Primitive Behaviors Research Articles

Blind faith in pills and potions

Scientists, in their professional capacity, are trained to be firm when it comes to differentiating between facts and beliefs. The scientific community accepts only carefully collected and reproducible results. Of course, there is often speculation about what these results mean, but such extrapolations must be based on facts and analysed in the context of a hypothesis. That is the virtually universally accepted procedure in laboratories throughout the world. But outside the scientific cloisters, there is often a different reaction to facts and beliefs. People might ignore or dismiss valid scientific results, and yet believe almost anything that non‐scientists proclaim. We live in the most sophisticated time in human history, have nearly unlimited access to information, are ‘free’ to think for ourselves and make our own decisions, and yet, often revert to more primitive behaviour when it comes to key aspects of our lives, such as health. When it comes to foods and food supplements, the public often consume products in the—possibly mistaken—belief that they are improving their health, and scientists are by no means …

"Difficult Patients" in Mental Health Care: A Review

"Difficult Patients" in Mental Health Care: A Review

SYNTHESIS OF WHOLE-BODY BEHAVIORS THROUGH HIERARCHICAL CONTROL OF BEHAVIORAL PRIMITIVES

To synthesize whole-body behaviors interactively, multiple behavioral primitives need to be simultaneously controlled, including those that guarantee that the constraints imposed by the robot's structure and the external environment are satisfied. Behavioral primitives are entities for the control of various movement criteria, e.g. primitives describing the behavior of the center of gravity, the behaviors of the hands, legs, and head, the body attitude and posture, the constrained body parts such as joint-limits and contacts, etc. By aggregating multiple primitives, we synthesize whole-body behaviors. For safety and for efficient control, we establish a control hierarchy among behavioral primitives, which is exploited to establish control priorities among the different control categories, i.e. constraints, operational tasks, and postures. Constraints should always be guaranteed, while operational tasks should be accomplished without violating the acting constraints, and the posture should control the residual movement redundancy. In this paper, we will present a multi-level hierarchical control structure that allows the establishment of general priorities among behavioral primitives, and we will describe compliant control strategies for efficient control under contact interactions.

How Hierarchical Control Self-organizes in Artificial Adaptive Systems

Diverse, complex, and adaptive animal behaviors are achieved by organizing hierarchically structured controllers in motor systems. The levels of control progress from simple spinal reflexes and central pattern generators through to executive cognitive control in the frontal cortex. Various types of hierarchical control structures have been introduced and shown to be effective in past artificial agent models, but few studies have shown how such structures can self-organize. This study describes how such hierarchical control may evolve in a simple recurrent neural network model implemented in a mobile robot. Topological constraints on information flow are found to improve system performance by decreasing interference between different parts of the network. One part becomes responsible for generating lower behavior primitives while another part evolves top-down sequencing of the primitives for achieving global goals. Fast and slow neuronal response dynamics are automatically generated in specific neurons of the lower and the higher levels, respectively. A hierarchical neural network is shown to outperform a comparable single-level network in controlling a mobile robot.

Ant Algorithms: Theory and Applications

This paper reviews the theory and applications of ant algorithms, new methods of discrete optimization based on the simulation of self-organized colony of biologic ants. The colony can be regarded as a multi-agent system where each agent is functioning independently by simple rules. Unlike the nearly primitive behavior of the agents, the behavior of the whole system happens to be amazingly reasonable. The ant algorithms have been extensively studied by European researchers from the mid-1990s. These algorithms have successfully been applied to solving many complex combinatorial optimization problems, such as the traveling salesman problem, the vehicle routing problem, the problem of graph coloring, the quadratic assignment problem, the problem of network-traffic optimization, the job-shop scheduling problem, etc. The ant algorithms are especially efficient for online optimization of processes in distributed nonstationary systems (for example, telecommunication network routing).

Representing function: Relating functional representation and functional modeling research streams

This paper is an informal description of some recent insights about what a device function is, how it arises in response to needs, and how function arises from the structure of a device and the functions of its components. These results formalize and clarify a set of contending intuitions about function that researchers have had. The paper relates the approaches, results, and goals of this stream of research, called functional representation (FR), with the functional modeling (FM) stream in engineering. Despite the occurrence of the term function in the two streams, often the results and techniques in the two streams appear not to have much to do with each other. I argue that, in fact, the two streams are performing research that is mutually complementary. FR research provides the basic layer for device ontology in a formal framework that helps to clarify the meanings of terms such as function and structure, and also to support representation of device knowledge for automated reasoning. FM research provides another layer in device ontology, by attempting to identify behavior primitives that are applicable to subsets of devices, with the hope that functions can be described in those domains with an economy of terms. This can lead to useful catalogs of functions and devices in specific areas of engineering. With increased attention to formalization, the work in FM can provide domain-specific terms for FR research in knowledge representation and automated reasoning.

Acquisition of Motion Primitives of Robot in Human-Navigation Task: Towards Human-Robot Interaction based on "Quasi-Symbols"

A novel approach to human-robot collaboration based on quasi-symbolic expressions is proposed. The target task is navigation in which a person with his or her eyes covered and a humanoid robot collaborate in a context-dependent manner. The robot uses a recurrent neural net with parametric bias (RNNPB) model to acquire the behavioral primitives, which are sensory-motor units, composing the whole task. The robot expresses the PB dynamics as primitives using symbolic sounds, and the person influences these dynamics through tactile sensors attached to the robot. Experiments with six participants demonstrated that the level of influence the person has on the PB dynamics is strongly related to task performance, the person's subjective impressions, and the prediction error of the RNNPB model (task stability). Simulation experiments demonstrated that the subjective impressions of the correspondence between the utterance sounds (the PB values) and the motions were well reproduced by the rehearsal of the RNNPB model.

Motor primitive and sequence self-organization in a hierarchical recurrent neural network

This study describes how complex goal-directed behavior can be obtained through adaptation processes in a hierarchically organized recurrent neural network using a genetic algorithm (GA). Our experiments, using a simulated Khepera robot, showed that different types of dynamic structures self-organize in the lower and higher levels of the network for the purpose of achieving complex navigation tasks. The parametric bifurcation structures that appear in the lower level explain the mechanism of how behavior primitives are switched in a top-down way. In the higher level, a topologically ordered mapping of initial cell activation states to motor primitive sequences self-organizes by utilizing the initial sensitivity characteristics of non-linear dynamical systems. The biological plausibility of the model's essential principles is discussed.

Visual Facial Grasp

Some patients with degenerative neurological diseases have a release of the vestibular-ocular reflex (VOR), as detected by passive head movement during visual fixation on a moving target (“doll’s eyes” maneuver). However, a positive doll’s eyes sign might be induced by other defects and the purpose of this article is to describe a new ocular sign of cortical dysfunction, the visual facial grasp. We observed three patients, one with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), another with probable Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and a third with cortico-basal degeneration (CBD) all of whom appeared to demonstrate a release of the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) with passive head movements. Whereas the patient with PSP, who was unable to inhibit the VOR regardless of the visual target used probably had a true release of the VOR, the patients with AD and CBD were able to inhibit this reflex when the visual target was the examiner’s moving face. These two patients also exhibited spontaneous preference for visual fixation on the examiner’s face and improvement in smooth pursuit when the examiner’s face was the visual target. This clinical observation suggests that the deficits in these two patients with AD and CBD were related to the emergence of a primitive stimulus-bound behavior, the visual facial grasp.

Tensions and conflicts: Toward a pleasure-seeking artifact

This paper presents psychodynamic architecture (PdA) as a basis of developmental robotic systems. It is assumed that the only mission of a psychodynamic agent is to seek pleasure for itself, where pleasure is the discharge of a psychic tension that is a function of sensory/memory patterns. The agent copes with conflicting tensions by using MemestormsTM, i.e., a working space in which ideas fight for access to actuators toward tension-discharging actions in the environment. Selected PdA-related concepts were tested using a simulated mobile robot and a one-eyed, one-armed physical robot that generated some life-like activities such as hesitation and distractible pursuing behavior from primitive behavior blocks mediated by Memestorms. We contend that humanmachine communication may emerge from its tension-discharging desire and interactions with human caregivers

Intelligent Control of a Miniature Climbing Robot

This paper presents an intelligent control system of a miniature climbing robot to achieve precise motion control, minimize power consumption, and produce versatile behaviors. The gravitational effects degrade the motion control performance and are difficult to compensate exactly, especially in the case of the climbing robot. A fuzzy logic based control scheme is developed which is capable of compensating the gravity at different robot configurations and task conditions. In order to reduce power consumption, an optimal control law is developed which minimizes the energy used to vacuum the suction foot. Primitive behaviors are implemented to provide the robot with basic competence. A finite state machine (FSM) is developed to synthesize signals from multiple sensors, keep track of robot motion status, and schedule motion sequences. FSM is an effective computational method in behavior-based control paradigm to implement robot behaviors. Experimental results prove the validity of the proposed methods.

A PARALLEL DISTRIBUTED COGNITIVE CONTROL SYSTEM FOR A HUMANOID ROBOT

During the last decade, researchers at Vanderbilt have been developing a humanoid robot called the Intelligent Soft Arm Control (ISAC). This paper describes ISAC in terms of its software components and with respect to the design philosophy that has evolved over the course of its development. Central to the control system is a parallel, distributed software architecture, comprising a set of independent software objects or agents that execute as needed on standard PCs linked via Ethernet. Fundamental to the design philosophy is the direct physical interaction of the robot with people. Initially, this philosophy guided application development. Yet over time it became apparent that such interaction may be necessary for the acquisition of intelligent behaviors by an agent in a human-centered environment. Concurrent to that evolution was a shift from a programmer's high-level specification of action toward the robot's own motion acquisition of primitive behaviors through sensory-motor coordination (SMC) and task learning through cognitive control and working memory. Described is the parallel distributed cognitive control architecture and the advantages and limitations that have guided its development. Primary structures for sensing, memory, and cognition are described. Motion learning through teleoperation and fault diagnosis through system health monitoring are also covered. The generality of the control system is discussed in terms of its applicability to physically heterogeneous robots and multi-robot systems.

Brief or New: Professional Development of Fieldwork Students: Occupational Adaptation, Clinical Reasoning, and Client-Centeredness

SUMMARYFieldwork provides occupational therapy students with professional development readiness for entry-level practice. Thus, describing the results of the fieldwork learning process in terms of observed professional behaviors is valuable. This pilot study was initiated as part of program evaluation with the goal to assess fieldwork students' performance maturation, clinical reasoning development, and client-centered behaviors as a result of this specific fieldwork experience. Nine occupational therapy students who completed Level II fieldwork at the Way Station, Inc., in Frederick, MD were videotaped administering the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM) to a new client during the 2nd and 10th week of fieldwork to gather descriptions of changes in student professional behavior during the fieldwork experience. Observational analysis demonstrated that primitive and transitional behaviors decreased as mature behaviors increased, clinical reasoning shifted from primarily procedural to interactive and conditional, and client-centered behaviors developed. The findings enhance our understanding of the development of professional behaviors during fieldwork and provide indicants for future studies as well as a methodology for fieldwork supervision.

Self-organization of behavioral primitives as multiple attractor dynamics: A robot experiment

This paper investigates how behavior primitives are self-organized in a neural network model utilizing a distributed representation scheme. The model is characterized by so-called parametric biases which adaptively modulate the encoding of different behavior patterns in a single recurrent neural net (RNN). Our experiments, using a real robot arm, showed that a set of end-point and oscillatory behavior patterns are learned by self-organizing fixed points and limit cycle dynamics that form behavior primitives. It was also found that diverse novel behavior patterns can be generated by modulating the parametric biases arbitrarily. Our analysis showed that such diversity in behavior generation emerges because a nonlinear map is self-organized between the space of parametric biases and that of the behavior patterns. The origin of the observed nonlinearity from the distributed representation is discussed. This paper investigates how behavior primitives are self-organized in a neural network model utilizing a distributed representation scheme. Our robot experiments showed that a set of end-point and oscillatory behavior patterns are learned by self-organizing fixed points and limit cycle dynamics that form behavior primitives. It was also found that diverse novel behavior patterns, in addition to previously learned patterns, can be generated by taking advantage of nonlinear effects that emerge from the distributed representation.

Learning to generate articulated behavior through the bottom-up and the top-down interaction processes

A novel hierarchical neural network architecture for sensory-motor learning and behavior generation is proposed. Two levels of forward model neural networks are operated on different time scales while parametric interactions are allowed between the two network levels in the bottom-up and top-down directions. The models are examined through experiments of behavior learning and generation using a real robot arm equipped with a vision system. The results of the learning experiments showed that the behavioral patterns are learned by self-organizing the behavioral primitives in the lower level and combining the primitives sequentially in the higher level. The results contrast with prior work by Pawelzik et al. [Neural Comput. 8 (1996) 340], Tani and Nolfi [From animals to animats, 1998], and Wolpert and Kawato [Neural Networks 11 (1998) 1317] in that the primitives are represented in a distributed manner in the network in the present scheme whereas, in the prior work, the primitives were localized in specific modules in the network. Further experiments of on-line planning showed that the behavior could be generated robustly against a background of real world noise while the behavior plans could be modified flexibly in response to changes in the environment. It is concluded that the interaction between the bottom-up process of recalling the past and the top-down process of predicting the future enables both robust and flexible situated behavior.

Evolving a modular neural network-based behavioral fusion using extended VFF and environment classification for mobile robot navigation

A local navigation algorithm for mobile robots is proposed that combines rule-based and neural network approaches. First, the extended virtual force field (EVFF), an extension of the conventional virtual force field (VFF), implements a rule base under the potential field concept. Second, the neural network performs fusion of the three primitive behaviors generated by EVFF. Finally, evolutionary programming is used to optimize the weights of the neural network with an arbitrary form of objective function. Furthermore, a multinetwork version of the fusion neural network has been proposed that lends itself to not only an efficient architecture but also a greatly enhanced generalization capability. Herein, the global path environment has been classified into a number of basic local path environments to which each module has been optimized with higher resolution and better generalization. These techniques have been verified through computer simulation under a collection of complex and varying environments.

A Rhetorical War of Fire: The Middle Volga Arson Panic of 1839 as Contested Legitimacy in Prereform Russia

Violent peasant resistance to the demands of the tsarist state oscillated, reaching extraordinary peaks during the Pugachev rebellion of the late eighteenth century and again with the 1905 Revolution. In between these apexes peasants usually utilized complex, but far less tumultuous, methods of resisting the authority and often the legitimacy of their overlords, methods simultaneously asserting the peasants' rights to live their lives within their own framework of meaning.1 These so called weapons of the weak represented a fundamental struggle between peasant and elite society over what Chinua Achebe has described as that which is and natural.2 However, periodically during the nineteenth century peasants substituted more lethal weapons passive ones. In examining these violent outbursts, recent scholarship has postulated the peasants' belief that the Old Regime was weak as the primary reason, a phenomenon of the late nineteenth century and primarily one associated with a perceived breakdown of the state's coercive power.3 That interpretation of late-nineteenth-century Russian history is not in question here; however, other forms of delegitimization of tsarist power were at work earlier in the century, processes that significantly undermined state authority well before 1905. This paper looks at one of those forces, the desanctification of the image of the during periods of significant social stress, in particular in 1839 during the height of an arson panic and chiliastic movement that swept the Middle Volga region.4 Arson, to be sure, has a long history in Russia. Examining its functionality, V.I. Semevskii, the foremost nineteenth-century Russian historian of the peasantry, noted that peasant petitions seldom led to any amelioration of conditions, and thus peasants were forced to resort to other forms of protest oppression. Chief among these, he argued, was arson.5 But Semevskii also contended that the peasants would use arson as a method to ruin their lords in hopes thereby of achieving a means to purchase their freedom. Therefore, he reasoned, arson should be viewed as either an explosion of peasant irrational frustration or evidence of their proverbial extraordinary craftiness [khitrost]. But there is significantly more at work here than prerational, primitive behavior. These fires became a contest definitional space, providing a focus a violent struggle to determine what view of the world as it should be would prevail. Elite society sought to justify the world as it presently existed, whereas the peasantry called into question not merely the gentry's right to exploit its labor but also the image of the tsar. In the process the arson panic of 1839 occasioned conflict over the meaning of the fires, with all who were caught up in the events submerging the fires into preexisting frameworks of thought and meaning.6 Through petitions and reports, a rhetorical struggle unfolded with gentry and officialdom attempting to preserve their hegemony during a moment of crisis, and the peasantry of the Middle Volga invoking alternative images as a mechanism to challenge authority. The gentry particularly desired to delegitimatize peasant disturbances by refusing to see them as forms of rebellion and instead conflating all peasant challenges to authority with crime.7 The peasants took the occasion of the fires as an opportunity transference, justifying an assault not merely on a suspected arsonist but on any who could be defined as an enemy.8 But more was disputed than simply gentry dominance or even membership in the community; in 1839 it was the very definition of tsar that was ultimately contested. Consequently our approach to the question of peasant naive monarchism requires rethinking, particularly the first half of the nineteenth century. Rather than being a question of whether the peasants were for or against the tsar, this study proposes that at this point in Russia's history several competing images of the were available to the peasantry in pursuit of their interests. …

Strategic interdisciplinary relations between a natural science community and a psychology community: Part 2: Change versus circumvention.

Abstract The discipline of psychology provides the vast ambient culture with a scientific pursuit of its mystical assumptions about human beings and their behavior. The postulates that serve as the foundation for traditional psychology, like the postulates that inform the work in any discipline, are largely immune to the change effects of scientific evidence. Behavior analysts seek the resources of the psychology establishment, while psychologists, in general, seek to associate with the powerful image of natural science. Many natural scientists would prefer to see psychologists adhere more closely to the postulates of naturalism. However, under neither side's motive--nor any motive--can evidence change the fundamental nature of the other intellectual faction, because the postulates to be changed function as the principles by which the adduced evidence is interpreted in the first place. An integral natural science discipline focused on behavior is possible only if the behavioral community organizes effectively for its development and maintenance, but current arrangements ignore the lessons of history and do not serve that outcome. Students in behavior analysis are entitled to a more accurate revelation of what they confront in the struggle to induce change in psychology and a more substantial defense, if that is possible, of the proposition that they devote their lives to the pursuit of that quest at the expense of the integrity of their own discipline. REDUCTIONISM VERSUS EXPANSIONISM Biological evolution always produces minimal solutions to problems, and they are always structural in nature. In that slow selectional process, new physiological structures are produced only as transmogrifications of old ones. Those changes in physiological structure yield the extensions of behavioral capacity that inhere in the new structures. Studies in structural biology, whether focused on the macro-level of organisms or the micro-level of physiology, have a reductionist character insofar as most biological structure is to be understood in terms of its history of simpler or more primitive precursors. An encountered biological phenomenon of apparent complexity is typically to be understood through its analytical reduction to the combination of simpler structures and processes from which the more complex events of current interest were derived biologically through evolutionary processes. Natural scientists of behavior, operating at their own level of consideration, study the complexity of behavior processes through a similar reductionist approach. Exhibited behavior, in spite of its often seeming complexity, similarly manifests through a limited number of basic behavioral processes that remains conceptually resistant to expansion (although, rarely, that does happen) . Natural scientists of behavior typically approach the investigation of a new, seemingly complex and at first mysterious behavioral phenomenon by looking for the more elemental or basic and perhaps primitive behavior processes that may in some way be combining to produce the new behavioral manifestation of interest. A typical example pertains to adjunctive behavior (Falk, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1984, 1986, 1993, 1995; Falk & Tang, 1988; Staddon, 1977). Adjunctive behavior was originally seen as a strange phenomenon that to some investigators implied new underlying behavioral processes, but which has been shown, to the satisfaction of many, to be explicable in terms of elemental and well understood basic processes (Fraley, 2001, Chap. 16). Natural scientists are under contingencies to keep things simple, and in the natural sciences professional status accrues to those who can reduce initial complexity to combinations of simpler processes with minimal recourse to newly proposed basic concepts. The set of concepts evoked in the construction of a valid explanation exhibit a one-to-one correspondence with the features of the event under investigation, but an excessively elaborate conceptual repertoire can result in the attribution of fictitious features to the phenomenon of analytical concern. …

Neurobiological and anthropological aspects of compulsions and rituals.

Obsessions and compulsions frequently accompany motor and vocal tics in Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS). The occurrence of motor tics and compulsions helps to understand the neurobiological foundation of repetitive behavior patterns. Based on a review of the literature and our own studies in GTS, we suggest that simple motor tics are caused by a stimulus-dependent disinhibition of stereotypies encoded in the head of the caudate, while more complex compulsions are associated with a serotonergic disinhibition of frontocortical-striatal circuits in GTS and obsessive-compulsive disorder. These findings indicate that obsessions and compulsions do not simply result from a lack of cortical control of phylogenetically primitive behavior patterns. Rather, an activation of the orbitofrontal cortex seems to be essential for the induction of anxiety and the disinhibition of subcortical stereotypies. The neurobiological findings may help to clarify why compulsions differ from cultural rituals. Cultural rituals are performed cyclically, represent important social conflicts and are usually not accompanied by fear or anxiety. Obsessions, on the other hand, seem to be generated in a self perpetuating cycle of cortico-subcortical activation and are associated with anxiety and ineffective repetition of stereotypies.

Patterns for decoupling data structures and algorithms

In order to build a data structure that is extensible and reusable, it is necessary to decouple the intrinsic and primitive behavior of the structure from the application specific behavior that manipulates it. To illustrate such a construction, this paper proposes a uniform object-oriented structural pattern for recursive data structures, and shows how external algorithms can be added without rewriting any code using the visitor design pattern. By presenting data structures in this manner, we can more effectively teach students about recursion, abstraction, design, and good software engineering practices.