Automatic Retrieval Research Articles

Prospective memories and working memory: shared resources or distinct mechanisms?

Prospective memory (PM) is a complex process involving multiple cognitive abilities. Several studies demonstrated the role of working memory (WM) in PM. However, to date, the extent to which PM and WM shared resources or, rather, they are distinct mechanisms is still debated. With the aim to investigate the role of WM in PM, we developed two experiments manipulating the WM load required by ongoing tasks to examine a patient with PM difficulties and dysexecutive syndrome following brain damage. Experiment 1 required a simple arithmetic activity together with a PM switching-task to be performed at a given time (time-based condition) or following cue presentation (event-based condition). In Experiment 2, we varied the complexity of the ongoing task (PASAT test). Patient MB’s performance in PM tasks significantly differs from the controls only in the PASAT time-based condition. We demonstrated a partial independence between WM and PM in tasks involving automatic retrieval.

Plant leaf tooth feature extraction.

Leaf tooth can indicate several systematically informative features and is extremely useful for circumscribing fossil leaf taxa. Moreover, it can help discriminate species or even higher taxa accurately. Previous studies extract features that are not strictly defined in botany; therefore, a uniform standard to compare the accuracies of various feature extraction methods cannot be used. For efficient and automatic retrieval of plant leaves from a leaf database, in this study, we propose an image-based description and measurement of leaf teeth by referring to the leaf structure classification system in botany. First, image preprocessing is carried out to obtain a binary map of plant leaves. Then, corner detection based on the curvature scale-space (CSS) algorithm is used to extract the inflection point from the edges; next, the leaf tooth apex is extracted by screening the convex points; then, according to the definition of the leaf structure, the characteristics of the leaf teeth are described and measured in terms of number of orders of teeth, tooth spacing, number of teeth, sinus shape, and tooth shape. In this manner, data extracted from the algorithm can not only be used to classify plants, but also provide scientific and standardized data to understand the history of plant evolution. Finally, to verify the effectiveness of the extraction method, we used simple linear discriminant analysis and multiclass support vector machine to classify leaves. The results show that the proposed method achieves high accuracy that is superior to that of other methods.

Binding lies: Flexible retrieval of honest and dishonest behavior.

Telling a consistent lie across multiple occasions poses severe demands on memory. Two cognitive mechanisms aid with overcoming this difficulty: associations between a question and its corresponding response and associations between a question and its previous intentional context (in this case: honest vs. dishonest responding). Here, we assessed whether intentional contexts such as an honest versus dishonest mindset modulate the retrieval of stimulus-response associations. In an item-specific priming paradigm, participants classified stimuli either honestly or dishonestly during a prime and a later probe. The results of three experiments yielded automatic retrieval of the previously primed motor responses (for both honest and dishonest responses) only when the intentional context repeated but not when it switched. These findings indicate interdependent associations between a stimulus, its intentional context, and the corresponding response, allowing for flexible, context-specific retrieval. Thus, humans benefit from prior learning history without incurring costs when the intentional context changes. This finding implies top-down control over the retrieval of stimulus-response associations and provides new insights into the mechanisms of associative learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

What reading aloud reveals about speaking: Regressive saccades implicate a failure to monitor, not inattention, in the prevalence of intrusion errors on function words.

Bilinguals occasionally produce language intrusion errors (inadvertent translations of the intended word), especially when attempting to produce function word targets, and often when reading aloud mixed-language paragraphs. We investigate whether these errors are due to a failure of attention during speech planning, or failure of monitoring speech output by classifying errors based on whether and when they were corrected, and investigating eye movement behaviour surrounding them. Prior research on this topic has primarily tested alphabetic languages (e.g., Spanish-English bilinguals) in which part of speech is confounded with word length, which is related to word skipping (i.e., decreased attention). Therefore, we tested 29 Chinese-English bilinguals whose languages differ in orthography, visually cueing language membership, and for whom part of speech (in Chinese) is less confounded with word length. Despite the strong orthographic cue, Chinese-English bilinguals produced intrusion errors with similar effects as previously reported (e.g., especially with function word targets written in the dominant language). Gaze durations did differ by whether errors were made and corrected or not, but these patterns were similar for function and content words and therefore cannot explain part of speech effects. However, bilinguals regressed to words produced as errors more often than to correctly produced words, but regressions facilitated correction of errors only for content, not for function words. These data suggest that the vulnerability of function words to language intrusion errors primarily reflects automatic retrieval and failures of speech monitoring mechanisms from stopping function versus content word errors after they are planned for production.

Repetition priming effects for famous faces through dynamic causal modelling of latency-corrected event-related brain potentials.

Repetition priming, that is, the repeated processing of a stimulus, facilitates performance. However, the neural underpinnings of repetition priming for famous faces in terms of effective connectivity are not known. Here we investigated this problem using dynamic causal modelling of latency-corrected event-related brain potentials (RERPs). Source waveforms of RERP-derived sources in the Occipital Lobe, Fusiform Gyrus, Mediotemporal Lobe, Prefrontal Cortex and Anterotemporal Lobe of each hemisphere entered into models with only forward (F) or also with backward (FB) connections. Based on the framework of predictive coding formulated for repetition suppression, modulations of F and FB connections were expected for sources that displayed priming effects in their source waveforms. Hence, neural sources in each hemisphere were fitted with either F or FB connections. Inter-hemispheric connections were considered between homologous areas and were allowed to be modulated in an incremental manner resulting in a model space that comprised of 24 models. Bayesian model averaging across models revealed effective bidirectional connectivity between the Fusiform Gyrus (face perception) and Prefrontal Cortex (decision-making) in both hemispheres to be modulated by priming. In the left hemisphere, there is also a substantial involvement from the Mediotemporal Lobe, indicating the facilitation of automatic retrieval of the famous person's name. Furthermore, there is evidence that the priming is supported by connections from the right to the left Fusiform Gyri possibly in the service of inter-hemispheric cooperation. Altogether, the study indicates that along with top-down modulations, efficient processing within and across the two hemispheres is crucial for famous face priming.

Visual content summarisation for instructional videos using AdaBoost and SIFT

Research contributions in video retrieval field are rising to propose solutions for automatic understanding and retrieval of video content. The aim is to make the user able to retrieve specific video sequences in a large database, based on semantic information. In this paper, we process a special case of videos, instructional videos, where text presents very rich semantic information for understanding video content. Indeed, lecture videos are the source of information used in learning systems by educators and students for archiving and sharing knowledge. However, users usually have difficulties to access accurate parts in instructional videos. In our paper, we propose a method to summarise the visual content in instructional videos. For that, first, we segment the video into shots based on SIFT. Then, key frames which are rich in text and figures are extracted from each shot based on entropy measurement. These keyframes are classified using AdaBoost to eliminate non-text frames. The text content in the lecture video summary can be detected and recognised to identify keywords for indexing and classification.

Recovering Damaged Documents to Improve Information Retrieval Processes

Although computer forensics is frequently related to the investigation of computer crimes, it can also be used in civil procedures. An example of case of use is information retrieval from damaged documents, where words have undergone alterations, either accidentally or intentionally. In this paper, we present a new tool able to retrieve information from large volumes of documents whose contents have been damaged. We have designed a new approach to recover the original words, composed of two stages: a text cleaning filter, able to remove non relevant information, and a text correction unit, which gather a general purpose spell checker with a N-gram based spell checker built specifically for the domain of the documents. The benefits of using this combined approach are two-fold: on the one hand, the general spell checker allows us to leverage all the general purpose techniques that are usually used to perform the corrections; on the other hand, the use of an N-gram based model allows us to adapt them to the particular domain we are tackling exploiting text regularities detected in successfully processed domain documents. The result of the correction allows us to improve automatic information retrieval tasks of from the texts. We have tested it using a real data set by using an information extraction tool based on semantic technologies in collaboration with the Spanish company InSynergy Consulting.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger: Psychological trauma and its relationship to enhanced memory control.

Control processes engaged in halting the automatic retrieval of unwanted memories have been shown to reduce the later recallability of the targets of suppression. Like other cognitive skills that benefit from practice, we hypothesized that memory control is similarly experience dependent, such that individuals with greater real-life experience at stopping retrieval would exhibit better inhibitory control over unwanted memories. Across two experiments, we found that college students reporting a greater history of trauma exhibited more suppression-induced forgetting of both negative and neutral memories than did those in a matched group who had reported experiencing little to no trauma. The association was especially evident on a test of suppression-induced forgetting involving independent retrieval cues that are designed to better isolate the effects of inhibitory control on memory. Participants reporting more trauma demonstrated greater generalized forgetting of suppressed material. These findings raise the possibility that, given proper training, individuals can learn to better manage intrusive experiences, and are broadly consistent with the view that moderate adversity can foster resilience later in life.

Subjectively-defined optimal/non-optimal time of day modulates controlled but not automatic retrieval processes in verbal memory.

Performance for controlled, resource-demanding retrieval in episodic memory has been consistently found to be better at an optimal compared with non-optimal time of the day, evidencing a synchrony effect. However, performance in memory tasks in which retrieval is mostly based on automatic processes was inconclusively found either to be better at a non-optimal time of day or independent of synchrony effects. A caveat in most prior studies is that optimal/non-optimal time of day is based on morningness-eveningness composite scores derived from chronotype questionnaires, which might not efficiently predict subjectively-defined cognitive efficiency periods. An additional caveat is that separate tasks are used to assess explicit and implicit retrieval in verbal memory. Indeed, no task is process-pure, and both controlled and automatic retrieval processes may potentially contribute to retrieval scores in different types of memory tasks. In the present study, we investigated the impact of individually defined subjective optimal/non-optimal time of day on verbal memory retrieval, using an adaptation of the Process-Dissociation Procedure that allows estimating the respective contributions of automatic and controlled memory retrieval processes within the same memory task. Our results disclose a higher involvement of controlled processes at subjectively optimal compared with non-optimal time of day, but no differences for automatic processes. Synchrony effects and subjectively-defined peaks and troughs of performance for controlled components of memory retrieval should be considered in the evaluation of episodic memory.

Evaluation of Prioritization Methods of Extrinsic Apoptotic Signaling Pathway Genes for Retrieval of the New Candidates Associated with Major Depressive Disorder

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is an important problem in psychophysical health and well-being of society in Russia and worldwide. In the present work, the role of apoptosis in the associative gene network of MDD was studied. The methods of prioritization were analyzed and candidate genes for further research were predicted. The quality of prioritization methods and their combinations was tested, and the most effective methods were selected. Prioritization was carried out for genes of the extrinsic apoptotic signaling pathway considering their role in the structure of the associative genetic network of MDD, since the external pathway of apoptosis is important for drug development. The methods of the ANDSystem, a computer system for reconstruction of gene networks on the basis of automatic data retrieval from scientific publications, were considered and used for gene prioritization. As a result of prioritization, some candidate genes were suggested for the further experimental study of their role in MDD pathogenesis, including CAV1, FYN, JAK2, PTEN, RAF1, RELA and SRC.

The output monitoring of performed actions: What can we learn from "recall-recognition" performance?

Memories of simple action phrases are retained better following subject-performed tasks (SPT) than verbal tasks (VT), and this superior memory performance of SPT over VT is referred to as the SPT effect. Although research has been conducted on the SPT effect for more than 30years, how well participants recognize whether they recalled the items successfully and the relationship between item-specific processing encoding and automatic retrieval have not been addressed. The present study used a 2 (instruction: with or without pleasantness rating) × 2 (type of encoding: SPT or VT) between-subject design and applied a "recall-recognition" paradigm to explore the above issues. For the "recall-recognition" performance, the SPT (and the VT with the pleasantness-rating task) produce very poor recognition of the correct recall of the last items (recency effect) and still poorer recognition of the middle items relative to VT alone, indicating that the retrieval process of these items in SPT needs less intention, effort, or monitoring, happens instantly, and involves a more non-obvious memory trace than that in VT alone. This was taken as support for the idea that an emphasis on item-specific information leads to automatic retrieval and thus poor awareness of the prior correct recall. We suggest that the SPT effect can be explained from the perspective of both encoding and retrieval.

Assessment of Fringe Pattern Decomposition with a Cross-Correlation Index for Phase Retrieval in Fringe Projection 3D Measurements.

Phase retrieval from single frame projection fringe patterns, a fundamental and challenging problem in fringe projection measurement, attracts wide attention and various new methods have emerged to address this challenge. Many phase retrieval methods are based on the decomposition of fringe patterns into a background part and a fringe part, and then the phase is obtained from the decomposed fringe part. However, the decomposition results are subject to the selection of model parameters, which is usually performed manually by trial and error due to the lack of decomposition assessment rules under a no ground truth data situation. In this paper, we propose a cross-correlation index to assess the decomposition and phase retrieval results without the need of ground truth data. The feasibility of the proposed metric is verified by simulated and real fringe patterns with the well-known Fourier transform method and recently proposed Shearlet transform method. This work contributes to the automatic phase retrieval and three-dimensional (3D) measurement with less human intervention, and can be potentially employed in other fields such as phase retrieval in digital holography.

Automatic Leaf Segmentation for Estimating Leaf Area and Leaf Inclination Angle in 3D Plant Images.

Automatic and efficient plant monitoring offers accurate plant management. Construction of three-dimensional (3D) models of plants and acquisition of their spatial information is an effective method for obtaining plant structural parameters. Here, 3D images of leaves constructed with multiple scenes taken from different positions were segmented automatically for the automatic retrieval of leaf areas and inclination angles. First, for the initial segmentation, leave images were viewed from the top, then leaves in the top-view images were segmented using distance transform and the watershed algorithm. Next, the images of leaves after the initial segmentation were reduced by 90%, and the seed regions for each leaf were produced. The seed region was re-projected onto the 3D images, and each leaf was segmented by expanding the seed region with the 3D information. After leaf segmentation, the leaf area of each leaf and its inclination angle were estimated accurately via a voxel-based calculation. As a result, leaf area and leaf inclination angle were estimated accurately after automatic leaf segmentation. This method for automatic plant structure analysis allows accurate and efficient plant breeding and growth management.

Context specificity of automatic influences of memory.

It has often been shown that intentional recollection is influenced by context manipulations, such as context reinstatement (e.g., Smith, 2013; Smith & Vela, 2001), but whether or not automatic retrieval (e.g., Jacoby, 1991) is likewise context dependent remains an open question. Here, we present two experiments that examined effects of context manipulations on indirect measures of memory. The first experiment tested anagram completion, and the second experiment used word fragment completion to test effects of context reinstatement; both experiments found reinstatement effects. To address potential problems of explicit contamination, we also asked participants if they were aware of the priming manipulations. Separating participants according to their test awareness showed effects of context manipulations for both aware and unaware participants. A greater effect size was found for aware participants only in Experiment 1, in which participants had enough time on each test trial for recollection to be used. We conclude that context reinstatement does affect automatic retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Shape based Object Retrieval Technique for Vehicular Spare Parts

Shape based object retrieval technique is an application used for the automatic retrieval of vehicular spare parts based on the input image, this application can be useful in the automobile industry/shop for the retrieval of specific object from the group of objects. For the retrieval process first the database has been designed to store different shapes of nuts that are hexagon and square. With the application of median filter and wiener filters in the preprocessing step, the canny edge-detector for identifying the edges and to ascertain shape of the input and database images the convex hull approach is applied. This system is successful in retrieving the shape of the images which already exist in the database and the method results with the accuracy of 82.1875%

A Phrasematic Key to the Russian Verb-Nominal Constructions: The Workshop of the Computational Phraseography

The article focuses on the problem of the phrasematic status of verb-nominal phrases considered as phrasemes, such as: давить на психику, ходить на работу, забежать на минутку, забраться на крышу, зайти на страницу. The analyzed list includes more than one thousand of such structures. A special approach to their valency autonomy in the context is proposed. We take into account the context as supraphrasematic feature of potential phrasemes. An individual approach to each potential phrasemes in a particular context has a special role to play. This allows creating a special experience that can be converted to computerized linguistic analysis. We propose to consider the possibility of automatization the detection of the phrasematic status of potential phrasemes by using machine learning methods (the artificial intelligence). The described methods allow to automatic retrieval of the potential phrasemes with synchronous recognition of their phrasematic status in particular text and big text corpora of Russian language.

Evaluation and comparison of hyperspectral temperature and emissivity separation methods influenced by sensor spectral properties

ABSTRACTIn this article, great efforts are focused on the temperature and emissivity separation (TES) from hyperspectral thermal infrared data. Instead of proposing a new TES method, several published TES methods, including iterative spectrally smooth temperature–emissivity separation method (ISSTES), automatic retrieval of temperature and emissivity using spectral smoothness method (ARTEMISS), spectral smoothness method (SpSm), downwelling radiance residual index method (DRRI), and linear spectral emissivity constraint method (LSEC), are reviewed. The performances of these TES methods are analysed and compared under different instrument characteristics, including spectral shifting and full-width half-maximum broadening, with the simulated data. The results show that LSEC has the most robust and accurate performance. DRRI also has a good performance, in which a channel selection procedure is required before the use of this method. ISSTES, ARTEMISS, and SpSm show more sensitivities.

Intimacy Effects on Action Regulation: Retrieval of Observationally Acquired Stimulus-Response Bindings in Romantically Involved Interaction Partners Versus Strangers.

Previous research has shown that stimulus–response (SR) binding and retrieval processes also occur when responses are only observed in another person (Giesen et al., 2014). Importantly, this effect depends on the two individuals interacting interdependently during the task (e.g., competition or cooperation). Interdependence, however, must not necessarily result from task-related demands, but can also reflect an intrinsic feature of a given relationship. The present study examines whether observing responses of one’s romantic partner also produces stimulus-based retrieval of observed responses even if the task itself does not involve interdependence. Participants performed a task pairwise, either with their romantic partner or with a stranger. In a sequential prime-probe design, both participants of a pair gave color responses themselves (actors) or merely observed these (observers) in alternating fashion. As expected, stimulus-based retrieval of observationally acquired SR-bindings occurred only in romantically involved pairs; participants interacting with a stranger showed no retrieval effects. We conclude that mental representations of self and other are more closely intertwined in romantic couples, which produces automatic retrieval of observationally acquired SR binding effects even independently of the task itself.

Coherence in general and personal semantic knowledge: functional differences of the posterior and centro-parietal N400 ERP component.

A growing body of scientific literature investigated the difference between general and personal semantic knowledge. In contrast to general world knowledge, personal semantics comprises highly individual knowledge about oneself. The present study aimed to differentiate processes of integration into personal as opposed to general semantic knowledge. For that purpose, participants were presented with pictures of themselves (Self-condition) or unknown persons (Other-condition) superimposed on a congruent or incongruent background. We hypothesized that self-referential processing is based on automatic retrieval of personal information as opposed to the processing of unknown persons, which requires voluntary, i.e., strategic, attention demanding processing. The topography of the N400 effect varied as a function of the type of semantic knowledge. We found a centro-parietal N400 effect within the Self-condition and a posterior effect within the Other-condition. The voluntary integration of facial expressions of unknown persons within the Other-condition was, furthermore, indexed by an N170 effect. The unresolved tension in personal semantics was reflected by the N500. Our study thus provides new impulses for interpretation of the N400's functional properties and extends our knowledge about the N500. Implications for the functional properties of the self as an organizational structure are discussed.

Multinomial models reveal deficits of two distinct controlled retrieval processes in aging and very mild Alzheimer disease.

Dual-process models of episodic retrieval reveal consistent deficits of controlled recollection in aging and Alzheimer disease (AD). In contrast, automatic familiarity is relatively spared. We extend standard dual-process models by showing the importance of a third capture process. Capture produces a failure to attempt recollection, which might reflect a distinct error from an inability to recollect when attempted (Jacoby et al. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134(2), 131-148, 2005a). We used multinomial process tree (MPT) modeling to estimate controlled recollection and capture processes, as well as automatic retrieval processes, in a large group of middle-aged to older adults who were cognitively normal (N = 519) or diagnosed with the earliest detectable stage of AD (N = 107). Participants incidentally encoded word pairs (e.g., knee bone). At retrieval, participants completed cued word fragments (e.g., knee b_n_) with primes that were congruent (e.g., bone), incongruent (e.g., bend), or neutral (i.e., &&&) to the target (e.g., bone). MPT models estimated retrieval processes both at the group and the individual levels. A capture parameter was necessary to fit MPT models to the observed data, suggesting that dual-process models of this taskcan be contaminated by a capture process. In both group- and individual-level analyses, aging and very mild AD were associated with increased susceptibility to capture, decreased recollection, and no differences in automatic influences. These results suggest that it is important to consider two distinct modes of attentional control when modeling retrieval processes. Both forms of control (recollection and avoiding capture) are particularly sensitive to cognitive decline in aging and early-stage AD.