Recognition of stimulus received by recurrent neural network

The study is concerned with the comparison of two methods for identification of stimulus received by artificial neural network using neural activity pattern that corresponds to the period of storing information about this stimulus in the working memory. We used simple recurrent neural networks learned to pass the delayed matching-to-sample test. Neural activity was detected at the period of pause between receiving stimuli. The analysis of neural excitation patterns showed that neural networks encoded variables that were relevant for the task during the delayed matching-to-sample test, and their activity patterns were dynamic. The method of centroids allowed identifying the type of the received stimuli with efficiency up to 75% while the method of neural network-based decoder showed 100% efficiency. In addition, this method was applied to determine the minimal set of neurons whose activity was the most significant for stimulus recognition.

Impairment effect of infantile coloration on face discrimination in chimpanzees

Impaired face recognition for certain face categories, such as faces of other species or other age class faces, is known in both humans and non-human primates. A previous study found that it is more difficult for chimpanzees to differentiate infant faces than adult faces. Infant faces of chimpanzees differ from adult faces in shape and colour, but the latter is especially a salient cue for chimpanzees. Therefore, impaired face differentiation of infant faces may be due to a specific colour. In the present study, we investigated which feature of infant faces has a greater effect on face identification difficulty. Adult chimpanzees were tested using a matching-to-sample task with four types of face stimuli whose shape and colour were manipulated as either infant or adult one independently. Chimpanzees' discrimination performance decreased as they matched faces with infant coloration, regardless of the shape. This study is the first to demonstrate the impairment effect of infantile coloration on face recognition in non-human primates, suggesting that the face recognition strategies of humans and chimpanzees overlap as both species show proficient face recognition for certain face colours.

Semantically Congruent Bimodal Presentation with Divided-Modality Attention Accelerates Unisensory Working Memory Retrieval

Although previous studies have shown that semantic multisensory integration can be differentially modulated by attention focus, it remains unclear whether attentionally mediated multisensory perceptual facilitation could impact further cognitive performance. Using a delayed matching-to-sample paradigm, the present study investigated the effect of semantically congruent bimodal presentation on subsequent unisensory working memory (WM) performance by manipulating attention focus. The results showed that unisensory WM retrieval was faster in the semantically congruent condition than in the incongruent multisensory encoding condition. However, such a result was only found in the divided-modality attention condition. This result indicates that a robust multisensory representation was constructed during semantically congruent multisensory encoding with divided-modality attention; this representation then accelerated unisensory WM performance, especially auditory WM retrieval. Additionally, an overall faster unisensory WM retrieval was observed under the modality-specific selective attention condition compared with the divided-modality condition, indicating that the division of attention to address two modalities demanded more central executive resources to encode and integrate crossmodal information and to maintain a constructed multisensory representation, leaving few resources for WM retrieval. Additionally, the present finding may support the amodal view that WM has an amodal central storage component that is used to maintain modal-based attention-optimized multisensory representations.

INCLUSÃO ESCOLAR DE UM ALUNO COM DEFICIÊNCIA INTELECTUAL: UM ESTUDO DE CASO DESENVOLVIDO EM PORTUGAL

O Programa de Ensino Individualizado (PEI) é um documento que descreve as medidas de aprendizagem por meio de orientações e desenvolvimento sistematizado de ensino para alunos que necessitam de suporte no processo de ensino e aprendizagem, no qual as metas devem atender às necessidades e singularidades do aluno, beneficiando o processo de inclusão. O presente trabalho teve como objetivo analisar o PEI de um aluno com deficiência intelectual matriculado em uma escola regular de Portugal, de modo a eleger um dos objetivos a ele propostos na área da leitura e escrita e elaborar uma intervenção que atendesse às suas necessidades, avaliando seu desempenho continuamente. Neste trabalho, realizou-se o ensino de reconhecimento de 10 palavras iniciadas com a letra P, ensinadas duas a duas, empregando-se os procedimentos de emparelhamento com o modelo (matching-to-sample [MTS]) e emparelhamento com o modelo com resposta construída (constructed response matching to sample [CRMTS]). Os resultados mostraram que o aluno apresentou avanços parciais no desempenho de habilidades alvo e não houve manutenção na avaliação após um mês. Os dados indicaram que o investimento no planejamento de ensino sistematizado e adequado torna-se de extrema relevância para o processo de ensino e aprendizado e o trabalho multidisciplinar.

Different Influences of Negative and Neutral Emotional Interference on Working Memory in Trait Anxiety

To examine the interaction of working memory (WM) type with emotional interference in trait anxiety, event-related potentials were measured in a combined WM and emotional task. Participants completed a delayed matching-to-sample task of WM, and emotional pictures were presented during the maintenance interval. The results indicated that negative affect interfered with spatial WM; task-related changes in amplitude were observed in the late positive potential (LPP) and slow waves in both the high and low anxiety groups. We also found an interaction among WM type, emotion, and trait anxiety such that participants with high levels of trait anxiety showed an opposite neural response to verbal and spatial WM tasks compared with individuals with low trait anxiety during the sustained brain activity involved in processing negative or neutral pictures in the delay phase. Our results increase our understanding of the influence of emotions on recognition and the vulnerability of those with trait anxiety to emotional stimuli.