Action Schemas Research Articles

Just-in-time: Gaze guidance in natural behavior.

Natural eye movements have primarily been studied for over-learned activities such as tea-making, sandwich-making, and hand-washing, which have a fixed sequence of associated actions. These studies demonstrate a sequential activation of low-level cognitive schemas facilitating task completion. However, whether these action schemas are activated in the same pattern when a task is novel and a sequence of actions must be planned in the moment is unclear. Here, we recorded gaze and body movements in a naturalistic task to study action-oriented gaze behavior. In a virtual environment, subjects moved objects on a life-size shelf to achieve a given order. To compel cognitive planning, we added complexity to the sorting tasks. Fixations aligned with the action onset showed gaze as tightly coupled with the action sequence, and task complexity moderately affected the proportion of fixations on the task-relevant regions. Our analysis revealed that gaze fixations were allocated to action-relevant targets just in time. Planning behavior predominantly corresponded to a greater visual search for task-relevant objects before the action onset. The results support the idea that natural behavior relies on the frugal use of working memory, and humans refrain from encoding objects in the environment to plan long-term actions. Instead, they prefer just-in-time planning by searching for action-relevant items at the moment, directing their body and hand to it, monitoring the action until it is terminated, and moving on to the following action.

Schema-driven prediction effects on episodic memory across the lifespan.

The predictive processing framework posits that one of the main functions of the brain is to anticipate the incoming information. Internal models facilitate interactions with the world by predicting future states against which actual evidence is compared. The difference between predicted and actual states, the prediction error (PE), signals novel information. However, how PE affects cognitive processing downstream is not fully understood: one such aspect pertains to how PE influences episodic memories, and whether those effect on memory differ across the lifespan. We examine the relationship between PE and episodic memory in children, young and older adults. We use a novel paradigm whereby rich visual narratives are used to build action schemas that enable probing different mnemonic aspects. To create different levels of PE, we manipulate the story endings to be either expected, neutral or unexpected with respect to the unfolded action. We show that (i) expected endings are better encoded than neutral endings and (ii) unexpected endings improve the encoding of mismatching events and other aspects of the narrative. These effects are differentially modulated across the lifespan with PE-driven encoding being more prominent in children and young adults and with schema integration playing a larger role on memory encoding in older adults. These results highlight the role of predictions by enriching past experiences and informing future anticipations.This article is part of the theme issue 'Elements of episodic memory: lessons from 40 years of research'.

Body schema and body image as internal representations of the body, and their disorders. An historical review.

Since the early 1900s, the terms body schema and body image denoted the internal representations of the body. Bonnier's (1905, Revue Neurologique, 13, 605) schema is a conscious spatial representation of the size, shape, and position of the body, and of body parts, whose dysfunction brings about aschématia, and hypo-, hyper-, and paraschématia. The two schemata of Head and Holmes (1911, Brain, 34, 102) are an unconscious plastic postural schema, for the maintenance of posture and balance and for the coding of the position of body parts, and a conscious superficial schema, for the localisation of somatosensory stimuli. Pick's (1922, Psychologische Forschung, 1, 303) body schema refers to a structural description of the body, including the position of body parts and their spatial relationships, defective in autotopagnosia. Schilder's (1935, The image and appearance of the human body) body image is a comprehensive construct, covering physiological, evolutional, neurological and neuropsychological, psychiatric and sociological aspects. Lhermitte's (1939, L'image de notre corps) image, based on the views of the abovementioned authors, is defective in bodily neuropsychological disorders. The two terms have been used interchangeably, to denote (hemi-)asomatognosia, anosognosia, autotopagnosia, depersonalisation, personal neglect, phantom and supernumerary limbs, somatoparaphrenia. Their properties have been summarized with general dichotomies: schema for action in space ("where" system), image for perception ("what" system), after primary sensory processing. While schema and image fractionated into multiple representations of aspects of the body, the two terms are still used to refer to some of these representations, and to their disorders.

The origin of great ape gestural forms.

Two views claim to account for the origins of great ape gestural forms. On the Leipzig view, gestural forms are ontogenetically ritualised from action sequences between pairs of individuals. On the St Andrews view, gestures are the product of natural selection for shared gestural forms. The Leipzig view predicts within- and between-group differences between gestural forms that arise as a product of learning in ontogeny. The St Andrews view predicts universal gestural forms comprehensible within and between species that arise because gestural forms were a target of natural selection. We reject both accounts and propose an alternative "recruitment view" of the origins of great ape gestures. According to the recruitment view, great ape gestures recruit features of their existing behavioural repertoire for communicative purposes. Their gestures inherit their communicative functions from visual (and sometimes tactile) presentations of familiar and easily recognisable action schemas and states and parts of the body. To the extent that great ape species possess similar bodies, this predicts mutual comprehensibility within and between species - but without supposing that gestural forms were themselves targets of natural selection. Additionally, we locate great ape gestural communication within a pragmatic framework that is continuous with human communication, and make testable predications for adjudicating between the three alternative views. We propose that the recruitment view best explains existing data, and does so within a mechanistic framework that emphasises continuity between human and non-human great ape communication.

Trauma-Informed Healthcare Leadership? Evidence and opportunities from interviews with leaders during COVID-19

BackgroundCOVID-19 impacted the mental health of healthcare workers, who endured pressures as they provided care during a prolonged crisis. We aimed to explore whether and how a Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) approach was reflected in qualitative perspectives from healthcare leaders of their experience during COVID-19 (2020–2021).MethodsSemi-structured interviews with healthcare leaders from four institutions were conducted. Data analysis consisted of four stages informed by interpretative phenomenological analysis: 1) deductive coding using TIC assumptions, 2) inductive thematic analysis of coded excerpts, 3) keyword-in-context coding of full transcripts for 6 TIC principles with integration into prior inductive themes, and 4) interpretation of themes through 6 TIC principles (safety; trustworthiness and transparency; peer support; collaboration and mutuality; empowerment, voice, and choice; and awareness of cultural, historical, and gender issues).ResultsThe actions of leaders (n = 28) that were reported as successful and supportive responses to the COVID-19 pandemic or else missed opportunities reflected core principles of Trauma-Informed Care. To promote safety, leaders reported affirmative efforts to protect staff by providing appropriate physical protection, and enhanced psychological safety by providing channels for communication about emotional well-being. To promote trustworthiness and transparency, leaders listened to their staff, shared current COVID-19 information, and increased frequency of meetings to disseminate accurate information. To promote mutual support, strategies included wellness check-ins, sharing uplifting stories, affirming common goals, articulating fears, and leading by example. Examples of empowerment included: making time and adjusting modalities for flexible communication; naming challenges outside of the hospital; and functioning as a channel for complaints.Reported missed opportunities included needing more dedicated time and space for healthcare employees to process emotions, failures in leadership managing their own anxiety, and needing better support for middle managers. Awareness of the TIC principle of cultural, historical, and gender issues was largely absent. Results informed the nascent Trauma-Informed Healthcare Leadership (TIHL) framework.ConclusionsWe propose the Trauma-Informed Healthcare Leadership framework as a useful schema for action and analysis. This approach yields recommendations for healthcare leaders including creating designated spaces for emotional processing, and establishing consistent check-ins that reference personal and professional well-being.

Optimizing the Optimization of Planning Domains by Automatic Action Schema Splitting

Most planners are based on grounding, that is, generating all instances of a parameterized action during a preprocessing phase. For some problems the number of ground actions is too high, causing a performance bottleneck. Building upon an existing approach, we present an enhanced method to split action schemas automatically during the grounding phase, to reduce the number of ground actions. First, we propose to exploit the structural knowledge of the problems to have a more informative dependency graph. Then, we suggest a better objective function to define and choose the best split. Finally, we present a more effective search to find it. We experimentally measure the impact of each of these improvements, and show that our approach significantly outperforms the state of the art.

Spontaneous memory strategies in a videogame simulating everyday memory tasks.

People can use different internal strategies to manage their daily tasks, but systematic research on these strategies and their significance for actual performance is still quite sparse. Here we examined self-reported internal strategy use with a 10-block version of the videogame EPELI (Executive Performance in Everyday LIving) in a group of 202 neurotypical adults of 18-50 years of age. In the game, participants perform lists of everyday tasks from memory while navigating in a virtual apartment. Open-ended strategy reports were collected after each EPELI task block, and for comparison also after an EPELI Instruction Recall task and a Word List Learning task assessing episodic memory. On average, 45% of the participants reported using some strategy in EPELI, the most common types being grouping (e.g., performing the tasks room by room), utilising a familiar action schema, and condensing information (e.g., memorising only keywords). Our pre-registered hypothesis on the beneficial effect of self-initiated strategy use gained support, as strategy users showed better performance on EPELI as compared with no strategy users. One of the strategies, grouping, was identified as a clearly effective strategy type. Block-by-block transitions suggested gradual stabilisation of strategy use over the 10 EPELI blocks. The proneness to use strategies showed a weak but reliable association between EPELI and Word List Learning. Overall, the present results highlight the importance of internal strategy use for understanding individual differences in memory performance, as well as the potential benefit for internal strategy employment when faced with everyday memory tasks.

Biased processing of game-related information in problematic mobile gaming users

AbstractBackground and aimsThe present study investigated processing bias for game-related cues in problematic mobile gamers (PMGs) under or above the threshold of conscious awareness.MethodsIn Experiment 1, all participants (20 PMGs and 23 casual players (CPs)) finished a masked visual probe task during a brief (17ms) masked exposure condition. In Experiment 2, an unmasked visual probe task was conducted by an additional forty participants (20 PMGs and 20 CPs) at two exposure durations (200 and 500ms).ResultsResults showed that PMGs, but not CPs, had an attentional bias for game-related cues which had been presented with two exposure durations (17 and 200ms).Discussion and conclusionIn conclusion, the present study provides evidence that bias in PMGs could be observed both preconsciously and consciously. The results are discussed with reference to incentive sensitization theory and automatic action schema theory.

FRAME STRUCTURE OF THE CONCEPT LOVE

The article deals with the analysis of the language representation of the concept LOVE in the modern English TV scripts. The main theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of the concept were systematized in modern cognitive linguistics and lingo culture. It’s aimed at developing the complex methodology of the analysis of the concept LOVE, actualized in the modern English TV scripts. The methods of research have become the basis of the conceptual analysis that includes dictionary definitions, synonymous rows of the concept’s name and also frame analysis which treats concept as a form of the ordered structure. The focus of the research deals with the analysis of the frame structure of the concept LOVE. The concept is viewed as a unit of mental process which is coded in the language. The survey was made concerning the explicit means of realization of the thing frame, the action frame, the possession frame, the identification frame, and the comparison frame of the concept as well as the conceptual metaphors. Verbal content of the frame structure represents the variety of lexico-semantic classes. Action schemas of state / process, of contact action as well as a causative schema are outlined and described. The possession frame elucidates two specifications: the part-whole schema and the inclusion schema. The thing frame is connected with the qualitative schema, existence schema and the locative schema. The identification frame comprises several classifiers and it’s found to be least representative. The comparison frame integrates the entities which are based on their sameness or likeness. As a result of the study, the frame analysis of the concept LOVE has been outlined and structured.

Frequency Event Detection and Mitigation in Power Systems: A Systematic Literature Review

Modern power systems characterized by complex topologies require accurate situational awareness to maintain an adequate level of reliability. Since they are large and spread over wide geographical areas, it is inevitable that failures will occur. Various generation and transmission disturbances, such as generator and transmission line tripping and load disconnection, give rise to a mismatch between generation and demand, which manifest as frequency events. These events can take the form of negligible frequency deviations or more severe emergencies that can precipitate cascading outages, depending on the severity of the disturbance and efficacy of remedial action schema. The impacts of such events have become more critical recently due to increased levels of renewable penetration and distributed energy resources, which have caused a decline in system synchronous inertia. Due to the repercussions, it is indispensable to arrest such disturbances on time by activating primary frequency control measures. In this paper, a comprehensive systematic literature review is presented on the techniques used for event detection in power systems and the methods of primary frequency response in modern power systems. The paper also highlights the impacts of severe frequency events within power systems.

Guiding Search with Generalized Policies for Probabilistic Planning

We examine techniques for combining generalized policies with search algorithms to exploit the strengths and overcome the weaknesses of each when solving probabilistic planning problems. The Action Schema Network (ASNet) is a recent contribution to planning that uses deep learning and neural networks to learn generalized policies for probabilistic planning problems. ASNets are well suited to problems where local knowledge of the environment can be exploited to improve performance, but may fail to generalize to problems they were not trained on. Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is a forward-chaining state space search algorithm for optimal decision making which performs simulations to incrementally build a search tree and estimate the values of each state. Although MCTS can achieve state-of-the-art results when paired with domain-specific knowledge, without this knowledge, MCTS requires a large number of simulations in order to obtain reliable state-value estimates. By combining ASNets with MCTS, we are able to improve the capability of an ASNet to generalize beyond the distribution of problems it was trained on, as well as enhance the navigation of the search space by MCTS.

Landmark Heuristics for Lifted Planning - Extended Abstract

Planning problems are usually modeled using lifted representations, they specify predicates and action schemas using variables over a finite universe of objects. However, current planning systems like Fast Downward need a grounded (propositional) input model. The process of grounding might result in an exponential blowup of the model size. This limits the application of grounded planning systems in practical applications. Recent work introduced an efficient planning system for lifted heuristic search, but the work on lifted heuristics is still limited. In this extended abstract, we introduce a novel lifted heuristic based on landmarks, which we extract from the lifted problem representation. Preliminary results on a benchmark set specialized to lifted planning show that there are domains where our approach finds enough landmarks to guide the search more effective than the heuristics available.

An exploration of the relationship between schema and language: four young child case studies

ABSTRACT This study draws on four case studies of young children in order to explore the relationship between children’s action schema [Athey, C. (1990). Extending though in young children: A parent-teacher partnership. London: Paul Chapman] and their developing speech, language and communication. What emerged was a connection through children’s thinking and thoughts, with a recognition that practitioners might further support early speech, language and communication development through careful consideration of children’s ‘conceptual concerns’ [Atherton, F., & Nutbrown, C. (2013). Understanding Schemas and young children from birth to three. London: Sage].

Model Recognition as Planning

Given a partially observed plan execution, and a set of possible planning models (models that share the same state variables but different action schemata), model recognition is the task of identifying the model that explains the observation. The paper formalizes this task and introduces a novel method that estimates the probability of a STRIPS model to produce an observation of a plan execution. This method builds on top of off-the-shelf classical planning algorithms and it is robust to missing actions and intermediate states in the observation. The effectiveness of the method is tested in three experiments, each encoding a set of different STRIPS models and all using empty-action observations: (1) a classical string classification task; (2) identification of the model that encodes a failure present in an observation; and (3) recognition of a robot navigation policy.

Predicative possession across Western Iranian languages

Abstract This paper offers a first systematic investigation of predicative possessive constructions across Western Iranian languages. The notion of possession is conceived as a prototypical domain. It is shown that investigated languages are classified into two major areally distributed groups with respect to predicative possessive constructions: (i) “be”-verb languages, (ii) “have”-verb languages. “Have”-possessives, which originated from “action schema”, are argued to have superseded the archaic “be”-possessives, which trigger a non-canonical marking of the possessor argument. However, “have”-verb languages have preserved relics of the older “be”-possessive in some neighbouring domains to possession. In addition, two languages exhibit possession split and are in transition from “be”-possession to “have”-possession: these languages demonstrate the effect of alienability/inalienability in such a split.

Construction of the concept of pairability in comparing infinite sets in the individuals’ mind: an APOS approach

Abstract This study focuses on the concept of pairability as a fundamental metaphorical concept in the Cantorian set theory regarding comparison of infinite sets. In this theory, pairability appears in a hierarchical manner of generating and developing as a one-to-one correspondence by arrows in finite, and then in infinite states, a bijection map through an explicit formula and the concept of cardinality. Adapting these hierarchical components of pairability and the APOS theory, about description of constructing and understanding a mathematical concept in a hierarchical manner, this study examines the construction of the concept of pairability in the individuals’ mind. In this way, their imaginations of pairability and practical performances in different situations will also be surveyed. In so doing, a total of 20 mathematics teachers and university lecturers holding at least an M.Sc. degree in mathematics were chosen. To collect the data, interviews were conducted in which the participants not only answered questions about the concept of the various types of pairability but also compared infinite countable sets in different situations. Our findings revealed that a bijection map via an explicit formula was the individuals’ dominant conception of pairability and most of the incorrect answers were related to unsuccessful attempts to recall a formula or method as the only possible way, and the encapsulated concept of cardinality was used less frequently in practice. Therefore, there was not a total schema of actions, processes and objects of the concept of pairability in the individuals’ mind.

It just feels right: an account of expert intuition

One of the hallmarks of virtue is reliably acting well. Such reliable success presupposes that an agent (1) is able to recognize the morally salient features of a situation, and the appropriate response to those features and (2) is motivated to act on this knowledge without internal conflict. Furthermore, it is often claimed that the virtuous person can do this (3) in a spontaneous or intuitive manner. While these claims represent an ideal of what it is to have a virtue, it is less clear how to make good on them. That is, how is it actually possible to spontaneously and reliably act well? In this paper, we will lay out a framework for understanding how it is that one could reliably act well in an intuitive manner. We will do this by developing the concept of an action schema, which draws on the philosophical and psychological literature on skill acquisition and self-regulation. In short, we will give an account of how self-regulation, grounded in skillful structures, can allow for the accurate intuitions and flexible expertise required for virtue. While our primary goal in this paper is to provide a positive theory of how virtuous intuitions might be accounted for, we also take ourselves to be raising the bar for what counts as an explanation of reliable and intuitive action in general.

Lifted Successor Generation Using Query Optimization Techniques

The standard PDDL language for classical planning uses several first-order features, such as schematic actions. Yet, most classical planners ground this first-order representation into a propositional one as a preprocessing step. While this simplifies the design of other parts of the planner, in several benchmarks the grounding process causes an exponential blowup that puts otherwise solvable tasks out of reach of the planners. In this work, we take a step towards planning with lifted representations. We tackle the successor generation task, a key operation in forward-search planning, directly on the lifted representation using well-known techniques from database theory. We show how computing the variable substitutions that make an action schema applicable in a given state is essentially a query evaluation problem. Interestingly, a large number of the action schemas in the standard benchmarks result in acyclic conjunctive queries, for which query evaluation is tractable. Our empirical results show that our approach is competitive with the standard (grounded) successor generation techniques in a few domains and outperforms them on benchmarks where grounding is challenging or infeasible.

Dynamic term-modal logics for first-order epistemic planning

Many classical planning frameworks are built on first-order languages. The first-order expressive power is desirable for compactly representing actions via schemas, and for specifying quantified conditions such as ¬∃xblocks_door(x). In contrast, several recent epistemic planning frameworks are built on propositional epistemic logic. The epistemic language is useful to describe planning problems involving higher-order reasoning or epistemic goals such as Ka¬problem.This paper develops a first-order version of Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL). In this framework, for example, ∃xKx∃yblocks_door(y) is a formula. The formalism combines the strengths of DEL (higher-order reasoning) with those of first-order logic (lifted representation) to model multi-agent epistemic planning. The paper introduces an epistemic language with a possible-worlds semantics, followed by novel dynamics given by first-order action models and their execution via product updates. Taking advantage of the first-order machinery, epistemic action schemas are defined to provide compact, problem-independent domain descriptions, in the spirit of PDDL.Concerning metatheory, the paper defines axiomatic normal term-modal logics, shows a Canonical Model Theorem-like result which allows establishing completeness through frame characterization formulas, shows decidability for the finite agent case, and shows a general completeness result for the dynamic extension by reduction axioms.

ASNets: Deep Learning for Generalised Planning

In this paper, we discuss the learning of generalised policies for probabilistic and classical planning problems using Action Schema Networks (ASNets). The ASNet is a neural network architecture that exploits the relational structure of (P)PDDL planning problems to learn a common set of weights that can be applied to any problem in a domain. By mimicking the actions chosen by a traditional, non-learning planner on a handful of small problems in a domain, ASNets are able to learn a generalised reactive policy that can quickly solve much larger instances from the domain. This work extends the ASNet architecture to make it more expressive, while still remaining invariant to a range of symmetries that exist in PPDDL problems. We also present a thorough experimental evaluation of ASNets, including a comparison with heuristic search planners on seven probabilistic and deterministic domains, an extended evaluation on over 18,000 Blocksworld instances, and an ablation study. Finally, we show that sparsity-inducing regularisation can produce ASNets that are compact enough for humans to understand, yielding insights into how the structure of ASNets allows them to generalise across a domain.