Circular Causality of Emotions in Moving Pictures

In the framework of predictive coding, as explained by Giovanni Pezzulo in his article Why do you fear the bogeyman? An embodied predictive coding model of perceptual inference (2014), humans construct instances of emotions by a double arrow of explanation of stimuli. Top-down cognitive models explain in a predictive fashion the emotional value of stimuli. At the same time, feelings and emotions depend on the perception of internal changes in the body. When confronted with uncertain auditory and visual information, a multimodal internal state assigns more weight to interoceptive information (rather than auditory and visual information) like visceral and autonomic states as hunger or thirst (motivational conditions). In short, an emotional mood can constrain the construction of a particular instance of emotion. This observation suggests that the dynamics of generative processes of Bayesian inference contain a mechanism of bidirectional link between perceptual and cognitive inference and feelings and emotions. In other words, “subjective feeling states and emotions influence perceptual and cognitive inference, which in turn produce new subjective feeling states and emotions” as a self-fulfilling prophecy (Pezzulo 2014, 908). This article focuses on the short introductory scene from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), claiming that the construction / emergence of the fear and sadness emotions are created out of the circular causal coupling instantiated between cinematic bottom-up mood cues and top-down cognitive explanations.

Premature commitment to uncertain beliefs during human NMDA receptor hypofunction

In uncertain environments, accurate decision-making requires integrating ambiguous or conflicting signals – a cognitive inference process thought to require n-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) synaptic receptors. Here we characterized the causal impact of human NMDA receptor hypofunction on cognitive inference using placebo-controlled infusions of ketamine in a visual cue combination task. Participants tested under ketamine showed elevated uncertainty, together with impaired cognitive inference despite intact visual processing. This behavioral effect of ketamine was associated in patterns of electrical brain activity with degraded and unbalanced coding of presented cues in associative cortex, followed by premature response preparation in motor cortex. Through quantitative simulations, we propose that these cognitive alterations reflect an urge to explain away the elevated uncertainty triggered by ketamine. This compensatory mechanism may cause the emergence of psychotic symptoms observed under chronic NMDA receptor dysfunction, but also forge unusually strong beliefs when confronted with uncertainty in everyday life.

A Cognitive Information Retrieval Using POP Inference Engine Approaches

The focus of this chapter is to design a cognitive information retrieval (CIR) framework using inference engine (IE). IE permits one to analyze the central concepts of information retrieval: information, information needs, and relevance. The aim is to propose an inference engine in which adequate user preferences are considered. As the cognitive inference engine (CIE) approach is involved, the complex inquiries are required to return more important outcomes as opposed to customary database questions which get irrelevant and unsolicited responses or results. The chapter highlights the framework of a cognitive rule-based engine in which preference queries are dealt with while keeping in mind the intention of the user, their performance, and optimization.

Human noise blindness drives suboptimal cognitive inference

Humans typically make near-optimal sensorimotor judgments but show systematic biases when making more cognitive judgments. Here we test the hypothesis that, while humans are sensitive to the noise present during early sensory processing, the “optimality gap” arises because they are blind to noise introduced by later cognitive integration of variable or discordant pieces of information. In six psychophysical experiments, human observers judged the average orientation of an array of contrast gratings. We varied the stimulus contrast (encoding noise) and orientation variability (integration noise) of the array. Participants adapted near-optimally to changes in encoding noise, but, under increased integration noise, displayed a range of suboptimal behaviours: they ignored stimulus base rates, reported excessive confidence in their choices, and refrained from opting out of objectively difficult trials. These overconfident behaviours were captured by a Bayesian model which is blind to integration noise. Our study provides a computationally grounded explanation of suboptimal cognitive inferences.

The mind of the market: Lay beliefs about the economy as a willful, goal-oriented agent

We propose an extension to Boyer & Petersen's (B&P's) framework for folk-economic beliefs, suggesting that certain evolutionarily acquired cognitive inference systems can cause modern humans to perceive abstract systems such as the economy as willful, goal-oriented agents. Such an anthropomorphized view, we argue, can have meaningful effects on people's moral evaluations of these agents, as well as on their political and economic behavior.

Pseudocontingencies

In research on causal inference and in related paradigms (conditioning, cue learning, attribution), it has been traditionally taken for granted that the statistical contingency between cause and effect drives the cognitive inference process. However, while a contingency model implies a cognitive algorithm based on joint frequencies (i.e., the cell frequencies of a 2 x 2 contingency table), recent research on pseudocontingencies (PCs) suggests a different mental algorithm that is driven by base rates (i.e., the marginal frequencies of a 2 x 2 table). When the base rates of two variables are skewed in the same way, a positive contingency is inferred. In contrast, a negative contingency is inferred when base rates are skewed in opposite directions. The chapter describes PCs as a resilient cognitive illusion, as a proxy for inferring contingencies in the absence of solid information, and as a smart heuristic that affords valid inferences most of the time.

Disambiguating the Stream/Bounce Illusion With Inference

The ‘stream/bounce’ illusion refers to the perception of an ambiguous visual display in which two discs approach each other on a collision course. The display can be seen as two discs streaming through each other or bouncing off each other. Which perception dominates, may be influenced by a brief transient, usually a sound, presented around the time of simulated contact. Several theories have been proposed to account for the switching in dominance based on sensory processing, attention and cognitive inference, but a universally applicable, parsimonious explanation has not emerged. We hypothesized that only cognitive inference would be influenced by the perceptual history of the display. We rendered the display technically unambiguous by vertically offsetting the targets’ trajectories and manipulated their history by allowing the objects to switch from one trajectory to the other up to four times before the potential collision point. As the number of switches increased, the number of ‘bounce’ responses also increased. These observations show that expectancy is a critical factor in determining whether a bounce or streaming is perceived and may form the basis for a universal explanation of instances of the stream/bounce illusion.