Declarative Process Research Articles

Distributionally robust comprehensive declaration strategy of virtual power plant participating in the power market considering flexible ramping product and uncertainties

The volatility and randomness of renewable energy output make the flexible ramping ability demand of power system more urgent, and flexible ramping product (FRP) can effectively improve the flexibility of the power system. Virtual power plant (VPP) can regulate distributed generation, which is conducive to the regulation potential of flexible resources. To solve the problems of FRP and electric energy markets synergy and the wind power output uncertainty faced by the VPP in the declaration process, this paper proposes a comprehensive declaration strategy for the VPP to participate in the power market considering FRP and uncertainties. Firstly, this paper designs a synergistic trading mode covering flexibility resource demand determination and the virtual bidding curve formation for electric energy and FRP markets, in which the virtual bidding curve can reasonably compensate for the unit opportunity cost. Secondly, a comprehensive declaration-dispatching strategy decision-making model for VPP is constructed, and a two-stage distributed robust optimization (DRO) technology is used to deal with the wind power output uncertainty in the model, and flexible resources such as energy storage are used to mitigate energy deviation in the VPP. Finally, simulations implemented on a typical VPP are delivered to show that: 1) Virtual bidding curve realizes the accurate compensation for the units providing FRP. 2) Compared with the single market, VPP can increase the expected profit by 20.44% and reduce wind curtailment cost by 59.68% in the joint declaration of multi-markets.3) VPP can effectively suppress output uncertainty through energy storage system. 4) DRO model has significant advantages in data-driven, less conservative results and stable running time.

Using digital technologies to plan and manage the pipelines network in city

AbstractPromoting the intelligent level of urban pipelines network planning and management is an important way to improve the rational development and utilisation of urban underground space and ensure the safe operation of urban infrastructure systems. The research on using the rapid and visual expression technology of 3D pipelines network model data, which has the functions of techno‐economic indexes calculation and automatic comparison of underground pipeline construction projects, effectively avoids possible errors in manual calculation and comparison and improves the efficiency and accuracy of the digital declaration process for project planning. In the 3D Geographic Information Systems (GIS) platform environment, this research help to develop many analysis and approval functions based on the data of the underground pipelines network model and the integrated pipes gallery Building Information Modelling, such as evaluating the compliance, feasibility and scientific of the planning scheme of the underground pipeline construction project, comparing the completion data with the data approved by the administrative departments of the project, evaluating the consistency of them and judging the compliance of the project completion data. The application results of some actual projects cases show that this research can improve the efficiency of planning declaration and approval analysis.

Sleep Spindles Favor Emotion Regulation Over Memory Consolidation of Stressors in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

BackgroundPosttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a trauma-induced condition, characterized by intrusive memories and trauma-associated anxiety. Non–rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep spindles might play a crucial role in learning and consolidating declarative stressor information. However, sleep and possibly sleep spindles are also known to regulate anxiety, suggestive of a dual role for sleep spindles in the processing of stressors. Specifically, in individuals with high PTSD symptom burden, spindles might fail to regulate anxiety levels after exposure and instead might maladaptively consolidate stressor information. MethodsTo disentangle the role of spindles in declarative memory versus anxiety regulation after stressor exposure and to examine the role of PTSD in these processes, we measured nap sleep after a cohort of 45 trauma-exposed participants were exposed to laboratory stress. Participants (high vs. low PTSD symptoms) completed 2 visits: a stress visit involving exposure to negatively valent images before nap and a control visit. In both visits, sleep was monitored via electroencephalography. A stressor recall session occurred after the nap in the stress visit. ResultsStage 2 NREM (NREM2) spindle rates were higher in stress versus control sleep, indicative of stress-induced changes in spindles. In participants with high PTSD symptoms, NREM2 spindle rates in stress sleep predicted poorer recall accuracy of stressor images relative to participants with low PTSD symptoms, while correlating with greater reduction in stressor-induced anxiety levels after sleep. ConclusionsContrary to our expectations, although spindles are known to play a role in declarative memory processes, our findings highlight an important role for spindles in sleep-dependent anxiety regulation in PTSD.

Ensino-aprendizagem de uma L2: uma perspetiva processual

This text presents fundamental concepts within the framework of teaching and learning Portuguese as a second language (L2) or another L2. Throughout the text, basic concepts such as acquisition and learning, procedural or declarative processing, working memory or long-term memory are discussed. The purpose of bringing to light a set of foundations that support a psycholinguistic approach to language teaching is to contribute to the initial or ongoing training of practicing or aspiring teaches who are interested in the processes that help explain difficulties and breakthroughs in the L2 learning process. It calls for an exploratory and inquisitive attitude on the part of these teachers.

Automaton-based comparison of Declare process models

The Declare process modeling language has been established within the research community for modeling so-called flexible processes. Declare follows the declarative modeling paradigm and therefore guarantees flexible process execution. For several reasons, declarative process models turned out to be hard to read and comprehend. Thus, it is also hard to decide whether two process models are equal with respect to their semantic meaning, whether one model is completely contained in another one or how far two models overlap. In this paper, we follow an automaton-based approach by transforming Declare process models into finite state automatons and applying automata theory for solving this issue.

Decoding declarative memory process for predicting memory retrieval based on source localization.

Many studies have focused on understanding memory processes due to their importance in daily life. Differences in timing and power spectra of brain signals during encoding task have been linked to later remembered items and were recently used to predict memory retrieval performance. However, accuracies remain low when using non-invasive methods for acquiring brain signals, mainly due to the low spatial resolution. This study investigates the prediction of successful retrieval using estimated source activity corresponding either to cortical or subcortical structures through source localization. Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded while participants performed a declarative memory task. Frequency-time analysis was performed using signals from encoding and retrieval tasks to confirm the importance of neural oscillations and their relationship with later remembered and forgotten items. Significant differences in the power spectra between later remembered and forgotten items were found before and during the presentation of the stimulus in the encoding task. Source activity estimation revealed differences in the beta band power over the medial parietal and medial prefrontal areas prior to the presentation of the stimulus, and over the cuneus and lingual areas during the presentation of the stimulus. Additionally, there were significant differences during the stimuli presentation during the retrieval task. Prediction of later remembered items was performed using surface potentials and estimated source activity. The results showed that source localization increases classification performance compared to the one using surface potentials. These findings support the importance of incorporating spatial features of neural activity to improve the prediction of memory retrieval.

ASP-Based Declarative Process Mining

We put forward Answer Set Programming (ASP) as a solution approach for three classical problems in Declarative Process Mining: Log Generation, Query Checking, and Conformance Checking. These problems correspond to different ways of analyzing business processes under execution, starting from sequences of recorded events, a.k.a. event logs. We tackle them in their data-aware variant, i.e., by considering events that carry a payload (set of attribute-value pairs), in addition to the performed activity, specifying processes declaratively with an extension of linear-time temporal logic over finite traces (LTLf). The data-aware setting is significantly more challenging than the control-flow one: Query Checking is still open, while the existing approaches for the other two problems do not scale well. The contributions of the work include an ASP encoding schema for the three problems, their solution, and experiments showing the feasibility of the approach.

Association of functional health literacy and cognitive ability with self-reported diabetes in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing: a prospective cohort study.

ObjectivesWe investigated whether functional health literacy and cognitive ability were associated with self-reported diabetes.DesignProspective cohort study.SettingData were from waves 2 (2004–2005) to 7 (2014–2015) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), a cohort study designed to be representative of adults aged 50 years and older living in England.Participants8669 ELSA participants (mean age=66.7, SD=9.7) who completed a brief functional health literacy test assessing health-related reading comprehension, and 4 cognitive tests assessing declarative memory, processing speed and executive function at wave 2.Primary outcome measureSelf-reported doctor diagnosis of diabetes.ResultsLogistic regression was used to examine cross-sectional (wave 2) associations of functional health literacy and cognitive ability with diabetes status. Adequate (compared with limited) functional health literacy (OR 0.71, 95% CI 0.61 to 0.84) and higher cognitive ability (OR per 1 SD=0.73, 95% CI 0.67 to 0.80) were associated with lower odds of self-reporting diabetes at wave 2. Cox regression was used to test the associations of functional health literacy and cognitive ability measured at wave 2 with self-reporting diabetes over a median of 9.5 years follow-up (n=6961). Adequate functional health literacy (HR 0.64; 95% CI 0.53 to 0.77) and higher cognitive ability (HR 0.77, 95% CI 0.69 to 0.85) at wave 2 were associated with lower risk of self-reporting diabetes during follow-up. When both functional health literacy and cognitive ability were added to the same model, these associations were slightly attenuated. Additionally adjusting for health behaviours and body mass index fully attenuated cross-sectional associations between functional health literacy and cognitive ability with diabetes status, and partly attenuated associations between functional health literacy and cognitive ability with self-reporting diabetes during follow-up.ConclusionsAdequate functional health literacy and better cognitive ability were independently associated with lower likelihood of reporting diabetes.

Organ Donation after Circulatory Determination of Death in India: A Joint Position Paper.

Organ donation following circulatory determination of death (DCDD) has contributed significantly to the donor pool in several countries. In India, majority of deceased donations happen following brain death (BD). While existing legislation allows for DCDD, there have been only few reports of kidney transplantation following DCDD from India. This document, prepared by a multidisciplinary group of experts, reviews international best practices in DCDD and outlines the path for DCDD in India. Ethical, medical, legal, economic, procedural, and logistic challenges unique to India have been addressed. The practice of withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment (WLST) in India, laid down by the Supreme Court of India, is time-consuming, possible only in patients in a permanent vegetative state, and too cumbersome for day-to-day practice. In patients where continued medical care is futile, the procedure for WLST is described. In controlled DCDD (category-III), decision for WLST is independent of and delinked from the subsequent possibility of organ donation. Families that are inclined toward organ donation are explained the procedure including the timing and location of WLST, consent for antemortem measures, no-touch period, and the possibility of stand-down and return to the intensive care unit (ICU) without donation. In donation following neurologic determination of death (DNDD), if cardiac arrest occurs during the process of BD declaration, the protocol for DCDD category-IV has been described in detail. In DCDD category-V, organ donation may be possible following unsuccessful cardiopulmonary resuscitation of cardiac arrest in the ICU. An outline of organ-specific requisites for kidney, liver, heart, and lung transplantation following DCDD and techniques, such as normothermic regional perfusion (nRP) and ex vivo machine perfusion, has been provided. The outcomes of transplantation following DCDD are comparable to those following DBDD or living donor transplantation. Documents and checklists necessary for successful execution of DCDD in India are described.How to cite this articleSeth AK, Mohanka R, Navin S, Gokhale AGK, Sharma A, Kumar A, et al. Organ Donation after Circulatory Determination of Death in India: A Joint Position Paper. Indian J Crit Care Med 2022;26(4):421–438.

Probabilistic declarative process mining

In a variety of application domains, (business) processes are intrinsically uncertain. Surprisingly, only very few languages and techniques in BPM consider uncertainty as a first-class citizen. This is also the case in declarative processes, which typically require that process executions satisfy all the elicited process constraints. We counteract this limitation by introducing the notion of probabilistic process constraint. We show how to characterize the semantics of probabilistic process constraints through the interplay of time and probability, and how it is possible to reason over such constraints by loosely coupling temporal and probabilistic reasoning. We then rely on this approach to redefine several key process mining tasks in the light of uncertainty. First, we discuss how probabilistic constraints can be discovered from event data by employing, off-the-shelf, existing algorithms for declarative process discovery. Second, we study how to carry out monitoring, obtaining a setting where a monitored partial trace may be in multiple monitoring states at the same time, though with different probabilities. Third, we handle conformance checking both at the trace and event log level, in the latter case providing a notion of earth mover’s distance that suits with our context. All the presented techniques have been implemented in proof-of-concept prototypes.

Stakeholder Utility Measures for Declarative Processes and Their Use in Process Comparisons

We present a method for calculating and analyzing stakeholder utilities of processes that arise in, but are not limited to, the social sciences. These areas include business process analysis, healthcare workflow analysis and policy process analysis. This method is quite general and applicable to any situation in which declarative-type constraints of a modal and/or temporal nature play a part. A declarative process is a process in which activities may freely happen while respecting a set of constraints. For such a process, anything may happen so long as it is not explicitly forbidden. Declarative processes have been used and studied as models of business and healthcare workflows by several authors. In considering a declarative process as a model of some system it is natural to consider how the process behaves with respect to stakeholders. We derive a measure for stakeholder utility that can be applied in a very general setting. This derivation is achieved by listing a collection a properties which we argue such a stakeholder utility function ought to satisfy, and then using these to show a very specific form must hold for such a utility. The utility measure depends on the set of unique traces of the declarative process, and calculating this set requires a combinatorial analysis of the declarative graph that represents the process. This builds on previous work of the author wherein the combinatorial diversity metrics for declarative processes were derived for use in policy process analysis. The collection of stakeholder utilities can themselves then be used to form a metric with which we can compare different declarative processes to one another. These are illustrated using several examples of declarative processes that already exist in the literature.

Revisiting the Role of the Medial Temporal Lobe in Motor Learning.

Classic taxonomies of memory distinguish explicit and implicit memory systems, placing motor skills squarely in the latter branch. This assertion is in part a consequence of foundational discoveries showing significant motor learning in amnesics. Those findings suggest that declarative memory processes in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) do not contribute to motor learning. Here, we revisit this issue, testing an individual (L. S. J.) with severe MTL damage on four motor learning tasks and comparing her performance to age-matched controls. Consistent with previous findings in amnesics, we observed that L. S. J. could improve motor performance despite having significantly impaired declarative memory. However, she tended to perform poorly relative to age-matched controls, with deficits apparently related to flexible action selection. Further supporting an action selection deficit, L. S. J. fully failed to learn a task that required the acquisition of arbitrary action-outcome associations. We thus propose a modest revision to the classic taxonomic model: Although MTL-dependent memory processes are not necessary for some motor learning to occur, they play a significant role in the acquisition, implementation, and retrieval of action selection strategies. These findings have implications for our understanding of the neural correlates of motor learning, the psychological mechanisms of skill, and the theory of multiple memory systems.

Organ Donation after Circulatory Determination of Death in India

Organ donation following circulatory determination of death (DCDD) has contributed significantly to the donor pool in several countries, without compromising the outcomes of transplantation or the number of donations following brain death (BD). In India, majority of deceased donations happen following BD. While existing legislation allows for DCDD, there have been only a few reports of kidney transplantation following DCDD from the country. This document, prepared by a multi-disciplinary group of experts, reviews the international best practices in DCDD and outlines the path for furthering the same in India. The ethical, medical, legal, economic, procedural, and logistic challenges unique to India for all types of DCDD based on the Modified Maastricht Criteria have been addressed. India follows an opt-in system for organ donation that does not allow much scope for uncontrolled DCDD categories I and II. The practice of withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment (WLST) in India is in its infancy. The process of WLST, laid down by the Supreme Court of India, is considered time-consuming, possible only in patients in a permanent vegetative state, and considered too cumbersome for day-to-day practice. In patients where continued medical care is determined to be futile following detailed and repeated assessment, the procedure for WLST, as laid down and published by Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy in conjunction with leading medical experts is described. In controlled DCDD (category-III), the decision for WLST is independent of and delinked from the subsequent possibility of organ donation. Once families are inclined toward organ donation, they are explained the procedure including the timing and location of WLST, consent for antemortem measures, no-touch period, and the possibility of stand down and return to the intensive care unit without donation. While donation following neurologic determination of death (DNDD) is being increasingly practiced in the country, there are instances where the cardiac arrest occurs during the process of declaration of BD, before organ retrieval has been done. Protocol for DCDD category-IV deals with such situations and is described in detail. In DCDD category V, organ donation may be possible following unsuccessful cardiopulmonary resuscitation of cardiac arrest in the intensive care. An outline of organ-specific requisites for kidney, liver, heart, and lung transplantation following DCDD and the use of techniques such as normothermic regional perfusion and ex vivo machine perfusion has been provided. With increasing experience, the outcomes of transplantation following DCDD are comparable to those following DBDD or living donor transplantation. Documents and checklists necessary for the successful execution of DCDD in India are described.

A semantic abstraction criterion to reduce complexity on automatically discovered declarative maps

A declarative approach can be employed on the definition of constraints that limit process execution possibilities. This perspective is appropriate when dealing with unstructured or flexible processes, a.k.a. knowledge-intensive processes. Declarative process mining may result in complex models due the discovery of a high quantity of constraints, producing models with excessive complexity. As abstractions are seen as an effective approach to represent readable models, this work proposes to create language-independent hierarchical declarative maps using a linguistic hierarchy of activities. The proposed approach applies natural language processing to build more abstract declarative models produced by process mining. The presented method was evaluated in a case study with real life data and support from domain experts. The findings showed that it is possible to generate meaningful groups by looking for the semantics of activity labels in order to create abstract process views with reduced complexity, starting from a low-level declarative map.

Declaration of conformity in the field of metallurgical production

At present, the declaration of conformity in Russia is a priority form of confirmation of the conformity of products to the requirements of technical regulations. Technical regulations are documents containing mandatory requirements for products, methods and forms of assessment, approved by the decision of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, acting on the territory of the Eurasian Economic Union and being mandatory for execution and compliance. A list of technical regulations has been established, for compliance with which the declaration of conformity of products in the field of metallurgy is carried out. The sources of risk of the process of declaration of conformity have been identified and their causes have been established. Among these sources are selection of product samples; on-site testing of products, samples or their study as a representative of all subsequently manufactured products; assessment of test (research) results from the standpoint of visibility of product compliance with the requirements of technical regulations; production control; study of a sample for the planned production as a typical representative of a product used at hazardous production facilities; analysis of the technical documentation submitted by the applicant and its preliminary assessment; assessment of the risk of harm when applying the requirements proposed by the applicant; quality management system (QMS) certification. On the basis of risk management, conformity declaration schemes have been established, with the use of which the likelihood of products hazardous to the consumer appearing on the market is greatest - 1D, 3D. The content of the documentation on the applicant’s production control when declaring conformity is proposed - technological equipment, personnel, measuring instruments, documentation (design, technological, registration and accounting), infrastructure (territory, production facilities, transport, etc.), incoming control, special processes (operations), acceptance control and periodic testing, marking of finished products. A list of national standards of the Russian Federation is presented, which make it possible to implement all stages of the declaration of conformity by the applicant.

Unification of Neutralized Korean Peninsula in the light of Austrian Neutrality

강대국들의 이해관계에 둘러싸인 한반도는 민족이 자주적 역량을 발휘하여 남북화해를 이루고 민족의 생존권을 보장하기에는 넘기 힘든 정치적, 외교적, 군사적 장애물에 직면하고 있음을 부정하기 어렵다. 필자는 이러한 장애물들을 일거에 제거하고 한민족의 평화와 번영을 도모하여 궁극적으로 민족통일의 길을 여는 방법으로서 ‘한반도 중립화’의 가능성과 방안을 제시하고자 한다. 이는 오직 ‘중립화’ 만이 자주적인 민족통일을 이룰 수 있는 유일한 길임을 필자는 확신하기 때문이다. 1945년 오스트리아가 패전에 이어 4개국 연합군의 분할점령을 당한 상태는 당시 한반도의 상황과 상당히 유사했다. 오스트리아가 10년간의 외국군 점령상태에서 벗어나 독립국가를 달성한 것은 1955년이었는데, 이는 당시의 동서냉전의 대치상황에서 오스트리아의 지정학적 위상을 십분 활용한 영세중립의 선언으로써 가능한 것이었다. 필자는 이러한 세계사적 모범사례를 현재 한반도의 상황과 비교 분석함으로써 한반도 평화정착을 위한 유일한 수단이 한반도 중립화라고 주장하면서 중립화의 비전을 전망해보고 그 성취 방안을 제시하고자 한다. 이를 위해 본고에서는 먼저 오스트리아의 중립화 과정을 돌아보고, 중립화 협상 및 선언 과정을 살핀 후, 오스트리아와 한반도 중립화 방안을 그 차이점을 중심으로 비교해 보고, 한반도 중립화 통일론의 쟁점들을 검토하여, 한반도 중립화의 가능성을 전망하고, ‘핵우산’을 접고 ‘중립화우산’을 쓰자고 주장하면서 한반도 중립화 방안을 제시한다.It is difficult to deny that the Korean Peninsula, surrounded by the interests of great powers, faces political, diplomatic, and military obstacles that are difficult to overcome in order to achieve inter-Korean reconciliation and guarantee the nation s right to survival by exerting its independent capabilities. I would like to suggest the possibility and plan for ‘neutralization of the Korean Peninsula’ as a way to remove these obstacles at once and ultimately open the way for national reunification for promoting peace and prosperity of the Korean people. This is because I am convinced that “neutralization” is the only way to achieve independent national reunification. Following the defeat in 1945, Austria was divided and occupied by the Allied Forces consisting of four countries, very similar to the situation on the Korean Peninsula at the time. It was not until 1955 that Austria achieved independence after 10 years of foreign occupation. By comparing and analyzing these world-historical exemplary cases with the current situation on the Korean Peninsula, I argue that the only means for the establishment of peace on the Korean Peninsula is the neutralization of the Korean Peninsula, and try to forecast the vision of neutralization and suggest ways to achieve it. To this end, the possibility of neutralization of the Korean Peninsula is investigated by reviewing the neutralization process in Austria, examining the neutralization negotiation and declaration process, and then comparing the neutralization plans of Austria and the Korean Peninsula. In conclusion, proposing a feasible neutralization plan, I suggest that Koreans should fold up the nuclear umbrella and instead unfold a neutrality umbrella.‘

The Type of Feedback Provided Can Affect Morphological Rule Learning of Young Children

ABSTRACT The acquisition of a new morphological rule can be influenced by numerous factors, including the type of feedback provided during learning. The present study aimed to test the effect of different feedback types on children’s ability to learn and generalize an artificial morphological rule (AMR). Two groups of eight-year-olds learned to judge and produce repeated and new (generalization) items representing the AMR during ten training sessions. One group (n = 7) received only corrective feedback, that is, heard “the correct answer is … ” after each incorrect answer, whereas the other group (n = 8) received corrective feedback following verification feedback, that is, heard “incorrect, the correct answer is … .” Performance in terms of accuracy and reaction times was compared to that of an additional eight-year-old group (n = 8) from a previous study who received only verification feedback, that is, heard “incorrect” following each incorrect answer. The data analysis that was conducted for all three groups (N = 23 total), with ten observations for each child revealed that corrective feedback improved implicit learning of the AMR and in some cases also allowed generalization to new items. The combination of verification and corrective feedback, however, yielded the best performance in generalizing the AMR, possibly by stimulating both implicit and explicit processes. These preliminary findings suggest that corrective feedback, and even more so combined corrective+verification feedback, can enhance procedural and declarative learning processes of young school-age children. Future studies may be necessary to test this inference in a larger group of school-age children, and across ages.

Problems and prospects of e-commerce regulation in the EAEU

The rapid growth of online trade leads to a number of problems faced by EAEU member states in the implementation of customs regulation of electronic commerce: reducing the tax base by reducing traditional trade; sending profit fl ows to those countries where the parent companies of online trading platforms are registered; imperfect competition of goods imported duty-free compared to goods produced within the EAEU; the emergence of new security threats due to the actual lack of certification and other restrictions, which actualizes a thorough study of this phenomenon and its timely regulation. The article outlines topical issues of regulating the movement of goods of cross-border electronic trade across the customs border of the EAEU, which make it necessary to amend the Agreement on the Customs Code of the EAEU on cross-border electronic commerce, that is, the content of the draft Protocol on Amendments, according to which "goods for electronic commerce" is understood as goods, acquired by individuals in the framework of foreign electronic commerce, under which, in turn, it is meant to conclude a transaction, one of the parties to which is a foreign economic operator, on electronic trading platforms through the Internet. An analysis of these changes is presented, in particular, the prospect of creating a new legal institution and type of activity in the field of customs regulation — an e-commerce operator, which will provide logistics of operations, as well as ensure interaction with Internet sites and customs, ensuring customs declaration processes. The main requirements for the operator of electronic commerce, the specifics of temporary storage, customs declaration and issuance of electronic commerce goods, the specifics of the application of the customs procedure of the customs warehouse, as well as the procedure for applying customs payments and the prospects for regulating electronic commerce in the EAEU have been determined.

Aesthetic Engagement*

Recent work in culture and cognition breaks cognitive processing into two types—automatic, implicit, and nondeclarative processes are labled “type 1” and controlled, explicit, and declarative processes are labled “type 2.” We suggest that this dual processing model cannot account for some types of experiences central to the embodied aspects of culture. In this paper, we lay out a theory of experience based on aesthetic engagement with the world, a type of experience that does not fall neatly into type 1 and type 2 processing. Drawing on phenomenology and pragmatism, we illustrate three dimensions of aesthetic engagement: (1) a shift to the fringe of attention that opens a zone of curiosity and fascination, (2) a focus on the unfolding moment that temporarily inhibits type 1 and type 2 thinking while sustaining uncertainty, and (3) a space to relax and possibly discard enduring storylines while creating potential paths to refreshment and change. We develop our argument through empirical analysis from the authors' respective studies of mindfulness‐based meditation and fly‐fishing. Both fly‐fishing and meditation open new worlds of perception that produce fascination and curiosity and destabilizes previous meanings. Through analyzing meditation and fly‐fishing, we highlight ideal‐typical processes that researchers will find in both mundane and complex combinations in daily life.

The Role of the Thalamus in Declarative and Procedural Linguistic Memory Processes.

Typically, thalamic aphasias appear to be primarily lexical-semantic disorders representing difficulty using stored declarative memories for semantic information to access lexical word forms. Yet, there also is reason to believe that the thalamus might play a role in linguistic procedural memory. For more than two decades, we have known that basal ganglia dysfunction is associated with difficulties in procedural learning, and specific thalamic nuclei are the final waypoint back to the cortex in cortico-basal ganglia-cortical loops. Recent analyses of the role of the thalamus in lexical-semantic processes and of the role of the basal ganglia in linguistic processes suggest that thalamic participation is not simply a matter of declarative vs. procedural memory, but a matter of how the thalamus participates in lexical-semantic processes and in linguistic procedural memory, as well as the interaction of these processes. One role for the thalamus in accessing lexical forms for semantic concepts relates to the stabilization of a very complex semantic-lexical interface with thousands of representations on both sides of the interface. Further, the possibility is discussed that the thalamus, through its participation in basal ganglia loops, participates in two linguistic procedural memory processes: syntactic/grammatical procedures and procedures for finding words to represent semantic concepts, with the latter interacting intricately with declarative memories. These concepts are discussed in detail along with complexities that can be addressed by future research.