulations more accurate and worthwhile (as Gilead et al. suggest), many systematic prediction errors persist despite substantial experience.

Mental representation of economic crisis in Italian and Swiss samples 1The authors would like to thank Maurizio Mistri for his help in the construction of items. This research was supported by a grant from the Italian Murst (ex 40%).

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Savadori ◽  
Eraldo Nicotra ◽  
Rino Rumiati ◽  
Roberto Tamborini
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
National Context ◽  
Cluster Procedure ◽  
Total N ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Important Symptom

The content and structure of mental representation of economic crises were studied and the flexibility of the structure in different social contexts was tested. Italian and Swiss samples (Total N = 98) were compared with respect to their judgments as to how a series of concrete examples of events representing abstract indicators were relevant symptoms of economic crisis. Mental representations were derived using a cluster procedure. Results showed that the relevance of the indicators varied as a function of national context. The growth of unemployment was judged to be by far the most important symptom of an economic crisis but the Swiss sample judged bankruptcies as more symptomatic than Italians who considered inflation, raw material prices and external accounts to be more relevant. A different clustering structure was found for the two samples: the locations of unemployment and gross domestic production indicators were the main differences in representations.

Reading About Persons: The Effects of Conjunctions on the Mental Representation of Person Descriptions

2008 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Krolak-Schwerdt ◽  
Margret Wintermantel ◽  
Nadine Junker ◽  
Julia Kneer
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Person Memory ◽  
Causal Connections ◽  
Single Person ◽  
On Line

Three experiments investigated the processing of person descriptions that consisted of a number of statements about the characteristics of a person. In one condition, each statement referred to a single person attribute and in the other condition, causal and additive conjunctions to verbally link the statements were introduced. Evidence was found that the introduction of verbal links enhanced participants’ memory about the characteristics of the described person. On-line measures of processing showed that the comprehension of person information was strongly facilitated by the introduction of verbal links. Furthermore, the results were due to the introduction of causal connections between person attributes. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for models of person memory and representation.

Cognitive Components of Ingroup Projection

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Machunsky ◽  
Thorsten Meiser
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Cognitive Representation ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Projection Model ◽  
Minimal Group ◽  
Model Experiments ◽  
Superordinate Category ◽  
Cognitive Components ◽  
Per Se

This research investigated whether relative ingroup prototypicality (i.e., the tendency to perceive one’s own ingroup as more prototypical of a superordinate category than the outgroup) can result from a prototype-based versus exemplar-based mental representation of social categories, rather than from ingroup membership per se as previously suggested by the ingroup projection model. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that a prototype-based group was perceived as more prototypical of a superordinate category than an exemplar-based group supporting the hypothesis that an intergroup context is not necessary for biased prototypicality judgments. Experiment 3 introduced an intergroup context in a minimal-group-like paradigm. The findings demonstrated that both the kind of cognitive representation and motivational processes contribute to biased prototypicality judgments in intergroup settings.

Exploring the Boundaries of the Number–Temporal Order Association

2015 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 198-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Ganor-Stern
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Temporal Order ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Numerical Comparison ◽  
Negative Number ◽  
Comparison Task ◽  
Negative Numbers ◽  
The Past

Past research has shown that numbers are associated with order in time such that performance in a numerical comparison task is enhanced when number pairs appear in ascending order, when the larger number follows the smaller one. This was found in the past for the integers 1–9 ( Ben-Meir, Ganor-Stern, & Tzelgov, 2013 ; Müller & Schwarz, 2008 ). In the present study we explored whether the advantage for processing numbers in ascending order exists also for fractions and negative numbers. The results demonstrate this advantage for fraction pairs and for integer-fraction pairs. However, the opposite advantage for descending order was found for negative numbers and for positive-negative number pairs. These findings are interpreted in the context of embodied cognition approaches and current theories on the mental representation of fractions and negative numbers.

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