Perceptual Schemas Research Articles

The Semantics of the Preposition " alā" in the Quran: A Conceptual Metaphor Perspective.

Traditional syntactic approaches do not offer a plausible explanation regarding the use of the Arabic preposition “alā” with abstract nouns or states. This article adopts a corpus-based approach to investigate the semantic classification of the preposition “alā” in the Quran from a cognitive linguistic perspective. Conceptual metaphor theory (hereafter CMT) was employed to find out conceptual metaphors (hereafter CM) in the data retrieved from the Quran with the help of search Quran software. CMT holds that human sensorimotor neural structures help store spatial relationships, which are then used to map the abstract concepts in language and thought, and that prepositions are the products of human sensorimotor neural structures. This paper found nine key CM themes behind the usage of prepositions in the data. Contact and support schemas were at the heart of the literal and metaphorical use of the spatial preposition “alā” in the Quran. However, it was also found that language generation and comprehension involve the role of multimodal perceptual schemas and linguistic knowledge rather than the unilinear process of one CM. This paper suggests further research into spatial relations across languages to explore the cross-cultural implications of image schemas.

COMPLEX COGNITIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH IDIOMS: А CASE OF EYE-UNITS

The paper suggests a complex cognitive model which reconstructs the formation of the idiomatic meaning on the intersection of the human faculties of perception, categorization, reasoning and memory with its two levels: linguistic and conceptual. The linguistic memory underlies the unity of form and meaning entrenched in the human mind enabling the identification of idioms as morphosyntactic constructions. The conceptual memory encompasses frames and concepts storing encyclopedic knowledge which underlies the creation of idiomatic meaning. Categorization establishes the belongingness of the basic-level entities to the same or different classes determining the application of the conceptual metaphor with the projection of the source domain onto the target domain or of the conceptual integration with two input spaces underlying the formation of the emergent semantics. The basic procedures of the creation of the idiomatic meaning are constrained by image schemas,i.e. dynamic recurring patterns of organism-environment interaction: somatic, structuring the space around the human body; perceptual, rendering the changes of images obtained from a varying distance; sensory-motor, coding human handling of the physical objects; dynamic, representing motion and force interaction. The paper finds that in the case of the English eye-idioms the perceptual schemas determine the indication of the number of organs of vision: prototypical, i.e. two, and non-prototypical, represented by one eye or its half versus four eyes or their collection. It results in the formation of the idiomatic meanings which intensify human visual capacity or focus attention on perceived objects. In their turn, the perceptual relations are modified by sensory-motor schemas underlying the use of eyes to represent the inner states of the body and mind: physiological conditions, beliefs, understanding, emotions of pleasure or shock, human soul and imagination. The dynamic schemas underlie the idio- matic meaning based on human interaction with other entities which is accompanied by blocking / unblocking vision to render the concept of ignoring; by attracting viewers’ attention to express the idea of concentration; by symbolizing the opposition between human bodies.

Composition of English News Stories: Strategies or Schemas?

The research deals with the composition of the English news story revealing that it rests on the interaction of strategies, tactics and schemas of perceptual origin. The material of the research is the BBC news stories. The paper applies cognitive and discursive methods to revealing the composition of English news stories. The results obtained show that strategies determine the choice of predicates structuring an event. Schemas of perceptual origin define the representation of event components in terms of human perception of environment: focusing, with the concentration of attention on one entity; identification, with the introduction of a single entity into the reader’s visual field; zooming-in by the use of the nouns indicating a transformation of a far distance into remote, close or immediate. In this case remote event models are comparatively few in number, because they offer a general picture of what is happening, without going into detail. In case of the subjective zooming-in model the desired effect is evoked by the interaction of collective nouns pointing to a group, i.e. distant perspective, and units in the plural, implying a distant position. The event-subjective perspective is implemented by a sequence of uncountables, denoting a general state of affairs, countables in the plural and in the singular, representing participants from the near or close distance. The tactics include verbalized contents into the composition of the text introducing the sections of context, commentaries, referring to witnesses or sources of information. The conclusions indicate the interaction of strategies, perceptual schemas and tactics in organizing English news stories.

Insights on obstacle avoidance for small unmanned aerial systems from a study of flying animal behavior

Thirty-five papers from the ethological literature were surveyed with the perception and reaction of flying animals to autonomous navigation tasks organized and analyzed using a schema theoretic framework. Flying animals are an existence proof of autonomous collision-free flight in unknown and disordered environments. Because they successfully avoid obstacles, self-orient, and evade predators and capture prey to survive, the collected information could inform the design of biologically-inspired behaviors for control of a small unmanned aerial system (SUAS) to improve the current state-of-the art in autonomous obstacle avoidance. Five observations were derived from the surveyed papers: sensing is done by vision in lighted scenarios and sonar in darkness, one sensor is always dominant, adaptive sensing is beneficial, no preference was identified for lateral versus vertical avoidance maneuvers, and reducing speed is consistently seen across species in response to objects in the flight path. Additionally, the questions of defining clutter and scale of speed reduction left unanswered by the literature were discussed. Finally, three rules for control of a SUAS in an unknown environment that restricts maneuverability were identified. These are the distance to begin maneuvers to avoid an obstacle in the flight path, the direction to adjust the flight path, and the role of centered flight in determining the adjustment. Surveyed 35 ethological papers for perception and reaction of flying animals.Bio-inspired motor and perceptual schemas for small unmanned aerial systems.Open questions of defining clutter and scale of speed reduction discussed.Identified three rules for control of a SUAS in an unknown environment.

Violent Stories

Although numerous studies have relied on the notion of street culture to explain why offenders commit an array of street crimes, researchers have generally overlooked the social processes that transmit street culture within and across populations. This article examines how personal stories about violent events shape and transmit street culture among active gang members and street-oriented youth. It conceptualizes street culture as a complex system of perceptual schemas that influences how individuals understand or perceive social events. The transmission of culture entails a collective struggle to make sense of social and personal experiences through the utilization and manipulation of cultural ideas. Drawing from ethnographic recordings of conversations between active gang members on the streets of Indianapolis, this study contends that personal narratives about violent events apply and help clarify the meaning of cultural ideas. They also follow a predictable violence script that establishes expectations for when to engage in violence, the intensity of violence to be used during conflicts, and the consequences for inaction.

Mirror system activity for action and language is embedded in the integration of dorsal and ventral pathways

We develop the view that the involvement of mirror neurons in embodied experience grounds brain structures that underlie language, but that many other brain regions are involved. We stress the cooperation between the dorsal and ventral streams in praxis and language. Both have perceptual and motor schemas but the perceptual schemas in the dorsal path are affordances linked to specific motor schemas for detailed motor control, whereas the ventral path supports planning and decision making. This frames the hypothesis that the mirror system for words evolved from the mirror system for actions to support words-as-phonological-actions, with semantics provided by the linkage to neural systems supporting perceptual and motor schemas. We stress the importance of computational models which can be linked to the parametric analysis of data and conceptual analysis of these models to support new patterns of understanding of the data. In the domain of praxis, we assess the FARS model of the canonical system for grasping, the MNS models for the mirror system for grasping, and the Augmented Competitive Queuing model that extends the control of action to the opportunistic scheduling of action sequences and also offers a new hypothesis on the role of mirror neurons in self action. Turning to language, we use Construction Grammar as our linguistic framework to get beyond single words to phrases and sentences, and initiate analysis of what brain functions must complement mirror systems to support this functionality.

Universali linguistici e categorie grammaticali

- In this paper I explore the consistency of an idea of language structures as both universal in their nature and empirical in their genesis. To this aim, I assume the theory of the parts of speech as a case study. I proceed from a brief historical reconstruction of 20th-century theories of grammatical categories to an analysis of the semantics of the parts of speech, with particular emphasis on Ronald Langacker's philosophy of grammar. Finally I focus on the theory of prepositions in order to explore the relations between language and perception and the function of perceptual schemas at the basis of linguistic categories.Keywords: Linguistic universals, Parts of speech, Perceptual schemas, Cognitive linguistics, Prepositions, Philosophy of grammar.Parole chiave: Universali linguistici, Parti del discorso, Schemi percettivi, Linguistica cognitiva, Preposizioni, Filosofia della grammatica.

Competitive Hebbian learning and the hippocampal place cell system: modeling the interaction of visual and path integration cues.

The hippocampus has long been thought essential for implementing a cognitive map of the environment. However, almost 30 years since place cells were found in rodent hippocampal field CA1, it is still unclear how such an allocentric representation arises from an ego-centrically perceived world. By means of a competitive Hebbian learning rule responsible for coding visual and path integration cues, our model is able to explain the diversity of place cell responses observed in a large set of electrophysiological experiments with a single fixed set of parameters. Experiments included changes observed in place fields due to exploration of a new environment, darkness, retrosplenial cortex inactivation, and removal, rotation, and permutation of landmarks. To code for visual cues for each landmark, we defined two perceptual schemas representing landmark bearing and distance information over a linear array of cells. The information conveyed by the perceptual schemas is further processed through a network of adaptive layers which ultimately modulate the resulting activity of our simulated place cells. In path integration terms, our system is able to dynamically remap a bump of activity coding for the displacement of the animal in relation to an environmental anchor. We hypothesize that path integration information is computed in the rodent posterior parietal cortex and conveyed to the hippocampus where, together with visual information, it modulates place cell activity. The resulting network yields a more direct treatment of partial remapping of place fields than other models. In so doing, it makes new predictions regarding the nature of the interaction between visual and path integration cues during new learning and when the system is challenged with environmental changes.

Perceptual and Conceptual Processes in Infancy

It is suggested that we must distinguish 2 types of object categorization in infancy. One is perceptual categorization, which is an automatic part of perceptual processing that computes the perceptual similarity of one object to another. It creates perceptual schemas of what objects look like. The other is conceptual categorization, which is based on what objects do. It consists of the redescription of perceptual information into conceptual form, particularly the paths that objects take and the interactions among them. This process creates the notion of kinds, such as animals, plants, vehicles, and furniture. The similarity in this kind of categorization is of roles in events, not the physical appearance of the objects. Several differences between the 2 types of categories are discussed, of which the most important is the different functions they serve. Perceptual categories are used for object identification; conceptual categories control inductive inference. Experimental results are described showing that because early conceptual categories tend to be global in scope, the inductive generalizations based on them are global in scope as well.

Sensorimotor transformations in the worlds of frogs and robots

The paper develops a multilevel approach to the design and analysis of systems with “action-oriented perception”, situating various robot and animal “designs” in an evolutionary perspective. We present a set of biological design principles within a broader perspective that shows their relevance for robot design. We introduce schemas to provide a coarse-grain analysis of “cooperative computation” in the brains of animals and the “brains” of robots, starting with an analysis of approach, avoidance, detour behavior, and path planning in frogs. An explicit account of neural mechanism of avoidance behavior in the frog illustrates how schemas may be implemented in neural networks. The focus of the rest of the article is on the relation of instinctive to reflective behavior. We generalize an analysis of the interaction of perceptual schemas in the VISIONS system for computer vision to a view of the interaction of perceptual and motor schemas in distributed planning which, we argue, has great promise for integrating mechanisms for action and perception in both animal and robot. We conclude with general observations on the lessons on relating structure and function which can be carried from biology to technology.

Motor Schema — Based Mobile Robot Navigation

Motor schemas serve as the basic unit of behavior specifica tion for the navigation of a mobile robot. They are multiple concurrent processes that operate in conjunction with asso ciated perceptual schemas and contribute independently to the overall concerted action of the vehicle. The motivation be hind the use of schemas for this domain is drawn from neuro- scientific, psychological, and robotic sources. A variant of the potential field method is used to produce the appropriate velocity and steering commands for the robot. Simulation re sults and actual mobile robot experiments demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.

Levels of modeling of mechanisms of visually guided behavior

AbstractIntermediate constructs are required as bridges between complex behaviors and realistic models of neural circuitry. For cognitive scientists in general, schemas are the appropriate functional units; brain theorists can work with neural layers as units intermediate between structures subserving schemas and small neural circuits.After an account of different levels of analysis, we describe visuomotor coordination in terms of perceptual schemas and motor schemas. The interest of schemas to cognitive science in general is illustrated with the example of perceptual schemas in high-level vision and motor schemas in the control of dextrous hands.Rana computatrix, the computational frog, is introduced to show how one constructs an evolving set of model families to mediate flexible cooperation between theory and experiment. Rana computatrix may be able to do for the study of the organizational principles of neural circuitry what Aplysia has done for the study of subcellular mechanisms of learning. Approach, avoidance, and detour behavior in frogs and toads are analyzed in terms of interacting schemas. Facilitation and prey recognition are implemented as tectal-pretectal interactions, with the tectum modeled by an array of tectal columns. We show how layered neural computation enters into models of stereopsis and how depth schemas may involve the interaction of accommodation and binocular cues in anurans.

Stability of forms under conditions of illusory distortion.

It has been suggested by some theorists that regular, common, symmetrical forms evoke perceptual schemas or sets of pre-implications that make them relatively resistant to imposed perceptual distortions. In this experiment, the Mueller-Lyer illusion was superimposed on forms varying in regularity. The results indicate that any closed figure is resistant to distortion, although the degree of its resistance does not vary as a function of the regularity of the form.

STABILITY OF FORMS UNDER CONDITIONS OF ILLUSORY DISTORTION

-It has been suggested by some theorists that regular, common, symmetrical forms evoke perceptual schemas or sets of pre-implications that make them relatively resistant to imposed perceptual distortions. In this experiment, the Mueller-Lyer illusion was superimposed on forms varying in regularity. The results indicate that any closed figure is resistant to distortion, although the degree of its resistance does not vary as a function of the regularity of the form.