scholarly journals The radically embodied conscious cybernetic Bayesian brain: Towards explaining the emergence of agency

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Safron
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Proximal Development ◽  
Developmental Robotics ◽  
Affective Development ◽  
Bayesian Brain ◽  
Inference Problems ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Embodied Self ◽  
Empirical Priors

This manuscript attempts to characterize a broad range of intentional phenomena in terms of embodied self-models (ESMs), understood as body maps with agentic properties, functioning as predictive-memory systems and cybernetic controllers. ESMs may constitute a dominant organizing principle for neural architectures due to their initial and ongoing significance for the processes by which inference problems are solved in cognitive (and affective) development. Specifically, embodied experiences may provide a source of foundational lessons in learning curriculums in which agents explore increasingly challenging inference spaces along zones of proximal development, so helping to solve an unresolved problem in Bayesian cognitive science: what are biologically plausible mechanisms for equipping learners with sufficiently constraining/empowering inductive biases? Drawing on models from neurophysiology, psychology, and developmental robotics, I suggest a potentially surprising answer to how this problem might be solved: body maps are the primary source of (empirical) priors, or very reliably learnable posterior expectations. If ESMs play this kind of foundational role in bootstrapping cognitive development, then we ought to expect bidirectional linkages between all sensory modalities and frontal-parietal control hierarchies, so infusing all senses with somatic-motoric properties, thereby structuring all perception by relevant affordances, so solving frame problems for embodied learners/agents.

scholarly journals The Radically Embodied Conscious Cybernetic Bayesian Brain: From Free Energy to Free Will and Back Again

Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 783
Author(s):  
Adam Safron
Keyword(s):  
Free Energy ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Active Inference ◽  
Developmental Robotics ◽  
Energy Principle ◽  
Affective Development ◽  
Bayesian Brain

Drawing from both enactivist and cognitivist perspectives on mind, I propose that explaining teleological phenomena may require reappraising both “Cartesian theaters” and mental homunculi in terms of embodied self-models (ESMs), understood as body maps with agentic properties, functioning as predictive-memory systems and cybernetic controllers. Quasi-homuncular ESMs are suggested to constitute a major organizing principle for neural architectures due to their initial and ongoing significance for solutions to inference problems in cognitive (and affective) development. Embodied experiences provide foundational lessons in learning curriculums in which agents explore increasingly challenging problem spaces, so answering an unresolved question in Bayesian cognitive science: what are biologically plausible mechanisms for equipping learners with sufficiently powerful inductive biases to adequately constrain inference spaces? Drawing on models from neurophysiology, psychology, and developmental robotics, I describe how embodiment provides fundamental sources of empirical priors (as reliably learnable posterior expectations). If ESMs play this kind of foundational role in cognitive development, then bidirectional linkages will be found between all sensory modalities and frontal-parietal control hierarchies, so infusing all senses with somatic-motoric properties, thereby structuring all perception by relevant affordances, so solving frame problems for embodied agents. Drawing upon the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference framework, I describe a particular mechanism for intentional action selection via consciously imagined (and explicitly represented) goal realization, where contrasts between desired and present states influence ongoing policy selection via predictive coding mechanisms and backward-chained imaginings (as self-realizing predictions). This embodied developmental legacy suggests a mechanism by which imaginings can be intentionally shaped by (internalized) partially-expressed motor acts, so providing means of agentic control for attention, working memory, imagination, and behavior. I further describe the nature(s) of mental causation and self-control, and also provide an account of readiness potentials in Libet paradigms wherein conscious intentions shape causal streams leading to enaction. Finally, I provide neurophenomenological handlings of prototypical qualia including pleasure, pain, and desire in terms of self-annihilating free energy gradients via quasi-synesthetic interoceptive active inference. In brief, this manuscript is intended to illustrate how radically embodied minds may create foundations for intelligence (as capacity for learning and inference), consciousness (as somatically-grounded self-world modeling), and will (as deployment of predictive models for enacting valued goals).

scholarly journals An embodied approach to consumer experiences: the Hollister brandscape

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 806-828 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorna Stevens ◽  
Pauline Maclaran ◽  
Stephen Brown
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
The Body ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Consumer Experience ◽  
Sensory Marketing ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
Consumer Experiences ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
On Line ◽  
Sensory Activation

Purpose This paper aims to use embodied theory to analyze consumer experience in a retail brandscape, Hollister Co. By taking a holistic, embodied approach, this study reveals how individual consumers interact with such retail environments in corporeal, instinctive and sensual ways. Design/methodology/approach The primary source of data was 97 subjective personal introspective accounts undertaken with the target age group for the store. These were supplemented with in-depth interviews with consumers, managers and employees of Hollister. Findings The authors offer a conceptualization of consumers’ embodied experience, which they term The Immersive Somascape Experience. This identifies four key touch points that evoke the Hollister store experience – each of which reveals how the body is affected by particular relational and material specificities. These are sensory activation, brand materialities, corporeal relationality and (dis)orientation. These may lead to consumer emplacement. Research limitations/implications The authors propose that taking an “intelligible embodiment” approach to consumer experiences in retail contexts provides a deeper, more holistic understanding of the embodied processes involved. They also suggest that more anthropological, body-grounded studies are needed for the unique insights they provide. Finally, they note that there is growing consumer demand for experiences, which, they argue, points to the need for more research from an embodied experience perspective in our field. Practical implications The study reveals the perils and pitfalls of adopting a sensory marketing perspective. It also offers insights into how the body leads in retail brandscapes, addressing a lack in such approaches in the current retailing literature and suggesting that embodied, experiential aspects of branding are increasingly pertinent in retailing in light of the continued growth of on-line shopping. Originality/value Overall, the study shows how an embodied approach challenges the dominance of mind and representation over body and materiality, suggesting an “intelligible embodiment” lens offers unique insights into consumers’ embodied experiences in retail environments.

scholarly journals Exploring Women’s Experiences: Embodied Pathways and Influences for Exercise Participation

Societies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Amy Clark
Keyword(s):  
Exercise Motivation ◽  
Exercise Participation ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Feminist Phenomenology ◽  
Embodied Self ◽  
Feminine Body ◽  
Experiences Of Women ◽  
Early Influences

It has been well-documented that women face pressures to conform to a slim, toned, and athletic body, becoming “tyrannised” by beauty ideals. Under these contemporary ideologies of perfectionism, women are placed under constant surveillance, evaluation and, objectification and are thus reduced to “being” their bodies. However, there is little known about the potential relationships between different types of exercise, body image, and exercise motivation. With this in mind, this paper contributes towards a small but developing body of research that utilises feminist phenomenology to reveal twelve women’s early embodied motivations for exercising and draws upon material gathered from a three-year ethnography into the embodied experiences of women in fitness cultures. This paper delves into the influences on their continued participation over time and explores how these experiences shape their understandings of the embodied self and the broader constructions of the gendered body. The discussion provided illuminates how early influences on exercise participation and how pressures on women to conform to dominant notions of the “feminine” body are imposed by structural, cultural, historical, and localised forces in ways that affect and shape future physical activity participation, and the physical cultures where these tensions are played out.

scholarly journals "Endless Possibilities" — Embodied Experiences and Connection in Social Salsa Dancing

PhaenEx ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-135
Author(s):  
B. McClure
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Doctoral Study ◽  
Personal Freedom ◽  
Theoretical Context ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Empirical Context ◽  
Embodied Self ◽  
Normative Ideals

This article offers an analysis of embodied experiences and connections in social salsa dancing. Framed within a theoretical context that views bodily practices as both the enactment of normative ideals and as a negotiation of personal freedom against normative ideals, social salsa dancing offers a rich empirical context to explore how we make sense of our bodies, bodily practices, and embodied experience. Drawing on fieldwork conducted as part of a doctoral study in addition to a decade of personal experience, I argue that social salsa dancing cultivates kinesthetic, tactile, and musical senses, and emphasizes the value of attentive embodied interactions and momentary connections with others. I conclude that exploring the possibilities of these interactions and connections offers a potentially emancipatory way of working on one’s embodied self.

scholarly journals Investigating the Zone of Proximal Development in Spoken Data from the Classroom

2019 ◽  
pp. 112-118
Author(s):  
Adwaa Sabah Shukur M. A. ◽  
Israa Sabeeh Abbas M. A.
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Classroom Interaction ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Zone Of Proximal Development ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Proximal Development ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Good People ◽  
Language Analysis

The educational process has form several social processes to add value to the community and its needs. The process aims to create good people in all their personal aspects, physical, mental, psychological and social through the modification of human behavior within the goals of the curricula content. The techniques of teaching arose from a desire to facilitate a better language learning process. Several other new techniques and methods were developed based on theories of learning and teaching (Ellis, 1999). In this regard, the present study examines data from classroom interaction to discuss the of zone of proximal development as the paper is designed to deal with spoken language analysis, the research utilizes primary source of data.

scholarly journals Emotional and Cognitive Development of Preschool Children: Overview of International and Russian Studies on Role of Dialectical Thinking in the Regulation of Affect and Recognition of Complex Feelings

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-121
Author(s):  
Nikolay E. Veraksa ◽  
Anastasia K. Belolutskaya
Keyword(s):  
Preschool Children ◽  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Preschool Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Proximal Development ◽  
Mental Action ◽  
Dialectical Thinking ◽  
Affective Development ◽  
Cognitive Mechanism ◽  
Game Activity

The article contains an overview of studies on the problem of emotional and cognitive development of preschool children (43 papers, including 6 in Russian and 37 in English) conducted in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Spain, Germany, Norway, Russia, etc). Special attention is paid to works that consider the reflexive aspect of childrens experiences characterized by duality, inconsistency and multypositionality, which makes it possible to identify and trace the line of dialectical transformations based on preschool childrens emotional experiences. The following statements are formulated as key conclusions: (1) dialectical thinking can be considered as a cognitive mechanism necessary for the analysis of complex, ambivalent and hidden feelings; (2) the unit of cognitive and affective development is experience, which involves reliance on an internal dialectical structure; (3) a two-position perspective in the game activity is a condition for forming preschool childrens dialectical thinking operations, which in turn can become a cognitive mechanism for regulating affect; (4) the cognitive basis of the emotional anticipation phenomenon includes a mental action of changing the alternative, which is in the zone of proximal development of preschool children and allows adults to use it as a mechanism of emotional co-regulation; and (5) philosophical dialog practices, which imply a discussion of problematic-contradictory content with preschoolers and are aimed at forming in them such actions of dialectical thinking as transformation, mediation and change of alternatives. These provisions represent are an effective tool for developing the ability to distinguish dual complex feelings and analyze their causes and consequences. The results of the work can serve as a basis for creating and implementing conceptually new preschool education programs aimed at both the creative and emotional development of children, where dialectical thinking is considered, inter alia, as an ability necessary for regulating affect and helping children to experience and cope with complex conflicting feelings.

Language processing is not a race against time

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giosuè Baggio ◽  
Carmelo M. Vicario
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Cognitive Functions ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Language System ◽  
Moderating Factors

AbstractWe agree with Christiansen & Chater (C&C) that language processing and acquisition are tightly constrained by the limits of sensory and memory systems. However, the human brain supports a range of cognitive functions that mitigate the effects of information processing bottlenecks. The language system is partly organised around these moderating factors, not just around restrictions on storage and computation.

Working, Declarative, and Procedural Memory in Children With Developmental Language Disorder

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (12) ◽  
pp. 4162-4178
Author(s):  
Emily Jackson ◽  
Suze Leitão ◽  
Mary Claessen ◽  
Mark Boyes
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Declarative Memory ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Procedural Memory ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Visual Spatial

Purpose Previous research into the working, declarative, and procedural memory systems in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) has yielded inconsistent results. The purpose of this research was to profile these memory systems in children with DLD and their typically developing peers. Method One hundred four 5- to 8-year-old children participated in the study. Fifty had DLD, and 54 were typically developing. Aspects of the working memory system (verbal short-term memory, verbal working memory, and visual–spatial short-term memory) were assessed using a nonword repetition test and subtests from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children. Verbal and visual–spatial declarative memory were measured using the Children's Memory Scale, and an audiovisual serial reaction time task was used to evaluate procedural memory. Results The children with DLD demonstrated significant impairments in verbal short-term and working memory, visual–spatial short-term memory, verbal declarative memory, and procedural memory. However, verbal declarative memory and procedural memory were no longer impaired after controlling for working memory and nonverbal IQ. Declarative memory for visual–spatial information was unimpaired. Conclusions These findings indicate that children with DLD have deficits in the working memory system. While verbal declarative memory and procedural memory also appear to be impaired, these deficits could largely be accounted for by working memory skills. The results have implications for our understanding of the cognitive processes underlying language impairment in the DLD population; however, further investigation of the relationships between the memory systems is required using tasks that measure learning over long-term intervals. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13250180

Human Memory Systems: A Framework for Understanding Dementia

ASHA Leader ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 8-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nidhi Mahendra ◽  
Allegra Apple
Keyword(s):  
Human Memory ◽  
Memory Systems
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