Goal Of Information Processing Research Articles

A unified information perceptron using deep reservoir computing

The delay feedback reservoir, as a branch of reservoir computing, has attracted a wide range of research interests because of its training efficiency and its simplicity for hardware implementation. However, its potential for processing various kinds of data, like sequential and matrix data, has not been fully explored. In this paper, we present a unified information processing structure by fusing the convolutional or fully connected neural network with the delay feedback reservoir into a hybrid neural network model to accomplish the comprehensive information processing goal. Our experimental results show that our methodology achieves high accuracy in both image classification and speech recognition, yielding 99.03% testing accuracy on the handwritten digits dataset (MNIST) and 97.3% on Spoken Digits Command Dataset (SDCD).

The impact of a limited time perspective on information distortion

The present research examines how a limited time perspective influences the processing of new information during choice making. Specifically, we examine how perceptions of a limited future promote the distortion of new information in favor of one’s prior beliefs. Across five studies, we provide evidence of a link between more-limited time perspectives and higher information distortion, and we illuminate the proposed process: the adoption of a cognitive consistency goal when the time perspective is limited. Overall, the current work identifies a new driver of distortion—the amount of time individuals believe remains in the future. Furthermore, it contributes a novel source of biased information processing that is motivational in nature rather than the result of a lack of cognitive resources: the mere belief regarding how much time remains in the future influences information processing goals and, subsequently, how decision-makers process new information.

Partial information decomposition as a unified approach to the characterization and design of neural goal functions

In many neural systems anatomical motifs are found repeatedly in different places. Despite this repetition these motifs often seem to serve a perplexing variety of functions. A prime example is the canonical microcircuit, which is repeated across multiple cortical areas, but supports a variety of functions from sensory processing and memory to executive functions and motor control. The multiplicity of functions served by a single anatomical motif suggests a common, but more abstract, information processing goal underlying all the different functions. Identifying this goal from neural recordings is a key challenge in understanding the general principles of neural information processing. The apparent diversity of functions makes it clear that this common goal cannot be described using function-specific language (e.g. edge filters), but calls for an abstract framework. Here, information theory is the obvious candidate. Notable past approaches using information theoretic descriptions of neural goal functions suggested to maximize the mutual information between input and output [1], maximize the coherent mutual information that all the inputs share about the output [2], or, very generally, to minimize the free energy [3]. To facilitate these efforts, and to better dissect the implications of existing neural goal functions, we suggest to build on a recent progress in information theory, termed partial information decomposition (PID). PID allows to measure which of a set of inputs contributes either uniquely, redundantly or synergistically to the output of a (neural) processing unit [4-7], and which fraction of the output's entropy remains unexplained by the input set. We show how these measures can be used to identify an information theoretic footprint of a neural goal function. Most importantly, these measures can quantify how much of the information is modified rather than merely relayed when passing through the neural processor [8]. This shifts the focus from information transmission to more complex processing and allows a much better understanding of the (theoretical?) capabilities of a neuron or neural circuit. Using this approach we show how to better understand existing neural goal functions using PID measures and provide an information theoretic framework for the design of novel goal functions for artificial neural networks.

Perceptual experience as a bridge between the retina and a bicoded cognitive map

The bicoded cognitive maps described by Jeffery et al. are compared to metric perceptual representations. Systematic biases in perceptual experience of egocentric distance, height, and surface orientation may reflect information processing choices to retain information critical for immediate action (Durgin et al. 2010a). Different information processing goals (route planning vs. immediate action) require different metric information.

Investigators under influence: How social norms activate goal-directed processing of criminal evidence

Summary: Previous research has shown that exposure to social information can influence behaviour through the automatic activation of goals. In the first study to examine such influences in a legal setting, an experiment with 104 experienced criminal investigators tested the idea that exposure to occupational norms can activate distinct information-processing goals. As predicted, exposure to norms associated with efficiency (vs. thoroughness) sped up and reduced the depth of investigators’ processing of criminal evidence, thus reducing their openness to sequentially late witness evidence. In addition, the goal activation operated outside investigators’ awareness, illustrating the insidious cognitive influence of occupational norms. The results are discussed in terms of practical significance and contributions to the goal activation literature and the applied study of criminal investigations. Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. It has long been recognised that human behaviour is largely governed by goals, and that goals can have a direct and powerful influence on cognitive processes (see Moskowitz & Grant, 2009). In the context of criminal investigation, detectives may be motivated by a range of goals, which are not always mutually compatible. For instance, external pressures may motivate an investigator to be efficient and obtain speedy results, and at the same time call for thoroughness and accuracy (Ask & Alison, 2010). The influence of any specific goal on an individual’s behaviour is dependent on goal activation, and recent evidence shows that the social environment is a rich source of goal-activation cues (Chartrand, Dalton, & Cheng, 2008). In this article, we test the consequent prediction that police investigators, when exposed to normative expressions by peers, will unconsciously adopt the goals implied by those norms. Specifically, we examine whether the social activation of goals to achieve efficiency or thoroughness affects investigators’ processing and judgments of criminal evidence.

The influence of information processing goal pursuit on postdecision affect and behavioral intentions.

Two important forces in human behavior are action and inaction. Although action and inaction are commonly associated with the presence and the absence of behavioral activity, they can also be represented as information processing goals. Action (inaction) goals influence decision effort and increase satisfaction with environments that are structured to allow for more (less) processing (Studies 1 and 2). This increased satisfaction can transfer to the decision (Study 3) and can increase the intent to perform a decision-congruent behavior (Studies 4 and 6). Finally, the author shows escalation of action and inaction goals when they are not achieved (Study 5) and rebound of the alternative goal when the focal goal is achieved (Study 6).

Reports of the AAAI 2008 Spring Symposia

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) was pleased to present the AAAI 2008 Spring Symposium Series, held Wednesday through Friday, March 26–28, 2008 at Stanford University, California. The titles of the eight symposia were as follows: (1) AI Meets Business Rules and Process Management, (2) Architectures for Intelligent Theory-Based Agents, (3) Creative Intelligent Systems, (4) Emotion, Personality, and Social Behavior, (5) Semantic Scientific Knowledge Integration, (6) Social Information Processing, (7) Symbiotic Relationships between Semantic Web and Knowledge Engineering, (8) Using AI to Motivate Greater Participation in Computer Science The goal of the AI Meets Business Rules and Process Management AAAI symposium was to investigate the various approaches and standards to represent business rules, business process management and the semantic web with respect to expressiveness and reasoning capabilities. The focus of the Architectures for Intelligent Theory-Based Agents AAAI symposium was the definition of architectures for intelligent theory-based agents, comprising languages, knowledge representation methodologies, reasoning algorithms, and control loops. The Creative Intelligent Systems Symposium included five major discussion sessions and a general poster session (in which all contributing papers were presented). The purpose of this symposium was to explore the synergies between creative cognition and intelligent systems. The goal of the Emotion, Personality, and Social Behavior symposium was to examine fundamental issues in affect and personality in both biological and artificial agents, focusing on the roles of these factors in mediating social behavior. The Semantic Scientific Knowledge Symposium was interested in bringing together the semantic technologies community with the scientific information technology community in an effort to build the general semantic science information community. The Social Information Processing's goal was to investigate computational and analytic approaches that will enable users to harness the efforts of large numbers of other users to solve a variety of information processing problems, from discovering high-quality content to managing common resources. The goal of the Symbiotic Relationships between the Semantic Web and Software Engineering symposium was to explore how the lessons learned by the knowledge-engineering community over the past three decades could be applied to the bold research agenda of current workers in semantic web technologies. The purpose of the Using AI to Motivate Greater Participation in Computer Science symposium was to identify ways that topics in AI may be used to motivate greater student participation in computer science by highlighting fun, engaging, and intellectually challenging developments in AI-related curriculum at a number of educational levels. Technical reports of the symposia were published by AAAI Press.

The Role of Information-Processing Capacity and Goals in Attitude-Congruent Selective Exposure Effects

Two experiments explored the role of information-processing capacity and strategies in regulating attitude-congruent selective exposure. In Experiment 1, participants were placed under time pressure and randomly assigned to conditions in which either an attitude-expressive or no-information processing goal was made salient. Analyses revealed an attitude-congruent selective exposure effect and indicated that this effect was stronger when an attitude-expressive goal was made salient than when no goal was made salient. In Experiment 2, information-processing goals and time pressure were factorially manipulated. Analyses revealed an attitude-congruent selective exposure effect and indicated that this effect was especially strong when time pressure was high and an attitude-expressive goal was made salient. In both experiments, bias at exposure was found to predict bias at later stages of information processing (attention and memory). Supplementary analyses and data confirmed that the attitude-expressive goal manipulation activated its intended motivational processing strategy.

How Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations Interact in Selectivity: Investigating the Moderating Effects of Situational Information Processing Goals in Issue Publics' Web Behavior

By employing a unique methodological tool that combines individual-level Web behavior data with survey data, this study explored the effects of two levels of motivations on online information selection and candidate evaluation in an actual election campaign: the moderating effects of situational information processing goals (i.e., extrinsic motivation) on the selectivity and candidate evaluation of members of issue publics (i.e., intrinsic motivation). The results suggest that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, and more importantly the interplay of the two, exert significant influences on online political information consumption and candidate evaluation. When the accuracy goal was promoted, issue publics extended their search beyond the issue domains of their personal concerns and considered diverse issues in candidate evaluation. However, an issue public's extremity in candidate evaluation was heightened, in that issue publics paid little attention to the implications of the information when the preservation goal was introduced. Implications for the field of communication are discussed.

The role of the insular cortex in pitch pattern perception: the effect of linguistic contexts.

Auditory pitch patterns are significant ecological features to which nervous systems have exquisitely adapted. Pitch patterns are found embedded in many contexts, enabling different information-processing goals. Do the psychological functions of pitch patterns determine the neural mechanisms supporting their perception, or do all pitch patterns, regardless of function, engage the same mechanisms? This issue is pursued in the present study by using 150-water positron emission tomography to study brain activations when two subject groups discriminate pitch patterns in their respective native languages, one of which is a tonal language and the other of which is not. In a tonal language, pitch patterns signal lexical meaning. Native Mandarin-speaking and English-speaking listeners discriminated pitch patterns embedded in Mandarin and English words and also passively listened to the same stimuli. When Mandarin listeners discriminated pitch embedded in Mandarin lexical tones, the left anterior insular cortex was the most active. When they discriminated pitch patterns embedded in English words, the homologous area in the right hemisphere activated as it did in English-speaking listeners discriminating pitch patterns embedded in either Mandarin or English words. These results support the view that neural responses to physical acoustic stimuli depend on the function of those stimuli and implicate anterior insular cortex in auditory processing, with the left insular cortex especially responsive to linguistic stimuli.

Preconscious and Postconscious Processes Underlying Construct Accessibility Effects: An Extended Search Model

In this article we first review research relevant to current models of assimilation and contrast effects. Second, we introduce a new theoretical model that specifies how preconscious and postconscious processes jointly contribute to the occurrence of assimilation and contrast effects. Furthermore, a central tenet of our model is that the perceiver's information-processing goals (expediency and accuracy goals) regulate these preconscious and postconscious processes, and they thus play an important role in moderating the magnitude of assimilation and contrast effects. We propose that our new theoretical model provides a parsimonious account for existing findings and derives a number of novel hypotheses to be tested by empirical research.

Examining Candidate Information Search Processes: The Impact of Processing Goals and Sophistication

An experiment investigated how 4 different information-processing goals, varying on the dimensions of effortful vs. effortless and impression-driven vs. non-impression-driven processing, and individual difference in political sophistication affect the depth at which people process candidate information and their decision-making strategies. The results showed that subjects with the goal of memorizing information (effortful and non-impression-driven processing) conducted the deepest information search by accessing the largest amount of information and spending the longest time on searching information, followed by those with the goal of carefully evaluating candidates (effortful and impression-driven processing). Moreover, political sophisticates were found to process information more efficiently and be more likely to adopt noncompensatory decision rules than were nonsophisticates, particularly when effortful processing was involved.

Examining candidate information search processes: the impact of processing goals and sophistication

An experiment investigated how 4 different information-processing goals, varying on the dimensions of effortful vs. effortless and impression-driven vs. non-impression-driven processing, and individual difference in political sophistication affect the depth at which people process candidate information and their decision-making strategies. The results showed that subjects with the goal of memorizing information (effortful and non-impression-driven processing) conducted the deepest information search by accessing the largest amount of information and spending the longest time on searching information, followed by those with the goal of carefully evaluating candidates (effortful and impression-driven processing). Moreover, political sophisticates were found to process information more efficiently and be more likely to adopt noncompensatory decision rules than were nonsophisticates, particularly when effortful processing was involved.

What the Disinterested Perceiver Overlooks: Goal-Directed Social Categorization

Previous research has suggested that initial categorization of a target is a rapid, automatic process that occurs relatively independently of attentional and motivational factors. Further processing requires both perceiver interest in the target and sufficient attentional resources. The present study investigated the effects of information-processing goals on the categorization process. With one of three information-processing goals in place-accountability to a third party, estimation of the target's height, or inspection of the videotape's clarity-subjects watched a videotape of a businesswoman. Target categorization was measured usinga lexical decision task. The results demonstrated that whereas subjects in aU conditions categorized the target at a superordinate level (i.e., woman), accountable subjects also categorized the target at a more differentiated subtype level (ie., businesswoman). The authors consider these findings in the context of contemporary models of stereotyping and impression formation.

Automatic activation of impression formation and memorization goals: Nonconscious goal priming reproduces effects of explicit task instructions.

According to the auto-motive model (J. A. Bargh, 1990), intentions and goals are represented mentally and, as representations, should be capable of nonconscious activation by the environmental context (i.e., priming). To test this hypothesis, the authors replicated 2 well-known experiments that had demonstrated differential effects of varying the information-processing goal (impression formation or memorization) on processing the identical behavioral information. However, instead of giving participants the goals via explicit instructions, as had been done in the original studies, the authors primed the impression formation or memorization goal. In both cases, the original pattern of results was reproduced. The findings thus support the hypothesis that the effect of activated goals is the same whether the activation is nonconscious or through an act of will. One's current intentions and goals affect not only what one considers important enough to pay attention to, but also how one uses, interprets, and subsequently remembers that information. Although that is a noncontroversial statement today, it was a radical departure from the dominant view of perception when Bruner and Postman (1948) originally proposed it. To claim that motivation influences perception was a major break with the then-dominant view that perception and judgment were entirely stimulus-driven (Stevens, 1951 ). The result of their claim that needs and motivations influence perception was the New Look--a flood of studies demonstrating that an individual's goals greatly influence which information the individual attends to and perceives in the environment, as well as how he or she interprets and remembers that information (Allport, 1955; Bruner, 1951, 1957). Jones and Thibaut (1958) subsequently introduced this idea to the domain of social perception, describing the influence that various potential interaction goals might have on selective attention to and use of information about one's interaction partner. After a period in which motivational and cognitive accounts of phenomena were viewed as mutually exclusive and competing instead of complementary and interdependent (see Gollwitzer & Bargh, 1996; Sorrentino & Higgins, 1986b), there recently has been a significant advance in theory and research on the motivation-cognition interface (e.g., Chaiken, Giner-Sorolla, C Goilwitzer & Moskowitz, 1996; Higgins &

Stereotypes and Mental Life: The Case of the Motivated but Thwarted Tactician

Two experiments investigated the effects of information-processing goals and attentional capacity on subjects′ impressions of a target. In Study 1, extending previous research in this area, both information-processing goals and a resource depleting task were manipulated simultaneously. It was predicted that, in contrast with outcome-independent subjects, subjects who were made outcome-dependent upon a woman would make individuated evaluations of her. This effect, however, was anticipated to be contingent upon the availability of attentional resources. Under conditions of cognitive busyness, it was predicted that both outcome-independent and -dependent subjects would view the woman in a relatively stereotyped (i.e., less individuating) manner. Our results supported this prediction. Resource depletion appeared to diminish subjects′ ability to individuate the woman, even when they were motivated to view her in such a manner. Study 2 utilized a probe reaction task to investigate the differential demands processing goals impose upon perceivers′ attentional capacity. In line with our predictions, outcome-dependent subjects used more cognitive resources when learning about a woman than comparable outcome-independent subjects. Taken together, these results demonstrate the dynamic interaction between cognitive and motivational factors in the determination of perceivers′ impressions of others. We consider these findings in the wider context of models of stereotyping and social inference.

Towards models of tasks and task complexity in supervisory control applications

Dynamic task environments in supervisory control situations differ from those traditionally investigated in problem-solving research in that (1) several task goals exist in parallel, (2) task goals change dynamically as the behaviour of the technical process changes, and (3) information required to accomplish task goals changes across time. In the present work, it is suggested that such dynamic task environments can be described using two types of task goal networks, namely a control task goal (CTG) network and an information processing goal (IPG) network. CTG networks are generated by analysis of the operational states required to produce the commodity for which a technical system has been designed. For example, such analyses can be performed using approaches such as Mitchell's operator function model or canonical means-end analyses. IPG networks are generated by using the recently proposed functional information and knowledge acquisition (FIKA) modelling technique. Two examples from different domains illustrate how these task goals networks can be used to describe dynamic task environments. Finally, two different ways of using the task modelling approach are briefly discussed.

An experimental examination of mood effects on retrieval and evaluation of advertisement and brand information

To ascertain the effect of mood on information retrieval and evaluation of advertisements and brands, subjects were induced into one of three moods (positive, neutral, or negative) via a modified Velten procedure 72 hours after they were exposed to five fictitious advertisements. While delayed positive and negative mood states had opposite effects on memory-based recall of information, with subjects in the positive mood condition recalling significantly more information than those in the negative one, they had no significant effect on ad or brand evaluation. Recall data are consistent with previous reports in the literature and evaluation data can be explained according to the information processing goals of subjects as described by Keller (1991) or Srull (1990). Thus, it appears that inducing people into positive moods as much as 72 hours after they have seen an ad for a product can have a significant impact on their memory for ad copy.

Process tracing of decision making: an approach for analysis of human-machine interactions in dynamic environments

The focus of the present paper is to develop principles for support of joint human-machine reasoning processes in dynamic environments. The central notion is to separate the representations of the technical system from the representations of the human operator during design of knowledge-based support systems. An approach is described which focuses on the analysis of information and knowledge acquisition of human operators in supervision and control systems. In the approach, information search of human operators is analysed using the notions of information processing goals, means and requirements. Examples illustrate how the present approach complements canonical goal-means representations of technical systems. Finally, the design implications of the proposed framework are discussed.