scholarly journals Making the World Behave: A New Embodied Account on Mobile Paradigm

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Umay Sen ◽  
Gustaf Gredebäck
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Motor Behavior ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Dorsal Stream ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Distributed Information ◽  
Young Infants ◽  
The World ◽  
Sensorimotor Contingencies

In this review article, we describe the mobile paradigm, a method used for more than 50 years to assess how infants learn and remember sensorimotor contingencies. The literature on the mobile paradigm demonstrates that infants below 6 months of age can remember the learning environment weeks after when reminded periodically and integrate temporally distributed information across modalities. The latter ability is only possible if events occur within a temporal window of a few days, and the width of this required window changes as a function of age. A major critique of these conclusions is that the majority of this literature has neglected the embodied experience, such that motor behavior was considered an equivalent developmental substitute for verbal behavior. Over recent years, simulation and empirical work have highlighted the sensorimotor aspect and opened up a discussion for possible learning mechanisms and variability in motor preferences of young infants. In line with this recent direction, we present a new embodied account on the mobile paradigm which argues that learning sensorimotor contingencies is a core feature of development forming the basis for active exploration of the world and body. In addition to better explaining recent findings, this new framework aims to replace the dis-embodied approach to the mobile paradigm with a new understanding that focuses on variance and representations grounded in sensorimotor experience. Finally, we discuss a potential role for the dorsal stream which might be responsible for guiding action according to visual information, while infants learn sensorimotor contingencies in the mobile paradigm.

scholarly journals Lessons from human vision for robotic design

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Melvyn A. Goodale
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Posterior Parietal Cortex ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Dorsal Stream ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Ventral Stream ◽  
Human Vision ◽  
Visual Stream ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The World

AbstractThe visual guidance of goal-directed movements requires transformations of incoming visual information that are different from those required for visual perception. For us to grasp an object successfully, our brain must use just-in-time computations of the object’s real-world size and shape, and its orientation and disposition with respect to our hand. These requirements have led to the emergence of dedicated visuomotor modules in the posterior parietal cortex of the human brain (the dorsal visual stream) that are functionally distinct from networks in the occipito-temporal cortex (the ventral visual stream) that mediate our conscious perception of the world. Although the identification and selection of goal objects and an appropriate course of action depends on the perceptual machinery of the ventral stream and associated cognitive modules, the execution of the subsequent goal-directed action is mediated by dedicated online control systems in the dorsal stream and associated motor areas. The dorsal stream allows an observer to reach out and grasp objects with exquisite ease, but by itself, deals only with objects that are visible at the moment the action is being programmed. The ventral stream, however, allows an observer to escape the present and bring to bear information from the past – including information about the function of objects, their intrinsic properties, and their location with reference to other objects in the world. Ultimately then, both streams contribute to the production of goal-directed actions. The principles underlying this division of labour between the dorsal and ventral streams are relevant to the design and implementation of autonomous robotic systems.

scholarly journals The Case of Ahmad Shamieh’s Campaign against Dublin Deportation: Embodiment of Political Violence and Community Care

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 154
Author(s):  
Jelka Zorn
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Community Care ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
The World ◽  
Dublin Regulation

Differently from studies that analyze antideportation struggles in relation to concepts of state sovereignty and (un)making of citizenship, this paper focuses more on intersection of politics and body. It discusses struggle for the “place in the world” as an embodied experience. Ahmad Shamieh came to Slovenia in 2016 through the humanitarian corridor on the Balkan route. The Slovene Ministry of the Interior refused to examine his asylum claim and instead issued him a Dublin Regulation decision, stating that he was to be deported to Croatia. Ahmad’s and his supporters’ legal and political struggle, which lasted several years, prevented his deportation. In contrast to state’s politics of exclusion, causing dehumanization and traumatization the grassroots community struggle developed the politics of inclusion, solidarity and care from below, in practice transforming the conditions of belonging.

Universal Design for Learning

2021 ◽  
pp. 002205742110319
Author(s):  
Sandra Levey
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Students With Disabilities ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Universal Design ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Universal Design For Learning ◽  
Design Learning ◽  
The World ◽  
Design For Learning

This review presents the Universal Design Learning (UDL) approach to education. Classrooms have become increasingly diverse, with second language learners, students with disabilities, and students with differences in their perception and understanding information. Some students learn best through listening, while others learn best when presented with visual information. Given the increased number of new language learners across the world, the UDL approach allows successful learning for all students. UDL has allowed students to acquire information more effectively. UDL provides guidance to educators that is especially valuable for the diversity of classrooms and the diversity in modalities in learning,

Learning Through Processing: Toward an Integrated Approach to Early Word Learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan C. Meylan ◽  
Elika Bergelson
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Lexical Knowledge ◽  
Novel Word Learning

Children's linguistic knowledge and the learning mechanisms by which they acquire it grow substantially in infancy and toddlerhood, yet theories of word learning largely fail to incorporate these shifts. Moreover, researchers’ often-siloed focus on either familiar word recognition or novel word learning limits the critical consideration of how these two relate. As a step toward a mechanistic theory of language acquisition, we present a framework of “learning through processing” and relate it to the prevailing methods used to assess children's early knowledge of words. Incorporating recent empirical work, we posit a specific, testable timeline of qualitative changes in the learning process in this interval. We conclude with several challenges and avenues for building a comprehensive theory of early word learning: better characterization of the input, reconciling results across approaches, and treating lexical knowledge in the nascent grammar with sufficient sophistication to ensure generalizability across languages and development. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 8 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Everyday agency and transformation: Place, body and story in the divided city

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Mannergren Selimovic
Keyword(s):  
Coping Mechanisms ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Generative Capacity ◽  
Peace And Conflict ◽  
Analytical Work ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

How do we identify and understand transformative agency in the quotidian that is not contained in formal, or even informal structures? This article investigates the ordinary agency of Palestinian inhabitants in the violent context of the divided city of Jerusalem. Through a close reading of three ethnographic moments I identify creative micropractices of negotiating the separation barrier that slices through the city. To conduct this analytical work I propose a conceptual grid of place, body and story through which the everyday can be grasped, accessed and understood. ‘Place’ encompasses the understanding that the everyday is always located and grounded in materiality; ‘body’ takes into account the embodied experience of subjects moving through this place; and ‘story’ refers to the narrative work conducted by human beings in order to make sense of our place in the world. I argue that people can engage in actions that function both as coping mechanisms (and may even support the upholding of status quo), and as moments of formulating and enacting agential projects with a more or less intentional transformative purpose. This insight is key to understanding the generative capacity of everyday agency and its importance for the macropolitics of peace and conflict.

scholarly journals Constructing Semantic Models From Words, Images, and Emojis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Armand Stefan Rotaru ◽  
Gabriella Vigliocco
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Visual Model ◽  
Semantic Data ◽  
Text Corpora ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Best Fit ◽  
Better Than

A number of recent models of semantics combine linguistic information, derived from text corpora, and visual information, derived from image collections, demonstrating that the resulting multimodal models are better than either of their unimodal counterparts, in accounting for behavioural data. Empirical work on semantic processing has shown that emotion also plays an important role especially for abstract concepts, however, models integrating emotion along with linguistic and visual information are lacking. Here, we first improve on visual and affective representations, derived from state-of-the-art existing models, by choosing models that best fit available human semantic data and extending the number of concepts they cover. Crucially then, we assess whether adding affective representations (obtained from a neural network model designed to predict emojis from co-occurring text) improves the model’s ability to fit semantic similarity/relatedness judgements from a purely linguistic and linguistic-visual model. We find that, given specific weights assigned to the models, adding both visual and affective representations improve performance, with visual representations providing an improvement especially for more concrete words, and affective representations improving especially the fit for more abstract words.

scholarly journals Is Vision for Action Unconscious?

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (8) ◽  
pp. 413-433
Author(s):  
Wayne Wu ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Work ◽  
Dorsal Stream ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Widespread Acceptance ◽  
Empirical Argument ◽  
Intentional Agency ◽  
Vision For Action

Empirical work and philosophical analysis have led to widespread acceptance that vision for action, served by the cortical dorsal stream, is unconscious. I argue that the empirical argument for this claim is unsound. That argument relies on subjects’ introspective reports. Yet on biological grounds, in light of the theory of primate cortical vision, introspection has no access to dorsal stream mediated visual states. It is wrongly assumed that introspective reports speak to absent phenomenology in the dorsal stream. In light of this, I consider a different conception of consciousness’s relation to agency in terms of access. While theoretical reasons suggest that the inaccessibility of the dorsal stream to conceptual report is evidence that it is unconscious, this position begs important questions about agency and consciousness. I propose a broader notion of access in respect of the guidance of intentional agency as the crucial link connecting agency to consciousness.

scholarly journals The Strasbourg Visual Scale: A Novel Method to Assess Visual Hallucinations

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Giersch ◽  
Thomas Huard ◽  
Sohee Park ◽  
Cherise Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Physical Property ◽  
Visual Hallucinations ◽  
Visual Scale ◽  
The World ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
Internal Experience ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Disorders Of The Self

The experience of oneself in the world is based on sensory afferences, enabling us to reach a first-perspective perception of our environment and to differentiate oneself from the world. Visual hallucinations may arise from a difficulty in differentiating one's own mental imagery from externally-induced perceptions. To specify the relationship between hallucinations and the disorders of the self, we need to understand the mechanisms of hallucinations. However, visual hallucinations are often under reported in individuals with psychosis, who sometimes appear to experience difficulties describing them. We developed the “Strasbourg Visual Scale (SVS),” a novel computerized tool that allows us to explore and capture the subjective experience of visual hallucinations by circumventing the difficulties associated with verbal descriptions. This scale reconstructs the hallucinated image of the participants by presenting distinct physical properties of visual information, step-by-step to help them communicate their internal experience. The strategy that underlies the SVS is to present a sequence of images to the participants whose choice at each step provides a feedback toward re-creating the internal image held by them. The SVS displays simple images on a computer screen that provide choices for the participants. Each step focuses on one physical property of an image, and the successive choices made by the participants help them to progressively build an image close to his/her hallucination, similar to the tools commonly used to generate facial composites. The SVS was constructed based on our knowledge of the visual pathways leading to an integrated perception of our environment. We discuss the rationale for the successive steps of the scale, and to which extent it could complement existing scales.

Seeing, acting, and knowing

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 999-999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zenon W. Pylyshyn
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Target Article ◽  
The World ◽  
Perceptual Representations ◽  
Sensorimotor Contingencies ◽  
Better Than

The target article proposes that visual experience arises when sensorimotor contingencies are exploited in perception. This novel analysis of visual experience fares no better than the other proposals that the article rightly dismisses, and for the same reasons. Extracting invariants may be needed for recognition, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient for having a visual experience. While the idea that vision involves the active extraction of sensorimotor invariants has merit, it does not replace the need for perceptual representations. Vision is not just for the immediate controlling of action; it is also for finding out about the world, from which inferences may be drawn and beliefs changed.

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