Imaginary Objects Research Articles

Eyes Wide Shut: Gaze dynamics without vision, Symposium 6 at the 20th European Conference on Eye Movement Research (ECEM) in Alicante, 21.8.2019.

The human ability for visualization extends far beyond the physical items that surround us. We are able to dismiss the constant influx of photons hitting our retinas, and instead picture the layout of our kindergarten classroom, envision the gently swaying palm trees of our dream vacation, or foresee the face of a yet-to-be-born child. As we inspect imaginary objects and people with our mind’s eye, our corporeal eyeballs latch onto the fantasy. Research has found that our eyes can move as if seeing, even when there is nothing to look at. Thus, gaze explorations in the absence of actual vision have been reported in many contexts, including in visualization and memory tasks, and perhaps even during REM sleep. This symposium will present the manifold aspects of gaze dynamics in conditions when the visual input is impoverished or altogether absent. Presentations will address the characteristics of large and small eye movements during imagined and remembered scenes, the impact of visual field deficits on oculomotor control, and the role of eye movements in the future development of neural prosthetics for the blind.Video stream: https://vimeo.com/365522806

Teaching "Imaginary Objects" Symbolic Play to Young Children with Autism.

Symbolic play skills are important in language acquisition and child development. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have difficulties demonstrating such play behaviors. Imaginary objects symbolic play refers to play behavior in which children perform play actions without actual objects. Three boys with ASD (3-7years) participated in this study. A multiple-probe across three participants and two settings design was employed to evaluate the effects of intraverbal training on the acquisition and generalization of imaginary objects symbolic play. Results indicated that all children acquired and maintained target imaginary objects play activities. Generalization to untaught activities occurred in one child. All three children' symbolic play emerged or increased in free play after the instruction.

Проекция на въображаемото

This is a concept related to the creation of a mental image at speculative space below surface of the picture plane. As non-representational and incompatible with it, the radical idea is might be defined as conscious infinite extension of three-dimensional field in which the matter exist. As a matter of fact it is evocation of space that is not void, but consists of multifold speculative creations from a myriad of perspectives. As a result appears a flat abstract image elicited on the picture plane. This projection breaking through the surface and reveals the essence of the imaginary objects without distortions. As a visible expression the metaphoric image preserves the identity of the things in their difference.

Пустые термины в логике У. Оккама: к чему отсылают химеры

Статья посвящена проблеме суппозиции терминов в предложениях о вымышленных объектах и их условиям истинности в учении Уильяма Оккама. У. Оккам является одной из главных фигур схоластического номинализма. Его онтологическая позиция достаточно радикальна и предполагает признание $\textit{реального}$ существования только двух типов сущностей – единичных субстанций и качеств. Элиминация универсалий из онтологической системы У.~Оккама привела к трансформации существовавших ранее семантических теорий, в частности теории суппозиции. В реконструкции, ставшей классической, суппозиция сближалась с референцией, однако в 2000-е годы К. Дьютил-Новаэш предлагается реконструкция, в рамках которой суппозиция понимается как теория пропозициональных значений. Этот подход предполагает понимание суппозиции как интенсиональной, а не экстенсиональной теории. Одним из ключевых аргументов в пользу данной интерпретации служит суппозиция в предложениях о вымышленных объектах. На наш взгляд, данный аргумент вызывает затруднения. Термин, отсылающий к вымышленным объектам, не может иметь персональную, но лишь простую или материальную суппозицию. Вымышленные объекты У. Оккам называет невозможными. Химера является невозможным объектом, потому что она понимается как то, что составлено из нескольких различных животных. Свойство быть смесью различных животных ведет к тому, что данная вещь должна включать в себя несколько субстанциальных форм, однако это исключено, поскольку то, что имеет больше чем одну субстанциальную форму, не может существовать в мире. Хотя объект является невозможным, термин, который к нему отсылает, может быть как субъектом, так и предикатом предложения. В учении У. Оккама утвердительные предложения о вымышленных объектах всегда будут ложными, так как в мире отсутствуют реально существующие химеры. Это, на наш взгляд, свидетельствует о том, что предложения о невозможных объектах скорее могут быть аргументом для экстенсионального, чем для интенсионального понимания суппозиции.

Characteristics of Students’ Intuitive Thinking in Solving Mathematical Problems

Intuition is one of important thing in the process of solving mathematical problems. It works as cognitive mediation. In this understanding, intuition can be made as a bridge to students' understanding so that it can be accessed in linking imagined objects with the desired alternative solutions. In other words, students can determine what strategies or steps should be taken to get a problem solution, especially contextual problems that have completion steps that cannot be accessed directly. Intuitive thinking often occurs in mathematical problem solving. This was also seen in the mathematical students of IAIN Purwokerto. Based on the teaching experience so far, it was found that many students gave spontaneous answers without analyzing first. So, the researcher studied how characteristics of students’ intuitive thinking are. This research used qualitative with descriptive-exploratory type of research and used test to identify the characteristics of students’ intuitive thinking in solving mathematical problems. Results showed that students’ characteristics consisted of extrapolative, implicitly, persistently, coercively, and the power of synthesis.

‘Under The Breath of Asia’: Echoes of the 1917 Revolution in French-Speaking Belgium

This article studies the images of Russia in French-speaking Belgium after 1917. It focuses on a number of Belgian intellectuals and travellers to Russia: the socialist politician Jules Destrée; the journalist Pierre Daye who sympathized with fascism; Charles Sarolea, the Belgian consul in Edinburgh and a propagandist of the Belgian cause; the famous literary critic Louis Dumont-Wilden; and the (French) Jesuit Bishop Michel d’Herbigny, who operated from Belgium. They all comply with the reigning Western image of Russia as the ‘fundamental other’ (E.Adamovsky). However, despite the domination of clichés, Russia after 1917 was not only a timeless and unchangeable object of imagination. Russian émigrés such as princess Zinaida Schakhovskoy and the translator and critic Benjamin Goriély tried to overcome the polarization between Russia and the West and offer a conciliatory voice.

Особенности структуры образной креативности у школьников младшего и старшего возраста

A study of age-related characteristics of creativity may aid understanding of mechanisms related to thinking style formation and identify the patterns of creative development in school students. Longitudinal studies indicate that the creative potential of children may be a predictor of their future social and personal success. The paper presents the results of studying age characteristics of imaginative creativity in schoolchildren aged 9–15. The age range is chosen in view of the evidence on uneven manifestation of creative abilities in children due to nonlinear dynamics of intellectual development. The quantitative assessment of creativity indices (originality, fluency, and flexibility) used a computerized data processing tool. The data was obtained through Torrance’s “Circles” task and “Incomplete Figures” task. The study revealed higher originality of drawings in older students compared to younger ones when performing the “Circles” task. This may be due to the age-related categorical expansion of the range of imaginary objects under the conditions when imaginative stereotypes have to be abandoned. The “Incomplete Figures” task did not reveal any reliable intergroup differences in creativity indices. However, in younger school students it showed their correlation with interest and difficulty level (self-assessed). A higher appreciation of the difficulty of the task by older students may indicate age-related willingness to inject motivation in creative productivity. The content analysis of children’s imaginative creativity showed that the age-related structural reorganization of imaginative creativity may be based on the changes in the thematic categories of ideas generated by students: younger school students opt for such thematic categories as “Nature”, “Fantasy”, “Toys”, whereas older students tend to choose other categories with the priority given to the category “Person”.

Cities in Flight: A Descriptive Examination of the Tropical City Imagined in Twentieth Century Science Fiction Cover Art

A search for imaginary cities and city-like objects portrayed in twentieth century science fiction magazine cover art employed digital tools and followed a PRISMA methodology for systematic analysis. The findings include a correlation between indigenous peoples being portrayed as possessing less advanced technology than human visitors or human city builders in the tropics. Human cultural tropes are identified in the depiction of indigenous peoples, and trends over time in the increasing sophistication of portrayals, and a decline in gratuitously sexual artwork are visible, which supports findings of other work on changing cultural perceptions of the tropics found in science fiction. Notable themes were the tropics as a place of conflict, simplistic depictions of women, the difference between the portrayal of jungle and desert environments and the colonial mythology perpetuated in cover art over this period. Science fiction cities of the tropics were often still or devoid of life, rather than vibrant, active places. An intriguing finding was that building a filtering model for tropical environments in a science fiction setting leads naturally to a consideration of how the concept of the tropics is based on arbitrary, Earthly, cartographic conventions, which do not exist on other worlds. This difference highlights the value-laden meaning of tropical environments and societies applied by the ‘alien,’ whether European colonist or visiting Earthling, and that the inhabitants of the tropics are not bound by these conventions.

Human V4 Activity Patterns Predict Behavioral Performance in Imagery of Object Color

Color is special among basic visual features in that it can form a defining part of objects that are engrained in our memory. Whereas most neuroimaging research on human color vision has focused on responses related to external stimulation, the present study investigated how sensory-driven color vision is linked to subjective color perception induced by object imagery. We recorded fMRI activity in male and female volunteers during viewing of abstract color stimuli that were red, green, or yellow in half of the runs. In the other half we asked them to produce mental images of colored, meaningful objects (such as tomato, grapes, banana) corresponding to the same three color categories. Although physically presented color could be decoded from all retinotopically mapped visual areas, only hV4 allowed predicting colors of imagined objects when classifiers were trained on responses to physical colors. Importantly, only neural signal in hV4 was predictive of behavioral performance in the color judgment task on a trial-by-trial basis. The commonality between neural representations of sensory-driven and imagined object color and the behavioral link to neural representations in hV4 identifies area hV4 as a perceptual hub linking externally triggered color vision with color in self-generated object imagery. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Humans experience color not only when visually exploring the outside world, but also in the absence of visual input, for example when remembering, dreaming, and during imagery. It is not known where neural codes for sensory-driven and internally generated hue converge. In the current study we evoked matching subjective color percepts, one driven by physically presented color stimuli, the other by internally generated color imagery. This allowed us to identify area hV4 as the only site where neural codes of corresponding subjective color perception converged regardless of its origin. Color codes in hV4 also predicted behavioral performance in an imagery task, suggesting it forms a perceptual hub for color perception.

Smooth tracking of visual targets distinguishes lucid REM sleep dreaming and waking perception from imagination

Humans are typically unable to engage in sustained smooth pursuit for imagined objects. However, it is unknown to what extent smooth tracking occurs for visual imagery during REM sleep dreaming. Here we examine smooth pursuit eye movements during tracking of a slow-moving visual target during lucid dreams in REM sleep. Highly similar smooth pursuit tracking was observed during both waking perception and lucid REM sleep dreaming, in contrast to the characteristically saccadic tracking observed during visuomotor imagination. Our findings suggest that, in this respect, the visual imagery that occurs during REM sleep is more similar to perception than imagination. The data also show that the neural circuitry of smooth pursuit can be driven by a visual percept in the absence of retinal stimulation and that specific voluntary shifts in the direction of experienced gaze within REM sleep dreams are accompanied by corresponding rotations of the physical eyes.

Das Ding as Object of Melancholia

While Freud’s account of melancholia stresses the role of a lost object, a Lacanian approach draws attention to the role of an intruding and excessive “real” object and the inability of the psychotic subject to adequately shield themselves from the traumatic jouissance associated with it. While initially these approaches seem to contradict one another, this short commentary argues that the loss of an imaginary (ego-supporting) object (as per Freud’s conceptualization of psychosis) may be coterminous with the invasive presence of an object of a different order—that of the Lacanian real. We are able to better appreciate the particularity of this invasive object by reference to Lacan’s notion—itself derived from Freud—of das Ding. Das Ding is that “object” of amassed primal jouissance, which—like a black hole—corresponds to its own absence and which, in its terrifying and sublime materializations, brings together the three crucial Freudian concepts of libidinal overproximity, unmodulated jouissance, and the death drive.

Models for basic warp knitted fabrics Part II: single guide bar fabrics (closed-lap and open-lap)

Warp knitted fabrics are mainly used as household goods, technical textiles, medical textiles, etc. Modeling of these fabrics is necessary for predicting the desired technical or medical functions beforehand. In this context, the present series of papers is devoted to the modeling of basic warp knitted fabrics. In this, Part II of this series, models for single guide bar fabrics are created. There are mainly two types of single bar fabrics, namely closed-lap and open-lap single bar fabrics. Structures are also changed by having different lapping movements up to the five needle spaces. In this work, 1 and 1, 2 and 1, 3 and 1, 4 and 1 closed-lap and 1 and 1, 2 and 1, 3 and 1 open-lap single bar warp knitted fabrics are considered. During modeling, the loop leanings in the course-wise direction are considered, curvature equalities at the loop parts are attained as much as possible, two connected parabolas are taken as the fabric plane model of the loop connection part, loop heads are taken as parametric ellipses in two dimensions and the remaining loop parts are modeled by wrapping parabolic or cubic curves on imaginary cylindrical or conical objects. The models created are versatile and they can be changed and used for special cases. The models created are drawn to scale by using the 3DS-MAX computer graphical program. At first glance, it is seen that the shapes obtained by the models are similar to the ones that can be observed in real samples.

Um contributo da Teoria da Comunicação para a Teoria dos Imaginários Sociais

O presente artigo analisa as potenciais contribuições que a teoria da comunicação pode oferecer à teoria dos imaginários sociais a partir de um debate acerca da ambiguidade que uma perspetiva comunicacional encerra. Com efeito, podemos utilizar a comunicação como objeto empírico de estudo dos imaginários. Mas podemos, igualmente, apropriar-nos da comunicação como ângulo de análise capaz de mobilizar um trabalho comunicacional em torno dos imaginários sociais. Adotando esta segunda hipótese, releva-se a possibilidade dos imaginários sociais se assumirem como formas de interação simbólica (em sentido lato) comunicativamente determinadas. Com efeito, é defendido que a ação imaginante denota uma ordem comunicacional. Reconhecer esta dimensão comunicacional dos imaginários sociais envolve ponderar o papel da publicidade na figuração e re-figuração dos imaginários sociais e por isso propomos a noção de “imaginal público” enquanto fluxo imaginante, como um campo de proliferação de imagens e símbolos onde podemos observar as rotas e os trajetos dos imaginários sociais nos seus muitos processos de diferenciação e consolidação.

Action memory and knowledge-based cuing in school-aged children: The effect of object presentation and semantic integration

Research into memory has found that declarative knowledge provides rich information about the world and improved memory performance. The present research investigates the effects of knowledge-based cues on memory for action events and on the enactment effect. Cued recall of action phrases was examined in four groups of 8-14-year-olds (410 children in total). The object cues (i.e., real vs. imaginary objects) and semantic relational cues (i.e., well-integrated vs. poorly integrated items) were manipulated in three encoding conditions: verbal tasks, experimenter-performed tasks, and subject-performed tasks. Results indicate that enacted encoding has a recall advantage over verbal encoding regardless of the cue manipulations, though presenting objects and semantic-integrated items can moderate the enactment effect. In addition, providing further information about prior knowledge can directly influence memory performance across age groups. These results are discussed in relation to the effect of knowledge-based information in facilitating memory strategies and cognitive processing in school-aged children.

Компьютерная методика изучения начертательной геометрии. Техническое задание

Descriptive geometry, whose subject of study is three-dimensional real and imaginary objects, is available for a specific method both of knowledge deepening and gained knowledge control. Thus apart from visualization of graphic constructions is available a strictly logical sequence of their execution. Using a graphical editor instead of a ruler and compass not only and not so much facilitates routine operations for construction of circles, parallel and perpendicular lines, but allows literally touch geometric images. Choice of one of three methods such as construction, transformation or intermediaries ones, allows a student under testing not only to respond a specific question, but also to choose a more suitable way to solve this problem. Has been presented the description of computer program that allows quickly solve course problems with the prompt, if necessary. Other modes make it possible to exercise self-control or final control of gained knowledge. The program interface is multi-window structure enabling in sequence, on proposed 4–7 steps, solve a problem in the animation mode. A program feature is the absence of false (harmful for the study) questions as options. The right questions of another stage are used as alternative. When the answer to the question is wrong, than the principle of return is used. Have been offered stages and questions for solution of one of typical problems with illustration of a possible computer algorithm. Has been presented a help page variant. A set of tasks, covering the entire course of descriptive geometry, has been presented for a discussion. It has been noted that the described program’s pilot variant was developed and successfully implemented in educational process with use of all formulated principles and modes, including animation and the choice of points coordinates by the random number method.

Human V4 Activity Patterns Predict Behavioral Performance in Imagery of Object Color.

Color is special among basic visual features in that it can form a defining part of objects that are engrained in our memory. Whereas most neuroimaging research on human color vision has focused on responses related to external stimulation, the present study investigated how sensory-driven color vision is linked to subjective color perception induced by object imagery. We recorded fMRI activity in male and female volunteers during viewing of abstract color stimuli that were red, green, or yellow in half of the runs. In the other half we asked them to produce mental images of colored, meaningful objects (such as tomato, grapes, banana) corresponding to the same three color categories. Although physically presented color could be decoded from all retinotopically mapped visual areas, only hV4 allowed predicting colors of imagined objects when classifiers were trained on responses to physical colors. Importantly, only neural signal in hV4 was predictive of behavioral performance in the color judgment task on a trial-by-trial basis. The commonality between neural representations of sensory-driven and imagined object color and the behavioral link to neural representations in hV4 identifies area hV4 as a perceptual hub linking externally triggered color vision with color in self-generated object imagery.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Humans experience color not only when visually exploring the outside world, but also in the absence of visual input, for example when remembering, dreaming, and during imagery. It is not known where neural codes for sensory-driven and internally generated hue converge. In the current study we evoked matching subjective color percepts, one driven by physically presented color stimuli, the other by internally generated color imagery. This allowed us to identify area hV4 as the only site where neural codes of corresponding subjective color perception converged regardless of its origin. Color codes in hV4 also predicted behavioral performance in an imagery task, suggesting it forms a perceptual hub for color perception.

“A Weapon to Change Modern Reality”: Action and Agitation in On Kawara's Thanatophanies, 1955–1956

In the context of 1950s Japanese aesthetic theory, On Kawara's Death Masks can be seen a tool of agitation and provocation. Through these drawings, Kawara resisted the destruction of individual thought and action in the harsh social conditions of postwar Japan, seeking to return agency to the viewer in two ways. First, by warping his human figures in a metaphor of “material” objectification, Kawara aimed to provoke anxiety and thus spur the audience to social action. Second, by creating “imaginary objects” in the process of drafting the Death Masks, Kawara refused the guide of historical reference and prompted viewers to invent associations between his figures and social conditions. This series can be seen as providing a prototype for a new form of art, the “Printed Paintings.” Kawara, critical of the institutional form of art museums and galleries, sought to create a system of art that would directly invite creative responses to the original work and thereby achieve a new actualization of individual subjects and of society at large.

Puerperal Pregnancy Psychopathology: The Psychic Space of Unsafe Abortion in a Gabonese Woman

Abortion refers to what is taboo and that affects the sacred, which consists in taking the life of a human being. And many women never or rarely speak about abortion. The Gabonese woman, generally resorts to the etiology of witchcraft to order to justify, on one hand, illegal abortion, often presented as an involuntary supernatural and malefic fact, when the latter is known to those around her and, on the other hand, to explain some secondary sterility that has resulted from unsafe abortions. The purpose of this work is to examine, in the case of <i>Mufune</i>, the archaic level of the psychic investment of the fetus or the embryo as an imaginary object in utero, articulated with the discourse of family persecution because of the difficulties inherent in reproduction for a woman. Abortion, even unsecured, thus refers to feelings and the lived experience of women all of which are part of a specific psychic space. The latter is born with the joint emergence of the desire to have a child, the desire of pregnancy and the desire for maternity which take shape at the moment when the question of the continuation or not of the pregnancy arises, and is instituted with the act of abortion together with all of the psychic effects.

"TRANSNOUMENALISM" AND OBJECT-ORIENTED ONTOLOGY: REAL, IMAGINARY AND CONSTITUTION OF OBJECTIVITY WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF SPECULATIVE REALISM

The article investigates place of an object in the field of speculative realism in general and objectoriented ontology in particular. It describes object’s special and ambiguous position given to it by OOO as opposed to “correlational” approach. Critics of correlational philosophy concerning objects and speculative approach opposing to it (including the one suggested by object-oriented ontologists and counter-arguments by other speculative realists) are analyzed. G. Harman’s quadruple structure taken as a basis and supplemented by imaginary object mode, whose place is on the edge of subject-object dichotomy. The author examines the dichotomy in the context of possibility to overcome it with the help of approach suggested by OOO backing. The analysis of Harman’s attempt to develop the thing-in-itself and extend understanding of object concept is about to be done. The aim of the article is to define how the imaginary intrudes basic perception leaving us with realistic (at least as consciousness sees it) picture of the world. So, throughout the article can be seen an attempt to investigate relations and/or tensions to which real and imaginable objects come between each other within the approach of speculative realism. In addition, the author had a task to determine how imaginary mode of an object is embedded in all tensions of its quadruple structure. Full transition to completely objective reality is considered impossible to be due to difficulties with its detachment from the imaginary. There was defined that imaginary object mode is organically built in all Harman’s four tensions, which are allure, causation, confrontation and theory – all of them are explained in more detail in the article. It also produces an effect on perception of constituents between which we notice those tensions, real or sensual objects and qualities. Thus, it can be argued that imaginary mode of an object is its binding component and it is necessary for complete object cognition. Besides, proceeding from the fact of how object shapes in this mode, there can be made a conclusion that cognition is not one-way process of information receiving. Imaginable becomes creative addition to it, work done by consciousness in cognition.

ВПЛИВ ХУДОЖНЬО-ЕСТЕТИЧНОГО ВИХОВАННЯ УЧНІВ НА РОЗВИТОК МНОЖИННОГО ІНТЕЛЕКТУ

The article describes how artistic and aesthetic education of schoolchildren affects intelligences defined by the distinguished American psychologist Howard Gardner. It is described that verbal-linguistic intelligence can be developed through acquaintance with the best examples of prose, drama and poetry as well as engagement of schoolchildren to express their own ideas and opinions. Arts also contribute to development of logical-mathematical intelligence, e.g. it helps to calculate precise proportions during painting and define clear perspective. Visual-spatial intelligence is closely related to imagination and transferring the imagined objects into reality contributes to development of this type of intelligence. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence is associated with movements. Children are extremely active, that is why it is necessary to direct this energy into something useful, e.g. dancing or drama. As for musical-rhythmic intelligence, there is no better way to develop this type of intelligence as with the help of listening to music, singing songs, playing musical instruments and creating one’s own pieces of music. Interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences contribute to the state of harmony with oneself and each other. Naturalistic intelligence is connected with communication with nature, and the process of artistic education contributes to the ability to see beauty in the nature, evaluate and protect it. Finally, existential intelligence relates to philosophical speculations about one’s own life and works of art can help to look at the life from the other perspective. In such a way, the importance of teaching arts and through arts in the process of developing multiple intelligences is emphasized. Besides, some difficulties that can impede the development of certain types of intelligence are identified (absence of necessary resources, historical, cultural, geographical, family and situational factors). The defining role of culture in the development of multiple intelligences is pointed out, as well as the fact that each culture possesses all the defined types of intelligences to some extent. To crown it all, it is emphasized that every child has the ability for a high level of development of any kind of intelligence under proper conditions, presence of skilled instructors and motivation.