scholarly journals What can computational models learn from human selective attention? A review from an audiovisual crossmodal perspective

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Di Fu ◽  
Cornelius Weber ◽  
Yang Guochun ◽  
Matthias Kerzel ◽  
Weizhi Nan ◽  
...  

Selective attention plays an essential role in information acquisition and utilization from the environment. In the past 50 years, research on selective attention has been a central topic in cognitive science. Compared with unimodal studies, crossmodal studies are more complex but necessary to solve real-world challenges in both human experiments and computational modeling. Although an increasing number of findings on crossmodal selective attention have shed light on humans' behavioral patterns and neural underpinnings, a much better understanding is still necessary to yield the same benefit for computational intelligent agents. This article reviews studies of selective attention in unimodal visual and auditory and crossmodal audiovisual setups from the multidisciplinary perspectives of psychology and cognitive neuroscience, and evaluates different ways to simulate analogous mechanisms in computational models and robotics. We discuss the gaps between these fields in this interdisciplinary review and provide insights about how to use psychological findings and theories in artificial intelligence from different perspectives.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Di Fu ◽  
Cornelius Weber ◽  
Guochun Yang ◽  
Matthias Kerzel ◽  
Weizhi Nan ◽  
...  

Selective attention plays an essential role in information acquisition and utilizationfrom the environment. In the past 50 years, research on selective attention has beena central topic in cognitive science. Compared with unimodal studies, crossmodalstudies are more complex but necessary to solve real-world challenges in both humanexperiments and computational modeling. Although an increasing number of findingson crossmodal selective attention have shed light on humans’ behavioral patterns andneural underpinnings, a much better understanding is still necessary to yield the samebenefit for intelligent computational agents. This article reviews studies of selectiveattention in unimodal visual and auditory and crossmodal audiovisual setups from themultidisciplinary perspectives of psychology and cognitive neuroscience, and evaluatesdifferent ways to simulate analogous mechanisms in computational models and robotics.We discuss the gaps between these fields in this interdisciplinary review and provideinsights about how to use psychological findings and theories in artificial intelligence fromdifferent perspectives.


Author(s):  
Charles Roddie

When interacting with others, it is often important for you to know what they have done in similar situations in the past: to know their reputation. One reason is that their past behavior may be a guide to their future behavior. A second reason is that their past behavior may have qualified them for reward and cooperation, or for punishment and revenge. The fact that you respond positively or negatively to the reputation of others then generates incentives for them to maintain good reputations. This article surveys the game theory literature which analyses the mechanisms and incentives involved in reputation. It also discusses how experiments have shed light on strategic behavior involved in maintaining reputations, and the adequacy of unreliable and third party information (gossip) for maintaining incentives for cooperation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2-3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dagmar Waltemath ◽  
Martin Golebiewski ◽  
Michael L Blinov ◽  
Padraig Gleeson ◽  
Henning Hermjakob ◽  
...  

AbstractThis paper presents a report on outcomes of the 10th Computational Modeling in Biology Network (COMBINE) meeting that was held in Heidelberg, Germany, in July of 2019. The annual event brings together researchers, biocurators and software engineers to present recent results and discuss future work in the area of standards for systems and synthetic biology. The COMBINE initiative coordinates the development of various community standards and formats for computational models in the life sciences. Over the past 10 years, COMBINE has brought together standard communities that have further developed and harmonized their standards for better interoperability of models and data. COMBINE 2019 was co-located with a stakeholder workshop of the European EU-STANDS4PM initiative that aims at harmonized data and model standardization for in silico models in the field of personalized medicine, as well as with the FAIRDOM PALs meeting to discuss findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data sharing. This report briefly describes the work discussed in invited and contributed talks as well as during breakout sessions. It also highlights recent advancements in data, model, and annotation standardization efforts. Finally, this report concludes with some challenges and opportunities that this community will face during the next 10 years.


Vaccines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 535
Author(s):  
Ban Qi Tay ◽  
Quentin Wright ◽  
Rahul Ladwa ◽  
Christopher Perry ◽  
Graham Leggatt ◽  
...  

The development of cancer vaccines has been intensively pursued over the past 50 years with modest success. However, recent advancements in the fields of genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, and immunology have renewed interest in these immunotherapies and allowed the development of promising cancer vaccine candidates. Numerous clinical trials testing the response evoked by tumour antigens, differing in origin and nature, have shed light on the desirable target characteristics capable of inducing strong tumour-specific non-toxic responses with increased potential to bring clinical benefit to patients. Novel delivery methods, ranging from a patient’s autologous dendritic cells to liposome nanoparticles, have exponentially increased the abundance and exposure of the antigenic payloads. Furthermore, growing knowledge of the mechanisms by which tumours evade the immune response has led to new approaches to reverse these roadblocks and to re-invigorate previously suppressed anti-tumour surveillance. The use of new drugs in combination with antigen-based therapies is highly targeted and may represent the future of cancer vaccines. In this review, we address the main antigens and delivery methods used to develop cancer vaccines, their clinical outcomes, and the new directions that the vaccine immunotherapy field is taking.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 205316801773975 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meagan Smith ◽  
Sean M. Zeigler

Was 9/11 the opening salvo in a new age of terrorism? Some argue that this act ushered in a more chaotic world. Others contend an increased focus on terrorism in the past 15 years is the result of conflating terrorist activity with insurgency. We shed light on these claims by analyzing data on domestic and transnational terrorist incidence from 1989 to 2014. The evidence suggests that the years since 9/11 have been different from those preceding them. Once the prevalence of conflicts is accounted for, the post-9/11 era is a significantly less terror prone period than the years before it. A country not suffering civil conflict was upwards of 60 percent more likely to experience terrorism prior to or during the year 2001 than since. However, the opposite trend holds for those countries with a higher proportion of Muslims. Prior to 2001, countries with higher Muslim populations experienced less domestic terrorism. Since 9/11, these countries have experienced significantly more terrorism – both domestic and international – than they had previously.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 323-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Ellis ◽  
Jerry Rawicki

This article extends the research of Jerry Rawicki and Carolyn Ellis who have collaborated for more than eight years on memories and consequences of the Holocaust. Focusing on Jerry’s memories of his experience during the Holocaust, they present dialogues that took place during five recorded interviews and follow-up conversations that reflect on the similarity of Hitler’s seizing of power in the 1930s to the meteoric rise of Donald Trump. Noting how issues of class and race were taking an increasingly prominent role in their conversations and collaborative writing, they also begin to examine discontent in the rural, White working class and Carolyn’s socialization within that community. These dialogues and reflections seek to shed light on the current political climate in America as Carolyn and Jerry struggle to cope with their fears and envision a hopeful path forward for their country.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mika Koverola ◽  
Marianna Drosinou ◽  
Jussi Palomäki ◽  
Juho Halonen ◽  
Anton Kunnari ◽  
...  

AbstractThe idea of sex with robots seems to fascinate the general public, raising both enthusiasm and revulsion. We ran two experimental studies (Ns = 172 and 260) where we compared people’s reactions to variants of stories about a person visiting a bordello. Our results show that paying for the services of a sex robot is condemned less harshly than paying for the services of a human sex worker, especially if the payer is married. We have for the first time experimentally confirmed that people are somewhat unsure about whether using a sex robot while in a committed monogamous relationship should be considered as infidelity. We also shed light on the psychological factors influencing attitudes toward sex robots, including disgust sensitivity and interest in science fiction. Our results indicate that sex with a robot is indeed genuinely considered as sex, and a sex robot is genuinely seen as a robot; thus, we show that standard research methods on sexuality and robotics are also applicable in research on sex robotics.


KronoScope ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-27
Author(s):  
Carl Humphries

Abstract “Being is said in many ways,” claimed Aristotle, initiating a discussion about existential commitment that continues today. Might there not be reasons to say something similar about “having been,” or “having happened,” where these expressions denote something’s being located in the past? Moreover, if history – construed not only as an object of inquiry (actual events, etc.) but also as a way of casting light on certain matters – is primarily concerned with “things past,” then the question just posed also seems relevant to the question of what historical understanding amounts to. While the idea that ‘being’ may mean different things in different contexts has indisputable importance, the implications of other, past-temporal expressions are elusive. In what might any differences of substantive meaning encountered there consist? One starting point for responding – the one that provides the subject matter explored here – is furnished by the question of whether or not a certain way of addressing matters relating to the past permits or precludes forms of intelligibility that could be said to be ‘radically historical.’ After arguing that the existing options for addressing this issue remain unsatisfactory, I set out an alternative view of what it could mean to endorse or reject such an idea. This involves drawing distinctions and analogies connected with notions of temporal situatedness, human practicality and historicality, which are then linked to a further contrast between two ways of understanding the referential significance of what is involved when we self-ascribe a relation to a current situation in a manner construable as implying that we take ourselves to occupy a unique, yet circumstantially defined, perspective on that situation. As regards the latter, on one reading, the specific kind of indexically referring language we use – commonly labelled “de se” – is something whose rationale is exhausted by its practical utility as a communicative tool. On the other, it is viewed as capturing something of substantive importance about how we can be thought of as standing in relation to reality. I claim that this second reading, together with the line of thinking about self-identification and self-reference it helps foreground, can shed light on what it would mean to affirm or deny the possibility of radically historical forms of intelligibility – and thus also on what it could mean to ascribe a plurality of meanings to talk concerning things being ‘in the past.’


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-79
Author(s):  
Alexandra Lee ◽  
◽  
Warwick Butt ◽  
◽  
◽  
...  

Inhaled nitric oxide has been used for 30 years to improve oxygenation and decrease pulmonary vascular resistance. In the past 15 years, there has been increased understanding of the role of endogenous nitric oxide on cell surface receptors, mitochondria, and intracellular processes involving calcium and superoxide radicals. This has led to several animal and human experiments revealing a potential role for administered nitric oxide or nitric oxide donors in patients with systemic inflammatory response syndrome or ischaemia–reperfusion injury, and in patients for whom exposure of blood to artificial surfaces has occurred.


2015 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 302-321
Author(s):  
Marion Bowman

This essay focuses upon a significant place, Glastonbury, at an important time during the early twentieth century, in order to shed light on a particular aspect of Christianity which is frequently overlooked: its internal plurality. This is not simply denominational diversity, but the considerable heterogeneity which exists at both institutional and individual level within denominations, and which often escapes articulation, awareness or comment. This is significant because failure to apprehend a more detailed, granular picture of religion can lead to an incomplete view of events in the past and, by extension, a partial understanding of later phenomena. This essay argues that by using the concept of vernacular religion a more nuanced picture of religion as it is – or has been – lived can be achieved.


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