Conceptual Knowledge Processing Research Articles

Improving User’s Experience in Exploring Knowledge Structures: A Gamifying Approach

Gamifying user experience while navigating knowledge structures is the new paradigm in online learning and improving human–computer interaction. Learning by playing and learning by doing lie at the core of this approach. Rooted in the paradigm of Conceptual Knowledge Processing and conceptual landscapes of knowledge, this research proposes an immersive experience in 3D knowledge structures, the VR FCA project. We exemplify this experience, at least the amount possible in a journal paper, by using data sets about topological spaces, a mathematical field which is notoriously hard to grasp by beginners or sometimes even at an intermediate level. We present the stages of this project, the technologies we have used in the implementation and also some basics of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA), the mathematical theory which lies at heart of Conceptual Knowledge Processing.

The grounding of temporal metaphors

Grounded cognition suggests that the processing of conceptual knowledge cued by language relies on the sensory-motor regions. Does temporal language similarly engage brain areas involved in time perception? Participants read sentences that describe the temporal extent of events with motion verbs (The hours crawled until the release of the news) and their static controls. Comparison conditions were fictive motion (The trail crawled until the end of the hills) and literal motion (The caterpillar crawled towards the top of the tree), along with their static controls. Several time sensitive locations, identified using a meta-analysis, showed activation specific to temporal metaphors, including in the left insula, right claustrum, and bilateral posterior superior temporal sulci. Fictive and literal motion contrasts did not show this difference. Fictive motion contrast showed activation in a conceptual motion sensitive area of the left posterior inferior temporal sulcus (ITS). These data suggest that language of time is at least partially grounded in experiential time. In addition, motion semantics has different consequences for events and objects: temporal events become animate, while static entities become motional.

Observing functional actions affects semantic processing of tools: evidence of a motor-to-semantic priming.

Recent evidence shows that activation of motor information can favor identification of related tools, thus suggesting a strict link between motor and conceptual knowledge in cognitive representation of tools. However, the involvement of motor information in further semantic processing has not been elucidated. In three experiments, we aimed to ascertain whether motor information provided by observation of actions could affect processing of conceptual knowledge about tools. In Experiment 1, healthy participants judged whether pairs of tools evoking different functional handgrips had the same function. In Experiment 2 participants judged whether tools were paired with appropriate recipients. Finally, in Experiment 3 we again required functional judgments as in Experiment 1, but also included in the set of stimuli pairs of objects having different function and similar functional handgrips. In all experiments, pictures displaying either functional grasping (aimed to use tools) or structural grasping (just aimed to move tools independently from their use) were presented before each stimulus pair. The results demonstrated that, in comparison with structural grasping, observing functional grasping facilitates judgments about tools' function when objects did not imply the same functional manipulation (Experiment 1), whereas worsened such judgments when objects shared functional grasp (Experiment 3). Instead, action observation did not affect judgments concerning tool-recipient associations (Experiment 2). Our findings support a task-dependent influence of motor information on high-order conceptual tasks and provide further insights into how motor and conceptual processing about tools can interact.

Conceptual metaphor theory meets the data: a corpus-based human annotation study

Metaphor makes our thoughts more vivid and fills our communication with richer imagery. Furthermore, according to the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) of Lakoff and Johnson (Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980), metaphor also plays an important structural role in the organization and processing of conceptual knowledge. According to this account, the phenomenon of metaphor is not restricted to similarity-based extensions of meanings of individual words, but instead involves activating fixed mappings that reconceptualize one whole area of experience in terms of another. CMT produced a significant resonance in the fields of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science and artificial intelligence and still underlies a large proportion of modern research on metaphor. However, there has to date been no comprehensive corpus-based study of conceptual metaphor, which would provide an empirical basis for evaluating the CMT using real-world linguistic data. The annotation scheme and the empirical study we present in this paper is a step towards filling this gap. We test our annotation procedure in an experimental setting involving multiple annotators and estimate their agreement on the task. The goal of the study is to investigate (1) how intuitive the conceptual metaphor explanation of linguistic metaphors is for human annotators and whether it is possible to consistently annotate interconceptual mappings; (2) what are the main difficulties that the annotators experience during the annotation process; (3) whether one conceptual metaphor is sufficient to explain a linguistic metaphor or whether a chain of conceptual metaphors is needed. The resulting corpus annotated for conceptual mappings provides a new, valuable dataset for linguistic, computational and cognitive experiments on metaphor.

Differential Activity for Animals and Manipulable Objects in the Anterior Temporal Lobes

Neuropsychological evidence has highlighted the role of the anterior temporal lobes in the processing of conceptual knowledge. That putative role is only beginning to be investigated with fMRI as methodological advances are able to compensate for well-known susceptibility artifacts that affect the quality of the BOLD signal. In this article, we described differential BOLD activation for pictures of animals and manipulable objects in the anterior temporal lobes, consistent with previous neuropsychological findings. Furthermore, we found that the pattern of BOLD signal in the anterior temporal lobes is qualitatively different from that in the fusiform gyri. The latter regions are activated to different extents but always above baseline by images of the preferred and of the nonpreferred categories, whereas the anterior temporal lobes tend to be activated by images of the preferred category and deactivated (BOLD below baseline) by images of the nonpreferred category. In our experimental design, we also manipulated the decision that participants made over stimuli from the different semantic categories. We found that in the right temporal pole, the BOLD signal shows some evidence of being modulated by the task that participants were asked to perform, whereas BOLD activity in more posterior regions (e.g., the fusiform gyri) is not modulated by the task. These results reconcile the fMRI literature with the neuropsychological findings of deficits for animals after damage to the right temporal pole and suggest that anterior and posterior regions within the temporal lobes involved in object processing perform qualitatively different computations.

What's behind a Face: Person Context Coding in Fusiform Face Area as Revealed by Multivoxel Pattern Analysis

The identification of a face comprises processing of both visual features and conceptual knowledge. Studies showing that the fusiform face area (FFA) is sensitive to face identity generally neglect this dissociation. The present study is the first that isolates conceptual face processing by using words presented in a person context instead of faces. The design consisted of 2 different conditions. In one condition, participants were presented with blocks of words related to each other at the categorical level (e.g., brands of cars, European cities). The second condition consisted of blocks of words linked to the personality features of a specific face. Both conditions were created from the same 8 × 8 word matrix, thereby controlling for visual input across conditions. Univariate statistical contrasts did not yield any significant differences between the 2 conditions in FFA. However, a machine learning classification algorithm was able to successfully learn the functional relationship between the 2 contexts and their underlying response patterns in FFA, suggesting that these activation patterns can code for different semantic contexts. These results suggest that the level of processing in FFA goes beyond facial features. This has strong implications for the debate about the role of FFA in face identification.

Behavioral patterns and lesion sites associated with impaired processing of lexical and conceptual knowledge of actions

To further investigate the neural substrates of lexical and conceptual knowledge of actions, we administered a battery of six tasks to 226 brain-damaged patients with widely distributed lesions in the left and right cerebral hemispheres. The tasks probed lexical and conceptual knowledge of actions in a variety of verbal and non-verbal ways, including naming, word-picture matching, attribute judgments involving both words and pictures, and associative comparisons involving both words and pictures. Of the 226 patients who were studied, 61 failed one or more of the six tasks, with four patients being impaired on the entire battery, and varied numbers of patients being impaired on varied combinations of tasks. Overall, the 61 patients manifested a complex array of associations and dissociations across the six tasks. The lesion sites of 147 of the 226 patients were also investigated, using formal methods for lesion-deficit statistical mapping and power analysis of lesion overlap maps. Significant effects for all six tasks were found in the following left-hemisphere regions: the inferior frontal gyrus; the ventral precentral gyrus, extending superiorly into what are likely to be hand-related primary motor and premotor areas; and the anterior insula. In addition, significant effects for 4–5 tasks were found in not only the regions just mentioned, but also in several other left-hemisphere areas: the ventral postcentral gyrus; the supramarginal gyrus; and the posterior middle temporal gyrus. These results converge with previous research on the neural underpinnings of action words and concepts. However, the current study goes considerably beyond most previous investigations by providing extensive behavioral and lesion data for an unusually large and diverse sample of brain-damaged patients, and by incorporating multiple measures of verb comprehension. Regarding theoretical implications, the study provides new support for the Embodied Cognition Framework, which maintains that conceptual knowledge is grounded in sensorimotor systems.

Product Variety Modeling Based on Formal Concept Analysis

Increasing product variety based on product family and product platform provides a company with a competitive advantage over its competitors. As products become more complex, short-life cycled and customized, the design efforts require more knowledge-intensive, collaborative and coordinating efforts for information sharing. By sharing knowledge, information, component and process across different families of products, the product realization process will be more efficient, cost-effective and quick-responsive. Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is used for analyzing data and forming semantic structures that are formal abstractions of concepts of human thoughts. A Web Ontology Language (OWL) is designed for applications that need to process the content of information instead of simply presenting information to humans. OWL also captures the evolution of different components of the product family. The purpose of this paper is to develop product variety modeling to increase the usefulness of common platform. In constructing and analyzing product ontology, FCA is adopted for conceptual knowledge processing. For the selected product family, product variety Ontology is constructed and implemented using prot<TEX>$\'{e}$</TEX>g<TEX>$\'{e}$</TEX>-2000.

A study of selection of the behavior under the conflicting conditions in Drosophila melanogaster larvae

Grounded cognition suggests that the processing of conceptual knowledge cued by language relies on the sensory-motor regions. Does temporal language similarly engage brain areas involved in time perception? Participants read sentences that describe the temporal extent of events with motion verbs (The hours crawled until the release of the news) and their static controls. Comparison conditions were fictive motion (The trail crawled until the end of the hills) and literal motion (The caterpillar crawled towards the top of the tree), along with their static controls. Several time sensitive locations, identified using a meta-analysis, showed activation specific to temporal metaphors, including in the left insula, right claustrum, and bilateral posterior superior temporal sulci. Fictive and literal motion contrasts did not show this difference. Fictive motion contrast showed activation in a conceptual motion sensitive area of the left posterior inferior temporal sulcus (ITS). These data suggest that language of time is at least partially grounded in experiential time. In addition, motion semantics has different consequences for events and objects: temporal events become animate, while static entities become motional.

Selective Retrieval of Abstract Semantic Knowledge in Left Prefrontal Cortex

Research into the representation and processing of conceptual knowledge has typically associated perceptual facts with sensory brain regions and executive retrieval mechanisms with the left prefrontal cortex. However, this dichotomy between knowledge content and retrieval processes leaves unanswered how the brain supports concepts less reliant on direct sensory experiences. We used neuroimaging methods to investigate whether an increased abstractness in semantic decisions, in contrast to increased response difficulty, is associated with increased left prefrontal activation. Participants were presented with concrete animal names and asked to verify sensory and abstract properties that corresponded only to the animal category. Candidate semantic regions were localized in left inferior, frontopolar, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in contrast to a pseudoword control. Activity in each of these prefrontal regions was associated with significantly increased activity for abstract relative to sensory semantic decisions, regardless of increased response difficulty and even when controlling for the response times of participants. These results suggest that more abstract, or verbally-mediated, semantic knowledge of concrete items, in contrast to more sensory-based properties, is specifically supported by the left prefrontal cortex. Semantic retrieval mechanisms may rely on abstract representations, likely coded through a verbal format, to mediate task demands when perceptual information is insufficient.

Neuroanatomical correlates of locative prepositions

Very little research has explored which neural systems may be important for retrieving the meanings of locative prepositions (e.g., in, on, around). To begin to address this knowledge gap, we conducted a lesion study in which we tested the hypothesis that processing the meanings of locative prepositions depends on neural structures in the left inferior prefrontal cortex and left inferior parietal cortex. Seventy‐eight subjects with focal, stable lesions to various parts of the telencephalon and a comparison group of 60 normal participants were studied with tasks that require production, comprehension, and semantic analysis of locative prepositions. In support of our hypothesis, we found that in subjects with impaired knowledge of locative prepositions, the highest region of lesion overlap was in the left frontal operculum and the left supramarginal gyrus, and in the white matter subjacent to these two areas. In a second study, focused on six subjects who had pervasive defects for locative preposition knowledge, we confirmed that such defects were associated specifically with damage to the posterior left frontal operculum, white matter subjacent to this region, and white matter underneath the inferior parietal operculum. These subjects did not have basic impairments in spatial processing or working memory, and they had relatively well‐preserved processing of conceptual knowledge for actions and various categories of concrete entities (e.g., persons, animals, tools). All six subjects, however, had defects in naming actions, and some of them also had defective naming of some categories of concrete entities. Overall, the findings converge nicely with recent results from functional imaging approaches, and with classic studies from the aphasia‐based literature, and suggest that the left inferior prefrontal and left inferior parietal regions have crucial–albeit not exclusive–roles in processing knowledge associated with locative prepositions.

Conceptual knowledge discovery--a human-centered approach

In this paper, we discuss Conceptual Knowledge Discovery in Databases (CKDD) as it is developing in the field of Conceptual Knowledge Processing. Conceptual Knowledge Processing is based on the mathematical theory of Formal Concept Analysis, which has become a successful theory for data analysis during the last two decades. CKDD aims to support a human-centered process of discovering knowledge from data by visualizing and analyzing the conceptual structure of the data. Basic to the philosophy of CKDD is the idea that only the human analyst is able to make meaningful decisions, and that the analysis tools should not oversimplify the data, but help the analyst to deal with the complex situation. We discuss how the management system TOSCANA for conceptual information systems is supporting those goals of CKDD, and illustrate it by two applications in database marketing and flight movement analysis. Finally, we present a new tool for conceptual deviation discovery, C HIANTI .

Conceptual Knowledge Markup Language: An introduction

Conceptual Knowledge Markup Language (CKML) is an application of XML. Earlier versions of CKML followed rather exclusively the philosophy of Conceptual Knowledge Processing (CKP), a principled approach to knowledge representation and data analysis that “advocates methods and instruments of conceptual knowledge processing which support people in their rational thinking, judgment and acting and promote critical discussion”. The new version of CKML continues to follow this approach, but also incorporates various principles, insights and techniques from Information Flow (IF), the logical design of distributed systems. Among other things, this allows diverse communities of discourse to compare their own information structures, as coded in logical theories, with that of other communities that share a common generic ontology. CKML incorporates the CKP ideas of concept lattice and formal context, along with the IF ideas of classification (= formal context), infomorphism, theory, interpretation and local logic. Ontology Markup Language (OML), a subset of CKML that is a self-sufficient markup language in its own right, follows the principles and ideas of Conceptual Graphs (CG). OML is used for structuring the specifications and axiomatics of metadata into ontologies. OML incorporates the CG ideas of concept, conceptual relation, conceptual graph, conceptual context, participants and ontology. The link from OML to CKML is the process of conceptual scaling, which is the interpretive transformation of ontologically structured knowledge to conceptual structured knowledge.

Conceptual knowledge processing and graphical representation of multidimensional atmospheric ozone data

The purpose of this paper is to visualize atmospheric ozone data using a new knowledge representation method called Formal Concept Analysis. This method is based on the concept of concept and represents data in hierarchical line diagrams combining the logic of implications with statistical frequency analysis and hierarchical search methods.

TOSCANA applied to thesaurus research

There is an immense number of publications and measurement data in atmospheric ozone and water vapor research. Even for the expert it is impossible to keep all current results of research in view. Hence there is a need for an information sytem which enables the user to find documents and corresponding measurement data accurately. The purpose of this research is to construct a prototype retrieval system using methods of conceptual knowledge processing and the sofware TOSCANA. For this purpose a vocabulary for atmosphere research was built from the DFD ozone thesaurus. Furthermore, conceptual hierarchies and topics were developed by experts.