Important Aspect Of Human Cognition Research Articles

Investigating the impact of emotion on temporal orientation in a deep multitask setting

Temporal orientation is an important aspect of human cognition which shows how an individual emphasizes past, present, and future. Theoretical research in psychology shows that one’s emotional state can influence his/her temporal orientation. We hypothesize that measuring human temporal orientation can benefit from concurrent learning of emotion. To test this hypothesis, we propose a deep learning-based multi-task framework where we concurrently learn a unified model for temporal orientation (our primary task) and emotion analysis (secondary task) using tweets. Our multi-task framework takes users’ tweets as input and produces three temporal orientation labels (past, present or future) and four emotion labels (joy, sadness, anger, or fear) with intensity values as outputs. The classified tweets are then grouped for each user to obtain the user-level temporal orientation and emotion. Finally, we investigate the associations between the users’ temporal orientation and their emotional state. Our analysis reveals that joy and anger are correlated to future orientation while sadness and fear are correlated to the past orientation.

Unraveling the Interconnections Between Statistical Learning and Dyslexia: A Review of Recent Empirical Studies.

One important aspect of human cognition involves the learning of structured information encountered in our environment, a phenomenon known as statistical learning. A growing body of research suggests that learning to read print is partially guided by learning the statistical contingencies existing between the letters within a word, and also between the letters and sounds to which the letters refer. Research also suggests that impairments to statistical learning ability may at least partially explain the difficulties experienced by individuals diagnosed with dyslexia. However, the findings regarding impaired learning are not consistent, perhaps partly due to the varied use of methodologies across studies – such as differences in the learning paradigms, stimuli used, and the way that learning is assessed – as well as differences in participant samples such as age and extent of the learning disorder. In this review, we attempt to examine the purported link between statistical learning and dyslexia by assessing a set of the most recent and relevant studies in both adults and children. Based on this review, we conclude that although there is some evidence for a statistical learning impairment in adults with dyslexia, the evidence for an impairment in children is much weaker. We discuss several suggestive trends that emerge from our examination of the research, such as issues related to task heterogeneity, possible age effects, the role of publication bias, and other suggestions for future research such as the use of neural measures and a need to better understand how statistical learning changes across typical development. We conclude that no current theoretical framework of dyslexia fully captures the extant research findings on statistical learning.

Source flexibility in schizophrenia: specificity and role in auditory hallucinations

ABSTRACTIntroduction: One important aspect of human cognition relies on the ability to bias attention towards stimulus-independent and stimulus-oriented thoughts and to switch between these states – or source flexibility. This mechanism has received very little attention in the literature, and in particular in schizophrenia. Moreover, there is good reason to believe that this mechanism could also be implicated in hallucinations, but this hypothesis has never been examined. Thus, the aim of the present study was, for the first time in the literature, to explore source flexibility abilities in schizophrenia and their potential relations with auditory hallucinations.Methods: Forty persons diagnosed with schizophrenia and 26 healthy controls were evaluated with tasks assessing source flexibility, cognitive flexibility and processing speed. Patients were also assessed with a measure of hallucinations and delusions.Results: Results revealed that persons diagnosed with schizophrenia presented a poorer performance than healthy controls for source flexibility. Moreover, results demonstrated that source flexibility performance could not be explained by a more general impairment of processing speed or buy difficulties in cognitive flexibility. Finally, source flexibility was found to be related to hallucinations.Conclusions: Source flexibility plays an important role in schizophrenia and in particular is a cognitive mechanism involved in hallucinations.

Human Cognition, Patterning and Deacon’s Absentials: The Value of Absent-Mindedness in the Sense of Minding What Is Absent

Important aspects of human cognition are considered in terms of patterning, which we claim represents a shift from focusing on what is present to what is absent. We make use of Deacon’s notion of absentials and apply it to the patterning that underscores human cognition. Several important aspects of human cognition are considered that represent a shift from focusing on what is present to what is absent, namely, language as representing the transition from percept to concept-based thinking, mathematical grouping and patterning of items into sets that gave rise to verbal language, as well as imaginative thinking which is so critical for the development of the arts, mathematics and science. The connection between information and absence is also examined, in which we claim that information is an absential, paralleling an idea of Deacon’s.

Ways of Perceiving and Mapping Human Cognition through Art

This paper discusses the question of how art might reveal important aspects of human cognition by taking as a starting point Alva Noe’s book Strange Tools. Art and Human Nature (2015). I argue that the enactive approach defended in this book has strong affinities with some recent art-historical approaches that take their cue from cognitive neuroscience, such as neuroarthistory (Onians, 2016). My main claim is that the extended mind thesis, which is implied in both approaches, fails to capture important aspects of the cognitive underpinnings of artistic practices. Finally, I bring into focus Noe’s ambiguous position with respect to the role of perception in aesthetic appreciation. What good comes from distinguishing between various ways of seeing while at the same time holding that art appreciation is a matter of value and judgment rather than perception and response?

Placebo can enhance creativity.

BackgroundThe placebo effect is usually studied in clinical settings for decreasing negative symptoms such as pain, depression and anxiety. There is interest in exploring the placebo effect also outside the clinic, for enhancing positive aspects of performance or cognition. Several studies indicate that placebo can enhance cognitive abilities including memory, implicit learning and general knowledge. Here, we ask whether placebo can enhance creativity, an important aspect of human cognition.MethodsSubjects were randomly assigned to a control group who smelled and rated an odorant (n = 45), and a placebo group who were treated identically but were also told that the odorant increases creativity and reduces inhibitions (n = 45). Subjects completed a recently developed automated test for creativity, the creative foraging game (CFG), and a randomly chosen subset (n = 57) also completed two manual standardized creativity tests, the alternate uses test (AUT) and the Torrance test (TTCT). In all three tests, participants were asked to create as many original solutions and were scored for originality, flexibility and fluency.ResultsThe placebo group showed higher originality than the control group both in the CFG (p<0.04, effect size = 0.5) and in the AUT (p<0.05, effect size = 0.4), but not in the Torrance test. The placebo group also found more shapes outside of the standard categories found by a set of 100 CFG players in a previous study, a feature termed out-of-the-boxness (p<0.01, effect size = 0.6).ConclusionsThe findings indicate that placebo can enhance the originality aspect of creativity. This strengthens the view that placebo can be used not only to reduce negative clinical symptoms, but also to enhance positive aspects of cognition. Furthermore, we find that the impact of placebo on creativity can be tested by CFG, which can quantify multiple aspects of creative search without need for manual coding. This approach opens the way to explore the behavioral and neural mechanisms by which placebo might amplify creativity.

Visual knowledge discovery and machine learning for investment strategy

Knowledge discovery is an important aspect of human cognition. The advantage of the visual approach is in opportunity to substitute some complex cognitive tasks by easier perceptual tasks. However for cognitive tasks such as financial investment decision making this opportunity faces the challenge that financial data are abstract multidimensional and multivariate, i.e., outside of traditional visual perception in 2D or 3D world. This paper presents an approach to find an investment strategy based on pattern discovery in multidimensional space of specifically prepared time series. Visualization based on the lossless Collocated Paired Coordinates (CPC) plays an important role in this approach for building the criteria in the multidimensional space for finding an efficient investment strategy. Criteria generated with the CPC approach allow reducing/compressing space using simple directed graphs with beginnings and the ends located in different time points. The dedicated subspaces constructed for time series include characteristics such as Bollinger Band, difference between moving averages, changes in volume etc. Extensive simulation studies have been performed in learning/testing context. Effective relations were found for one-hour EURUSD pair for recent and historical data. Also the method has been explored for one-day EURUSD time series n 2D and 3D visualization spaces. The main positive result is finding the effective split of a normalized 3D space on 4×4×4 cubes in the visualization space that leads to a profitable investment decision (long, short position or nothing). The strategy is ready for implementation in algotrading mode.

Understanding Minds in Real-World Environments: Toward a Mobile Cognition Approach.

There is a growing body of evidence that important aspects of human cognition have been marginalized, or overlooked, by traditional cognitive science. In particular, the use of laboratory-based experiments in which stimuli are artificial, and response options are fixed, inevitably results in findings that are less ecologically valid in relation to real-world behavior. In the present review we highlight the opportunities provided by a range of new mobile technologies that allow traditionally lab-bound measurements to now be collected during natural interactions with the world. We begin by outlining the theoretical support that mobile approaches receive from the development of embodied accounts of cognition, and we review the widening evidence that illustrates the importance of examining cognitive processes in their context. As we acknowledge, in practice, the development of mobile approaches brings with it fresh challenges, and will undoubtedly require innovation in paradigm design and analysis. If successful, however, the mobile cognition approach will offer novel insights in a range of areas, including understanding the cognitive processes underlying navigation through space and the role of attention during natural behavior. We argue that the development of real-world mobile cognition offers both increased ecological validity, and the opportunity to examine the interactions between perception, cognition and action—rather than examining each in isolation.

Counterfactual Reasoning: Sharpening Conceptual Distinctions in Developmental Studies

Counterfactual reasoning (CFR)—mentally representing what the world would be like now if things had been different in the past—is an important aspect of human cognition and the focus of research in areas such as philosophy, social psychology, and clinical psychology. More recently, it has also gained broad interest in cognitive developmental psychology, mainly focusing on the question of how this kind of reasoning can be characterized. Studies have been inconsistent in identifying when children can use CFR. In this article, we present theoretical positions that may account for this inconsistency and evaluate them in the light of research on counterfactual emotions.

Behavioral toxicology of cognition: Extrapolation from experimental animal models to humans: Behavioral toxicology symposium overview

A variety of behavioral instruments are available for assessing important aspects of cognition in both animals and humans and, in many cases, the same instruments can be used in both. While nonhuman primates are phylogenetically closest to humans, rodents, pigeons and other animals also offer behaviors worthy of note. Delay Discounting procedures are as useful as any in studies of impulsivity and may have utility in shedding light on processes associated with drug abuse. Specific memory tests such as Visual Paired Comparisons tasks (similar to the Fagan test of infant intelligence) can be modified to allow for assessment of different aspects of memory such as spatial memory. Use of these and other specific memory tasks can be used to directly monitor aspects of cognitive development in infant animals, particularly in nonhuman primates such as monkeys, and children and to draw inferences with respect to possible neuroanatomical substrates sub-serving their functions. Tasks for assessing working memory such as Variable Delayed Response (VDR), modified VDR and Spatial Working Memory tasks are now known to be affected in Parkinson's disease (PD). These and other cognitive function tasks are being used in a monkey model of PD to assess the ability of anti-Parkinson's disease therapies to ameliorate these cognitive deficits without diminishing their therapeutic effects on motor dysfunction. Similarly, in a rat model of the cognitive deficits associated with perinatal exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), clear parallels with children can be seen in at least two areas of executive function: cognitive flexibility and response inhibition. In the rat model, discrimination reversal tasks were utilized to assess cognitive flexibility, a function often assessed in humans using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task. Response inhibition was assessed using performance in a Differential Reinforcement of Low Response Rates (DRL) task. As the data continue to accumulate, it becomes more clear that our attempts to adapt animal-appropriate tasks for the study of important aspects of human cognition have proven to be very fruitful.

Scale and frequency chauvinism in brain dynamics: too much emphasis on gamma band oscillations

In the early 1990s, Wolf Singer advanced a very provocative idea: Different features of an animal’s world are represented by distinct cell assemblies that can be bound together by oscillatory synchrony (Singer 1993; Singer and Gray 1995). In particular, simultaneous recordings from animal visual, association, somatosensory, and motor areas reveal that the cortical areas involved in task execution synchronize local field potentials (LFPs) when the animals prepare for the task and focus attention on the relevant stimulus. These findings emphasize LFP oscillations at frequencies in the gamma band (above 20–30 Hz). In perceptual and perceptual-motor tasks, gamma band synchrony is maintained until the task is completed, at which time the coherent patterns collapse and give way to low frequency incoherent oscillatory activity (Singer 2001). This “binding by synchrony” idea may well qualify as “a paradigm shift” in neuroscience by suggesting that coherent oscillatory activity across different cell assemblies is a critical feature underlying cognition rather than just fixed anatomical connections (Buzsaki 2006). This letter does not challenge the importance of gamma oscillations, nor do we deny the compelling notion of binding by synchrony. Rather, we question the (perhaps implicit) assumption by many neuroscientists that the most important aspects of human cognition are based mainly or even exclusively on the catch-all category labeled “gamma oscillations.” For one thing, the theoretical idea proposed by Singer that synchronization facilitates binding does not depend on or specify any particular frequency band. Our objections to the extreme gamma focus are based on several interrelated arguments as follows.

Following Schizophrenia’s Frustrating Genetic Trail

Following Schizophrenia’s Frustrating Genetic Trail