Feature Binding Research Articles

Openness in Situations of Joint Attention

Openness is a distinctive feature in the episodes of joint attention. In such an episode, everything is in the open, nothing is hidden (PEACOCKE, 2005, p. 298). But what is this metaphorical description supposed to grasp? On the common knowledge approach, openness is characterized by an infinite list of iterated perceptual knowledge attributions. This approach overloads the cognitive costs of joint attention. On the relational approach, openness is a primitive notion; the phenomenon results from the fusion of perceptions between the agents, a singular experience of co-percipience that explains joint attention for free. This paper aims to argue for an intermediate approach to explain openness. We offer here an account of openness in terms of non-wellfounded situations. We shall argue that it not only fully characterizes mutual awareness in a finite adequate way but that it also preserves the low cognitive burden of the co-presence situation.

The role of spatial attention in crowding and feature binding.

Crowding refers to the failure to identify a peripheral object due to nearby objects (flankers). A hallmark of crowding is inner-outer asymmetry; that is, the outer flanker (more peripheral) produces stronger interference than the inner one. Here, by manipulating attention, we tested the predictions of two competing accounts: the attentional account, which predicts a positive attentional effect on the inner-outer asymmetry (i.e., attention to the outer flanker will increase asymmetry) and the receptive field size account, which predicts a negative attentional effect. In Experiment 1, observers estimated a Gabor target orientation. A peripheral pre-cue drew attention to one of three locations: target, inner flanker, or outer flanker. Probabilistic mixture modeling demonstrated asymmetry by showing that observers often misreported the outer-flanker orientation as the target. Interestingly, the outer cue led to a higher misreport rate of the outer flanker, and the inner cue led to a lower misreport rate of the outer flanker. Experiment 2 tested the effect of crowding and attention on incoherent object reports (i.e., binding errors, reporting the tilt of one presented item with the color of another item). In each trial, observers estimated both the tilt and color of the target. Attention merely increased coherent target reports, but not coherent flanker reports. The results suggest that the locus of spatial attention plays an essential role in crowding, as well as inner-outer asymmetry, and demonstrate that crowding and feature binding are closely related. However, our findings are inconsistent with the view that covert attention automatically binds features together.

UNDERSTANDING YŪNUS EMRE IN THE CONTEXT OF TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY

As a poet-hero who was raised by Turkish culture and left his mark on centuries, every step taken to fully grasp Yūnus Emre is an effort to understand people. The aim of the study is to analyse the psychological dynamics and experiences of Yūnus Emre and to reveal a "special" human model. In this direction, the peak experiences in Yūnus Emre's poetry are discussed in the context of the theories of Abraham Maslow, who is accepted as the founder of the transpersonal psychology school. The reason why Maslow is suitable for the subject is that he is one of the founders of "modern health psychology" developed in the West. In relation to this, when evaluating a ṣūfī-poet like Yūnus Emre who left his mark on the ages, it was deemed appropriate to choose a psychology school that focuses on the potential of human, not on the weaknesses. In the study, it has been determined that the moods described by Maslow are very similar to the “states” that Yūnus lived in depending on ṣūfism. These links are grouped under two main headings. In the first part of the study, the motivations needed to reach the transcendent or peak experiences and their equivalents in Yūnus Emre's poems were evaluated. It has been observed that deep feelings such as love, pain, devotion and anxiety have turned into purposeful motivational tools in Yūnus’s poetry. In the second part, the appearance of certain characteristics of transcendental experiences in Yūnus Emre's poems is given. The basic features of these transcendent experiences have been identified as unity of consciousness, self-cognition and admiration. As a result of the study, it has been seen that a new breath can be brought to the analysis of Yūnus Emre's poems by utilizing the accumulation of different disciplines. However, it was seen that although Maslow discovered the subject of peak experience and meta-motivations with his own efforts, he could not put forward a systematic definition, and ṣūfism is at a much more advanced point in this regard. Keywords: Trans-personal Psychology, Yūnus Emre, Abraham Maslow, Peak Experience.

A Farewell to Sufficiency (In Memory of Jean-Luc Nancy)

A Farewell to Sufficiency (In Memory of Jean-Luc Nancy)

Mosque Archives and a Muslim Collective Memory in Formation

Abstract Looking at the fragmented documents of Muslim community life at mosques, bringing together different types of materials and creating mosque archives is a challenging endeavour, as shown by the contributions in this volume. This contribution asks for the implication the archives, once collected and considered as parts of a larger picture, can have for the formation of a Muslim collective memory. Connecting different archives – with their singular experiences – into collective forms of memory, similar experiences and ruptures come to the surface and a new perspective on a shared German history is articulated. As the collective memory is a reservoir to understand the past, giving meaning to the present, and a source for the future, this process has a social and political dimension. The process of creating a Muslim collective memory will fill blanks within German history and add new chapters, but will at the same time change Muslim self-perception and self-positioning by recentring their sometimes ambiguous experiences within a larger setting.

Binding of Features and Responses in Inhibition of Return: The Effects of Task Demand.

Binding of target's location and response has been demonstrated in inhibition of return (IOR). This study further investigated the effects of task demand on the binding of the target's form to the target's location and response in the target-target paradigm of IOR. Experiments 1 (detection task) and 2 (localization task), in which the target's form was task irrelevant, suggested the binding of location and response. Experiment 3 (discrimination task), in which the target's form was task relevant, showed the binding of target's form, location, and response. These findings support the concept that the features and responses associated with a target are integrated into episodic representations or event files for the target event. Furthermore, task demand modulates the binding or retrieval of the event files.

Binding of task-irrelevant contextual features in task switching.

Research in attention and action control produced substantial evidence suggesting the presence of feature binding. This study explores the binding of task-irrelevant context features in cued task switching. We predicted that repeating a context feature in trial n retrieves the trial n - 1 episode. Consequently, performance should improve when the retrieved features match the features of the current trial. Two experiments (N = 124; N = 96) employing different tasks and materials showed that repeating the task-irrelevant context improved performance when the task and the response repeated. Furthermore, repeating the task-irrelevant context increased task repetition benefits only when the context feature appeared synchronously with cue onset, but not when the context feature appeared with a 300-ms delay (Experiment 1). Similarly, repeating the task-irrelevant context improved performance when the task and the response repeated only when the context feature was part of the cue, and not when it was part of the target (Experiment 2). Taken together, binding and retrieval processes seem to play a crucial role in task switching, alongside response inhibition processes. In turn, our study provided a better understanding of binding and retrieval of task-irrelevant features in general, and specifically on how they modulate response repetition benefits in task repetitions.

Impact of Governance Practice on Unity and Reconciliation among Genocide Survivors and Released Prisoners of Rwandans Post 1994 Genocide in Nyanza District

The objective of this research was to assess the impact of governance practice on unity and reconciliation among genocide survivors and released prisoners of Rwandans post 1994 genocide in Nyanza District. Specifically, the research intended to assess the characteristics of governance practice that influence unity and reconciliation among genocide survivors and released prisoners in Nyanza District; to assess the lessons that can be drawn from the experience of unity and reconciliation due to governance practice among genocide survivors and released prisoners in Nyanza District and to evaluate the relationship between governance practice and Unity and Reconciliation among genocide survivors and released prisoners in Nyanza District. Moreover, the carrying out of this research, concentrating on Good Governance, has motives of current confidence, and there was no recent empirical findings concerning the correlation linking governance practice and Unity and Reconciliation in Nyanza District. Descriptive and correlative research designs were used. Study population size was 21740 while the sample size was 122. Questionnaire was used as data collection instrument. Quantitative approach was used in data analysis by Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Findings revealed major characteristics of governance practice such as participation, responsiveness; equity and inclusiveness, accountability, transparency and rule of law have mean (μ) value which is between 1.00-1.50, while the variables with 1.51-2.50 are effectiveness and efficiency as well as consensus orientation. For the lesson, 95.9% of respondents affirmed that unity and Reconciliation are possible; 95.1% of research participants acknowledged that the restorative justice is important in unity and reconciliation; 86.9% of respondents recognized that Genocidists should not be dehumanized; 82.8% of respondents underlined the full cooperation to fight against genocide ideology is essential to unity and reconciliation whilst 75.4% of respondents approved that the only governance is not sufficient for unity and reconciliation. Regarding the relationship, the correlation coefficient is 0.880 meaning that there is a positive higher correlation between governance practice and Unity and reconciliation. Keywords: Governance practice, Governance characteristics, Unity & Reconciliation

The Co-Construction of an Elegant Ending-Polyphonic Musical Intervention in Palliative Care: A Case Study.

The complexity of creative processes, within which human nature pines and finds itself, reflects a state of relational emergency. The weak structure of our multicultural system gives us a series of behavioral flaws, denouncing our inability to welcome diversity and treasure it. In the search for the way out, using the metaphor of polyphony is increasingly frequent. However, since the term Polyphony is borrowed from musical language, it would be necessary to experience it concretely, and this usually does not happen. Those musicians who aspire to be artists in helping relationships should constantly train themselves in this sense and force themselves to make their ability understood externally, helping those who for reasons of life find themselves experiencing the limit. The field of palliative care is probably the most suitable socio-cultural setting for getting in touch with the personal (mis)interpretations, idiosyncrasies, and pain of those who feel close to the end. To their aid, the aesthetic criterion advances. Making sacred the unifying experience of loss and finiteness turns into an educational process moreover therapeutic, in the co-construction of an elegant “finale” able to reach the heart and intelligence of those who remain.

Expressing the Prolonged Grief Disorder through Face Expression by using Silk Screen

The purpose of the project is to express prolonged grief through facial expressions. Grief is a natural response to loss because it is a universal and singular experience. Art students and academics frequently employed art-based study as a technique and research strategy. This study's methodology includes the processes of artwork analysis, visual data collection, and artwork making. According to the researcher, this study will significantly impact the art scene, especially among printmakers. The outcomes will be implemented in producing artworks incorporating silk screen printing techniques.

Aging and feature binding in visual working memory.

Older adults have reduced performance in visual working memory tasks in comparison to young adults, but the precipitators of the age-related impairment are not fully understood. The most common interpretation of this difference is that older adults are incapable of maintaining the same amount of object representations as young adults over short intervals (in line with the fixed-slot model of working memory). However, it has remained largely unexplored whether the age-related decline is only due to the number of representations that older individuals can retain in visual working memory, or whether the content of the representation(s) may have an effect as well (in line with the flexible-resource model of working memory). Feature binding studies represent an interesting research line to examine the content of older adults' representations. In this mini-review, we present the main results across feature binding studies in aging, as well as highlight the importance of manipulating both the representation content and number to have a stress test of the various models of working memory and their contribution to aging. Overall, feature binding studies, together with the simultaneous manipulation of set size, will allow us to better understand the nature of the age-related decline of visual working memory.

Craniofacial Pain: Frequent Combined Diagnosis in Complex Unique Patients

Pain is a frequent symptom that is present in several areas of the medical field. Innumerous conditions show this unpleasant complaint, which pathophysiological particularities need to be understood in order to achieve an accurate diagnosis. Besides, although there are diagnostic criteria and classifications essential to the clinical practice, there is a role of individual parameters, such as previous pain experiences, personality, pain history, comorbidities, predisposing factors, and associated diseases [1,2]. This unique combination of factors makes pain a singular experience, a reason why patients’ assessment by doctors depends on training, study, and dedication.

The emergent loop of interdisciplinary exchange

This exegetical analysis of performance drawing highlights its character as an interdisciplinary process. Specifically, I demonstrate that the interrelation of drawing and performance, that occurs in the active, live-audience drawing processes, is a unique interdisciplinary exchange. This analysis utilizes the concept of ‘intra-action’, as defined by Karen Barad, to reveal the multidirectional and emergent processes of the interdisciplinary exchange exhibited through drawing as performance. Furthermore, this interdisciplinary exchange is likened to a Möbius loop. Exploring ‘intra-action’ and the Möbius loop analogy, I examine the interdisciplinary drawing process through the cooperative performance drawing work initiated by myself, Kellie O’Dempsey (Australia) and Jennifer Wroblewski (United States): Resistance Movement (2017–18). This work exemplifies the interdisciplinary process of performance drawing as the initiator for creative exchange. To examine this proposition, I isolate the components of drawing, performance and the spatio-temporal, and analyse how these components operate through Resistance Movement. While Barad’s theory of intra-action relates to the entanglement of matter in the universe, I use the theory to explore the entangled aspects of performance drawing that create a single, unified experience for both artists and viewers. The three elements – drawing, performance and the spatio-temporal – combine, resulting in intra-action. Thus, creating a unique, interdisciplinary event.

Adaptive cognition implemented with a context-aware and flexible neuron for next-generation artificial intelligence.

Neuromorphic computing mimics the organizational principles of the brain in its quest to replicate the brain's intellectual abilities. An impressive ability of the brain is its adaptive intelligence, which allows the brain to regulate its functions "on the fly" to cope with myriad and ever-changing situations. In particular, the brain displays three adaptive and advanced intelligence abilities of context-awareness, cross frequency coupling, and feature binding. To mimic these adaptive cognitive abilities, we design and simulate a novel, hardware-based adaptive oscillatory neuron using a lattice of magnetic skyrmions. Charge current fed to the neuron reconfigures the skyrmion lattice, thereby modulating the neuron's state, its dynamics and its transfer function "on the fly." This adaptive neuron is used to demonstrate the three cognitive abilities, of which context-awareness and cross-frequency coupling have not been previously realized in hardware neurons. Additionally, the neuron is used to construct an adaptive artificial neural network (ANN) and perform context-aware diagnosis of breast cancer. Simulations show that the adaptive ANN diagnoses cancer with higher accuracy while learning faster and using a more compact and energy-efficient network than a nonadaptive ANN. The work further describes how hardware-based adaptive neurons can mitigate several critical challenges facing contemporary ANNs. Modern ANNs require large amounts of training data, energy, and chip area, and are highly task-specific; conversely, hardware-based ANNs built with adaptive neurons show faster learning, compact architectures, energy-efficiency, fault-tolerance, and can lead to the realization of broader artificial intelligence.

Intentional and incidental odour-colour binding in working memory

ABSTRACT The question of how features are bound together in working memory has become a topic of much research in recent years. However, this is typically focused on visual and/or auditory stimuli. The purpose of this study is to apply established feature binding procedures to investigate odour binding in working memory. Across three experiments, memory for intentionally and incidentally formed odour-colour pairings was tested. Experiment 1 showed that following explicit instruction to remember the odour-colour combinations, young adults can recall lists of 3-pairings at levels above that of chance and exhibit a recency advantage for the last pairing. In Experiment 2 participants were asked to prioritise the first pairing in the list or treat all pairings equally. We observed only limited evidence of prioritisation affecting the serial position function. Experiment 3 explored incidental odour-colour binding. Using a yes/no recognition procedure, accuracy did not differ for positive test probes presented in the same (bound) or different (unbound) colour to encoding. This study is one of the first to examine odour-colour binding in working memory and, taking the evidence together, suggests that odour-colour bindings can be formed in working memory; however, functionality may be limited compared to that of visual feature binding.

К вопросу об аффекте как одном из оснований дигитального дискурса

Introduction. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of affects found its further development in the works of the Canadian philosopher Brian Massoumi, who was engaged in popularizing the heritage of the French tandem of philosophers in the English- speaking environment. Massumi continues to explore society and man, based on the concepts of rhizome and the dominance of affective flows in forming social and political dimensions of people’s lives, as well as the coherence of the emergence of affect and the digital environment. Massumi argues that the influence of the affective on human behavior is extremely strong; it takes revenge on consciousness, the sensory-emotional sphere and the rationality of the individual. Breaking a single field of consciousness into many streams, Massumi postulates the initial splitting of the human psyche, in which he continues the schizoanalytic line of Deleuze and Guattari, who set this discourse in the latest Western philosophy. The purpose of the article is to answer the question: “Can a person become transparent in the world of numerical relations?” In the answers to this question, two main positions can be identified: a scientific view of a person as an incalculable and observable object and the idea of a person as an expression of unobservable subjectivity, his inner world, trans- gressed by imagination in self–cognition. Methods. The article analyzes Brian Massumi’s work from the view point of singular anthropology, which asserts the unity of consciousness, and also examines the genesis of affect from its description by Spinoza to the complexity theory of post-non- classical scientific discourse, a special place in which belongs to the phenomenon of an observer of complex processes. Scientific novelty of the research. The discovery of new optics, expressed in an appeal to subjectiv- ity and showing the insufficiency of describing a person exclusively with an objectified view of digital reality, constitutes the scientific novelty of this work. Results. On the basis of the thesis that it is impos- sible to identify a person by attributing his essence to a digital structure, there is a special attitude to anthropological reality as a unique event that is not included in the frames of the digital paradigm. Conclusions. Anthropological reality is based on affect, this is its territory, but there is no single definition of affect that would unite the often polar directions of philosophical thought. In this article, the author comes to the conclusion that Massumi’s attempt to fix affect on the EEG and present these results as a fact of finding affect in space reduces the concept of affect to the manifested electro- magnetic signals of the brain. While the affective field includes the non-objectifiable phenomena of dreams, emotions, and the supersensible. On the other hand, complexity theory does not exclude working with the latest phenomena, but still chooses flat ontologies and digital languages for describing anthropological reality as a philosophical guideline, which, in general, develops Massumi’s idea of human readability and transparency. But, unlike the above-mentioned approaches, Rus- sian philosophical thought asserts the reality of a person not in space, but in time, thereby offering to expand the range of optics to the very concept of affect.

Stigma and art therapy with Brazilian leprosy patients

Introduction This study is about art therapy as a resource to express and redefine the meaning of the stigma experienced by leprosy patients after being discharged from multi-drug therapy. Aim To investigate the use of art therapy as a tool for expression and redefinition of stigma in subjects affected by leprosy. Method A qualitative, descriptive exploratory study was conducted to investigate stigma among Brazilian leprosy patients through their artistic creations in art therapy workshops, combined with a focus group discussion during outpatient treatment. Patients with upper extremity impairment that had been treated with physical therapy and surgery were included. Initially, a focus group was formed to discuss previous awareness of the condition, receiving the diagnosis, and living with leprosy. Subsequently, seventeen separate art therapy workshops were held, which provided space for listening, exchanging experiences, as well as discussing and explaining the disease itself. Results and discussion These individuals’ artistic creations revealed the presence of both enacted stigma as well as self-inflicted stigma. Furthermore, effects from sharing their deepest feelings about the singular experience of contracting leprosy were observed, as well as the formation of bonds and solidarity, which may have contributed to the return of certain individuals to the labor force and social life. This study presents an innovative approach to help people cope with the stigma associated with leprosy. Conclusions This research does not intend to establish a framework, but rather to reveal issues of intersubjectivity related to the stigma experienced by leprosy patients. Art therapy workshops represented an important aspect of their healthcare regime, helping them understand and process how the disease is seen by society and its repercussions on their own lives.

Проблемы с проблемой сознания. Абстракции и псевдоабстракции

The problem of consciousness is explored in the article from conceptual and terminologi­cal perspective. The question of the origins of the ambiguity of the relevant philosophical terms is discussed and relevant examples are given. The basic premise of the study is the as­sertion that abstraction works as a differentiation of differences that characterize and sep­arate kinds of experience. A methodological distinction is made between abstraction and pseudo-abstraction, which can bear the same name, in this case “consciousness”. Termi­nology is interpreted as naming of abstractions of different levels and of realizable expe­riences. The term “consciousness” denotes an element of the ultimate distinction “con­sciousness/objective world”, abstracted from a series of distinctions that characterize the types and levels of experience. Pseudo-abstraction is formed from a series of pre-ex­isting meanings of the word “consciousness” without regard to realizable types of experi­ence as types of distinctions. There are two main alternative trends in the formulation of the problem of consciousness – structural-genetic and phenomenological. The high­lighted tendencies have something in common: the vagueness of the meaning in the use of the word “consciousness” and its functioning as a pseudo-abstraction. The ideological aspect of the problem is also considered. The principle of empiricism is identified with the recognition of the primacy of the diversity of experience as the source of abstraction. An alternative is formulated concerning the problem of the unity of consciousness. Husserl’s argumentation, through which an attempt is made to single out the sphere of consciousness as independent of any type of objectivity and as self-sufficient is analyzed, as well as the way he introduces such terms as “consciousness”, “sensation”, “experi­ence”, “perception” “intentionality”. Husserl’s thought experiment, the purpose of which is to prove the identity of the sensation of color from a real and illusory object, is sub­jected to a detailed analysis.

Assessing mild cognitive impairment using object-location memory in immersive virtual environments.

Pathological changes in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) are found in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and aging. The earliest pathological accumulation of tau colocalizes with the areas of the MTL involved in object processing as part of a wider anterolateral network. Here, we sought to assess the diagnostic potential of memory for object locations in iVR environments in individuals at high risk of AD dementia (amnestic mild cognitive impairment [aMCI] n = 23) as compared to age‐related cognitive decline. Consistent with our primary hypothesis that early AD would be associated with impaired object location, aMCI patients exhibited impaired spatial feature binding. Compared to both older (n = 24) and younger (n = 53) controls, aMCI patients, recalled object locations with significantly less accuracy (p < .001), with a trend toward an impaired identification of the object's correct context (p = .05). Importantly, these findings were not explained by deficits in object recognition (p = .6). These deficits differentiated aMCI from controls with greater accuracy (AUC = 0.89) than the standard neuropsychological tests. Within the aMCI group, 16 had CSF biomarkers indicative of their likely AD status (MCI+ n = 9 vs. MCI− n = 7). MCI+ showed lower accuracy in the object‐context association than MCI− (p = .03) suggesting a selective deficit in object‐context binding postulated to be associated with anterior‐temporal areas. MRI volumetric analysis across healthy older participants and aMCI revealed that test performance positively correlates with lateral entorhinal cortex volumes (p < .05) and hippocampus volumes (p < .01), consistent with their hypothesized role in binding contextual and spatial information with object identity. Our results indicate that tests relying on the anterolateral object processing stream, and in particular requiring successful binding of an object with spatial information, may aid detection of pre‐dementia AD due to the underlying early spread of tau pathology.

Binding between Responses is not Modulated by Grouping of Response Effects.

Several action control theories postulate that individual responses to stimuli are represented by event files that include temporal bindings between stimulus, response, and effect features. Which stimulus features are bound into an event file can be influenced by stimulus grouping. Here, we investigate whether effect grouping moderates response feature binding. For this purpose, we used an adapted response-response binding paradigm introducing a visual effect after each response. These effects could either appear spatially grouped, i.e., close to each other, or non-grouped, thus far from each other. If effect grouping influences response representation, response-response binding effects should be larger for responses producing grouped effects than for responses producing non-grouped effects. In two experiments, we found no indication for a modulation of response-response binding by effect grouping. The role of effect grouping for binding and retrieval processes seems to differ from past evidence regarding stimulus grouping.