Modelling Adaptation through Social Allostasis: Modulating the Effects of Social Touch with Oxytocin in Embodied Agents

Social allostasis is a mechanism of adaptation that permits individuals to dynamically adapt their physiology to changing physical and social conditions. Oxytocin (OT) is widely considered to be one of the hormones that drives and adapts social behaviours. While its precise effects remain unclear, two areas where OT may promote adaptation are by affecting social salience, and affecting internal responses of performing social behaviours. Working towards a model of dynamic adaptation through social allostasis in simulated embodied agents, and extending our previous work studying OT-inspired modulation of social salience, we present a model and experiments that investigate the effects and adaptive value of allostatic processes based on hormonal (OT) modulation of affective elements of a social behaviour. In particular, we investigate and test the effects and adaptive value of modulating the degree of satisfaction of tactile contact in a social motivation context in a small simulated agent society across different environmental challenges (related to availability of food) and effects of OT modulation of social salience as a motivational incentive. Our results show that the effects of these modulatory mechanisms have different (positive or negative) adaptive value across different groups and under different environmental circumstance in a way that supports the context-dependent nature of OT, put forward by the interactionist approach to OT modulation in biological agents. In terms of simulation models, this means that OT modulation of the mechanisms that we have described should be context-dependent in order to maximise viability of our socially adaptive agents, illustrating the relevance of social allostasis mechanisms.

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Discrete Event Simulation Models for CT Examination Queuing in West China Hospital

Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine ◽

10.1155/2016/2731675 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 2016 ◽

pp. 1-10 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Li Luo ◽

Hangjiang Liu ◽

Huchang Liao ◽

Shijun Tang ◽

Yingkang Shi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Waiting Time ◽

Discrete Event ◽

Simulation Models ◽

West China Hospital ◽

West China ◽

Event Simulation ◽

Ct Examination ◽

Degree Of Satisfaction ◽

Dynamic Priorities ◽

Priority Model

In CT examination, the emergency patients (EPs) have highest priorities in the queuing system and thus the general patients (GPs) have to wait for a long time. This leads to a low degree of satisfaction of the whole patients. The aim of this study is to improve the patients’ satisfaction by designing new queuing strategies for CT examination. We divide the EPs into urgent type and emergency type and then design two queuing strategies: one is that the urgent patients (UPs) wedge into the GPs’ queue with fixed interval (fixed priority model) and the other is that the patients have dynamic priorities for queuing (dynamic priority model). Based on the data from Radiology Information Database (RID) of West China Hospital (WCH), we develop some discrete event simulation models for CT examination according to the designed strategies. We compare the performance of different strategies on the basis of the simulation results. The strategy that patients have dynamic priorities for queuing makes the waiting time of GPs decrease by 13 minutes and the degree of satisfaction increase by 40.6%. We design a more reasonable CT examination queuing strategy to decrease patients’ waiting time and increase their satisfaction degrees.

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Active tactile exploration for adaptive locomotion in the stick insect

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2011.0126 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 366 (1581) ◽

pp. 2996-3005 ◽

Cited By ~ 36

Author(s):

Christoph Schütz ◽

Volker Dürr

Keyword(s):

Movement Pattern ◽

Stick Insect ◽

Cycle Frequency ◽

Joint Coupling ◽

Contact Information ◽

Tactile Contact ◽

Exploratory Movement ◽

Swing Movement ◽

Context Dependent ◽

Antennal Contact

Insects carry a pair of actively movable feelers that supply the animal with a range of multimodal information. The antennae of the stick insect Carausius morosus are straight and of nearly the same length as the legs, making them ideal probes for near-range exploration. Indeed, stick insects, like many other insects, use antennal contact information for the adaptive control of locomotion, for example, in climbing. Moreover, the active exploratory movement pattern of the antennae is context-dependent. The first objective of the present study is to reveal the significance of antennal contact information for the efficient initiation of climbing. This is done by means of kinematic analysis of freely walking animals as they undergo a tactually elicited transition from walking to climbing. The main findings are that fast, tactually elicited re-targeting movements may occur during an ongoing swing movement, and that the height of the last antennal contact prior to leg contact largely predicts the height of the first leg contact. The second objective is to understand the context-dependent adaptation of the antennal movement pattern in response to tactile contact. We show that the cycle frequency of both antennal joints increases after obstacle contact. Furthermore, inter-joint coupling switches distinctly upon tactile contact, revealing a simple mechanism for context-dependent adaptation.

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Social behaviours in dog-owner interactions can serve as a model for designing social robots

Interaction Studies ◽

10.1075/is.15.2.01far ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 15 (2) ◽

pp. 143-172 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Tamás Faragó ◽

Ádám Miklósi ◽

Beáta Korcsok ◽

Judit Száraz ◽

Márta Gácsi

Keyword(s):

Social Behaviour ◽

Social Robotics ◽

Social Robots ◽

Human Society ◽

Low Level ◽

Human Interactions ◽

Social Monitoring ◽

The Family ◽

Context Dependent ◽

Social Behaviours

It is essential for social robots to fit in the human society. In order to facilitate this process we propose to use the family dog’s social behaviour shown towards humans as an inspiration. In this study we explored dogs’ low level social monitoring in dog-human interactions and extracted individually consistent and context dependent behaviours in simple everyday social scenarios. We found that proximity seeking and tail wagging were most individually distinctive in dogs, while activity, orientation towards the owner, and exploration were dependent on the context and/or the activity of the owner. The functional analogues of these dog behaviours can be implemented in social robots of different embodiments in order to make them acceptable and more believable for humans. Keywords: dog-owner interaction; social robotics; low-level social monitoring; greeting behaviour; individually distinctive behaviours

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Correlation of Pore Structure and Permeability by SEM-Image Analysis

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100180896 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 48 (1) ◽

pp. 428-429

Author(s):

C. A. Callender ◽

Wm. C. Dawson ◽

J. J. Funk

Keyword(s):

Image Analysis ◽

Pore Structure ◽

Imaging System ◽

Pore Space ◽

Simulation Models ◽

Image Analyzer ◽

Imaging Data ◽

Sem Images ◽

Thin Sections ◽

Rock Types

The geometric structure of pore space in some carbonate rocks can be correlated with petrophysical measurements by quantitatively analyzing binaries generated from SEM images. Reservoirs with similar porosities can have markedly different permeabilities. Image analysis identifies which characteristics of a rock are responsible for the permeability differences. Imaging data can explain unusual fluid flow patterns which, in turn, can improve production simulation models.Analytical SchemeOur sample suite consists of 30 Middle East carbonates having porosities ranging from 21 to 28% and permeabilities from 92 to 2153 md. Engineering tests reveal the lack of a consistent (predictable) relationship between porosity and permeability (Fig. 1). Finely polished thin sections were studied petrographically to determine rock texture. The studied thin sections represent four petrographically distinct carbonate rock types ranging from compacted, poorly-sorted, dolomitized, intraclastic grainstones to well-sorted, foraminiferal,ooid, peloidal grainstones. The samples were analyzed for pore structure by a Tracor Northern 5500 IPP 5B/80 image analyzer and a 80386 microprocessor-based imaging system. Between 30 and 50 SEM-generated backscattered electron images (frames) were collected per thin section. Binaries were created from the gray level that represents the pore space. Calculated values were averaged and the data analyzed to determine which geological pore structure characteristics actually affect permeability.

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Forming Impressions of Personality

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000179 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 45 (3) ◽

pp. 153-163 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Sanne Nauts ◽

Oliver Langner ◽

Inge Huijsmans ◽

Roos Vonk ◽

Daniël H. J. Wigboldus

Keyword(s):

Impression Formation ◽

Context Dependent

Asch’s seminal research on “Forming Impressions of Personality” (1946) has widely been cited as providing evidence for a primacy-of-warmth effect, suggesting that warmth-related judgments have a stronger influence on impressions of personality than competence-related judgments (e.g., Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007 ; Wojciszke, 2005 ). Because this effect does not fit with Asch’s Gestalt-view on impression formation and does not readily follow from the data presented in his original paper, the goal of the present study was to critically examine and replicate the studies of Asch’s paper that are most relevant to the primacy-of-warmth effect. We found no evidence for a primacy-of-warmth effect. Instead, the role of warmth was highly context-dependent, and competence was at least as important in shaping impressions as warmth.

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Memorial Consequences of Environmental Context Change in Children and Adults

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000056 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 57 (6) ◽

pp. 455-461 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Alp Aslan ◽

Anuscheh Samenieh ◽

Tobias Staudigl ◽

Karl-Heinz T. Bäuml

Keyword(s):

Elementary School ◽

Young Adults ◽

Episodic Memory ◽

Middle Childhood ◽

First Graders ◽

Fourth Graders ◽

Environmental Context ◽

Context Change ◽

Context Dependent

Changing environmental context during encoding can influence episodic memory. This study examined the memorial consequences of environmental context change in children. Kindergartners, first and fourth graders, and young adults studied two lists of items, either in the same room (no context change) or in two different rooms (context change), and subsequently were tested on the two lists in the room in which the second list was encoded. As expected, in adults, the context change impaired recall of the first list and improved recall of the second. Whereas fourth graders showed the same pattern of results as adults, in both kindergartners and first graders no memorial effects of the context change arose. The results indicate that the two effects of environmental context change develop contemporaneously over middle childhood and reach maturity at the end of the elementary school days. The findings are discussed in light of both retrieval-based and encoding-based accounts of context-dependent memory.

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