Representation Of Spatial Relations Research Articles

Are Categorical Spatial Relations Encoded by Shifting Visual Attention between Objects?

Perceiving not just values, but relations between values, is critical to human cognition. We tested the predictions of a proposed mechanism for processing categorical spatial relations between two objects—the shift account of relation processing—which states that relations such as ‘above’ or ‘below’ are extracted by shifting visual attention upward or downward in space. If so, then shifts of attention should improve the representation of spatial relations, compared to a control condition of identity memory. Participants viewed a pair of briefly flashed objects and were then tested on either the relative spatial relation or identity of one of those objects. Using eye tracking to reveal participants’ voluntary shifts of attention over time, we found that when initial fixation was on neither object, relational memory showed an absolute advantage for the object following an attention shift, while identity memory showed no advantage for either object. This result is consistent with the shift account of relation processing. When initial fixation began on one of the objects, identity memory strongly benefited this fixated object, while relational memory only showed a relative benefit for objects following an attention shift. This result is also consistent, although not as uniquely, with the shift account of relation processing. Taken together, we suggest that the attention shift account provides a mechanistic explanation for the overall results. This account can potentially serve as the common mechanism underlying both linguistic and perceptual representations of spatial relations.

Two modes for seeing relations between objects

Past work has revealed two distinct types of spatial relation representations: categorical (e.g., 'X left of Y') and coordinate (e.g., 'X is 1 cm away from Y'; Kosslyn et al., 1989). Does a similar dissociation exist for relations based on features other than spatial location, such as size? By measuring eye movements, we show that people adopt distinct attentional modes when representing different types of magnitude relations in the same display (two bars). In Experiment 1, when asked to judge a directional relation ('Are the bars arranged short-tall or tall-short?'), participants systematically isolated one bar with their attention. In contrast, when asked to judge a nondirectional relation ('Are the bars the same or different heights?'), participants systematically shifted their gaze toward the right. A rightward shift would place the stimuli in the left visual field, allowing the bars to be processed more holistically by the right hemisphere. In a second experiment, we encouraged one group of participants (holistic group) to extract relations by imagining a line connecting the tops of the two bars (directional: 'Is the line sloped positively or negatively?'; nondirectional: 'Is the line flat or sloped?'). As a control, we included an individuated group of participants who used the same perceptual framing as Experiment 1. The holistic framing changed participants' eye movements such that directional relations were extracted more similarly to nondirectional relations than directional relations in the individuated group. Together, these results reveal two distinct modes for extracting magnitude relations (locally versus holistically), and that these modes map onto how categorical and coordinate spatial relations are processed, respectively. They also show that people can be induced to extract relations locally or holistically for the same display, either by manipulating the type of judgment (directional/nondirectional) or the perceptual framing (individuated/holistic). Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2016

A tulajdonnevek a gyermeki nyelvelsajátításban

The majority of onomastic research centres around the proper names of adults. Works on general name theory contain a few hypotheses in connection with the acquisition of the first proper names. The first section of the paper overviews the results achieved by the research of children’s language acquisition with respect to acquiring personal names. The acquisition of other name types, such as place names is a much longer process, which has not been examined in depth by either psychology or onomastics to date. Psychological research focuses on spatial orientation, the cerebral localization of space-related information, the linguistic representation of spatial relations and the childhood development of these capacities. Factors, such as how wider geographical surroundings are divided, or how place names are acquired by children are not examined thoroughly. To gain insight into the initial phases of these processes, the author follows their development in two infants’ knowledge of place names. The early meanings of place names are typically not fully generalized: the name of a town or a street is understood and used by the infants to refer to a house. At this age, infants connect place names to specific persons. In infants, the concept of places (what is a town?, what is a street?) is not completely formed, this leads to semantic discrepancies. For them, spatial elements are not the individual entities of their surroundings. Besides the peculiarities of the earliest appearance of place names, the paper also observes the early use of geographical common nouns and the development of spatial orientation.

Computing force field-based directional maps in subquadratic time

Spatial knowledge, i.e., knowledge about configurations among distinct spatial entities, plays a key role in everyday life and has wide applications in numerous application domains. In particular, computer vision systems exploit spatial knowledge to enhance their object recognition capabilities. The focus of this article is on the representation of spatial knowledge. Specifically, we concentrate on the representation of spatial relationships among objects in an image, a fundamental problem in pattern recognition and computer vision. In the study of spatial relationships, significant progress has been made by using directional maps. However, the time complexity of map generation is O(N2) and thus not practical. We present an improvement of a state-of-the-art approximation method that is based on an analogy with the force exerted by an object on another object. The improvement is based on the use of a family of forces whose dependence on the pixel–pixel distance r is of the type 1/rl+1 with l > 1. Analysis of time complexity shows that the improved method is O(Nx), with x=1+3/(l+2). Application of this method to both artificial and real images validates the time complexity analysis and shows that the proposed method is much faster than the original method. Furthermore, for the special case of small objects relative to the image size, the proposed method generates more accurate maps and, in other cases, the difference in accuracy is very small.

LBP based Watermarking Scheme for Image Tamper Detection and Recovery

In recent years, digital images are in use in a wide range of Applications and for multiple purposes. They also play an important role in the storage and transfer of visual information, especially the secret ones. With this widespread usage of digital images, in addition to the increasing number of tools and software of digital images editing, it has become easy to manipulate and change the actual information of the image. Therefore, it has become necessary to check the authenticity and the integrity of the image by using modern and digital techniques, which contribute to analysis and understanding of the images’ content, and then make sure of their integrity Digital image fragile watermarking is an information hiding technique which adds the watermark into the host image for authentication .while achieving the high integrity one should not compromise with quality distortion of images. numbers of watermarking schemes exist today for balancing between the tamper detection rate and quality of reconstructed images in propose scheme we aim at maintain high tamper detection rate as well as high Peak to Signal Noise Ratio (PSNR) of reconstructed images for their quality. For that we utilize Local Binary Pattern (LBP) for this purpose to obtain the optimum solution. In the proposes scheme we used a fragile image watermarking scheme with recover ability based on local binary pattern (LBP). The local binary pattern operator used to extract localized spatial features. A local binary pattern is used to represent the localized relations of a pixel with its neighborhood pixels. Every pixel measured by the LBP operator and obtained its own local binary pattern as representation of local spatial relations. We utilizes the LBP operator to generate authentication data which are embedded into each image block with 3 × 3 pixels size for tamper detection and recovery. The recovery information is obtained by calculating the mean value of each image block, and then the mean value is converted into a binary string which is embedded into eight neighboring pixels’ LSBs of each image block for image recovering In the propose scheme we can take the input as 256 × 256 as well as 512×512 dimension image, one of the advantage compare to other existing system is that it can also processed the color image. The quality is calculated by the PSNR but in the proposed scheme PSNR at peak point is also calculated to get better result. General Terms Digital image watermarking, fragile image watermarking, local binary pattern (LBP), PSNR (peak signal to noise ratio)

Integrated model/scene construction through context-based search, data-driven suggestion and component replacement

In recent years, 3D scene construction has become increasingly popular in movies and games. However, it is without doubt that the involved effort is significant, and therefore how to simplify such a process has drawn the attentions from many researchers. More specifically, the construction of a 3D scene consists of two parts: the creation of 3D objects, and their deployment. In general, one possible and popular solution is to reuse previous 3D scene construction results. In this regard, there are least two types of approaches. The first type of approaches places more emphasis on the spatial relationships. In particular, by placing a query box in the current scene and comparing its relationships with other objects under the current scene, a desired object in a previous scene can be retrieved if it shares a similar configuration. However, inappropriate representations of previous spatial relationships may lead to ambiguous or superfluous retrieval results. The second type of approaches focuses on the generation of a single object. A method of such could either start from an initial model and gradually evolve into a more complex/specific one by selecting a similar model in the database, or directly synthesize a new model by a combination of more than one model from the database. This paper proposes a framework that not only integrates the two types of approaches just mentioned, but also unifies the previous two different ways for model construction. In addition, the representation of spatial relationships is further refined so that more desired retrieval results can be obtained, together with a meaningful object class scheme to facilitate the involved interaction for model construction.

A Completeness of Metrics for Topological Relations in 3D Qualitative Spatial Reasoning

For qualitative spatial reasoning, there are various dimensions of objects. A considerable amount of effort has been devoted to 2D representation and analysis of spatial relations. Here we present an exposition for 3D objects. There are three types of binary relations between pairs of objects: topological connectivity, cardinal directions, and distance relations. The combinations of these relations can provide additional useful knowledge. The spatial databases include data and the spatial relations to facilitate end-user spatial querying, it also is important to associate natural language with these relations. Some work has been done in this regard for line-region and region-region topological relations in 2D, and very recent work has initiated the association between natural language, topology, and metrics for 3D objects. However, prior efforts have lacked rigorous analysis, expressive power, and completeness of the associated metrics. Herein we present a detailed study of new metrics required to bridge the gap between topological connectivity and size information for integrating reasoning in spatial databases. The complete set of metrics that we present should be useful for a variety of applications dealing with 3D objects including regions with vague boundaries.

Prior knowledge of character locational stereotypes and representations during text comprehension.

Certain character locational stereotypes are expected to affect constructions of mental representations during text comprehension. The present study examined whether readers' prior knowledge of character locational stereotypes affects the construction of these character representations during text comprehension. Two short stories were presented to the participants. In one story, God, and two people wearing blue and green clothes, respectively, appeared in a room in that order (God condition). In the other, three people appeared in red, blue, and green clothes, respectively (three-people condition). The only difference between the two stories was the first character that appeared in the room. All participants were assigned to either the God or three-people condition. Participants read the story and provided an account of their own mental representation of where the three characters were located within the room, and explained the reasoning behind their descriptions. In the God condition, most participants stated that God was in the center (relative to the two people) because of locational stereotypes of God. In the three-people condition, most participants stated that the person in red was located in front of or closest to the participant because of the order in which the character appeared in the text. These results show that readers' prior knowledge of character locational stereotypes affects their mental representation of spatial relationships between characters during text comprehension.

Poor judgment of distance between nociceptive stimuli

Although pain is traditionally assumed to be poorly localized, recent work indicates that spatial acuity for nociception is surprisingly high. Here we investigated whether the nervous system can also accurately estimate the distance between two nociceptive stimuli. Estimating distance implies a metric representation of spatial relations, a property that underlies abilities such as perceiving the size of external objects. We presented pairs of simultaneous nociceptive or non-nociceptive somatosensory stimuli, and asked participants to judge the distance between them. Judgments of distance between nociceptive stimuli were much worse than judgments of distance between non-nociceptive tactile stimuli, even on skin regions where spatial acuity for nociception exceeded spatial acuity for touch. Control experiments ruled out explanations based on inaccurate localization of double nociceptive stimuli. Thus, the nervous system poorly represents the distance between two nociceptive stimuli. The dissociation between high spatial acuity and poor distance judgment in the nociceptive system may reflect a specialization for computing accurate spatial representations useful to protect the body, rather than to perceive the size of external objects.

Integrative representation and inference of qualitative locations about points, lines, and polygons

Qualitative knowledge representation of spatial locations and relations is popular in many text-based media, for example, postings on social networks, news reports, and encyclopedia, as representing qualitative spatial locations is indispensable to infer spatial knowledge from them. However, an integrative model capable of handling direction-based locations of various spatial objects is missing. This study presents an integrative representation and inference framework about direction-based qualitative locations for points, lines, and polygons. In the framework, direction partitions of different types of reference objects are first unified to create a partition consisting of cells, segments, and corners. They serve as a frame of reference to locate spatial objects (e.g., points, lines, and polygons). Qualitative relations are then defined to relate spatial objects to the elements in a cell partition, and to form the model of qualitative locations. Last, based on the integrative representation, location-based reasoning mechanism is presented to derive topological relations between objects from their locations, such as point–point, line–line, point–line, point–polygon, line–polygon, and polygon–polygon relations. The presented model can locate any type of spatial objects in a frame of reference composed of points, lines, and polygons, and derive topological relations between any pairs of objects from the locations in a unified method.

Meta-analysis: how does posterior parietal cortex contribute to reasoning?

Reasoning depends on the contribution of posterior parietal cortex (PPC). But PPC is involved in many basic operations—including spatial attention, mathematical cognition, working memory, long-term memory, and language—and the nature of its contribution to reasoning is unclear. Psychological theories of the processes underlying reasoning make divergent claims about the neural systems that are likely to be involved, and better understanding the specific contribution of PPC can help to inform these theories. We set out to address several competing hypotheses, concerning the role of PPC in reasoning: (1) reasoning involves application of formal logic and is dependent on language, with PPC activation for reasoning mainly reflective of linguistic processing; (2) reasoning involves probabilistic computation and is thus dependent on numerical processing mechanisms in PPC; and (3) reasoning is built upon the representation and processing of spatial relations, and PPC activation associated with reasoning reflects spatial processing. We conducted two separate meta-analyses. First, we pooled data from our own studies of reasoning in adults, and examined activation in PPC regions of interest (ROI). Second, we conducted an automated meta-analysis using Neurosynth, in which we examined overlap between activation maps associated with reasoning and maps associated with other key functions of PPC. In both analyses, we observed reasoning-related activation concentrated in the left Inferior Parietal Lobe (IPL). Reasoning maps demonstrated the greatest overlap with mathematical cognition. Maintenance, visuospatial, and phonological processing also demonstrated some overlap with reasoning, but a large portion of the reasoning map did not overlap with the map for any other function. This evidence suggests that the PPC’s contribution to reasoning may be most closely related to its role in mathematical cognition, but that a core component of this contribution may be specific to reasoning.

Cortical connectivity maps reveal anatomically distinct areas in the parietal cortex of the rat.

A central feature of theories of spatial navigation involves the representation of spatial relationships between objects in complex environments. The parietal cortex has long been linked to the processing of spatial visual information and recent evidence from single unit recording in rodents suggests a role for this region in encoding egocentric and world-centered frames. The rat parietal cortex can be subdivided into four distinct rostral-caudal and medial-lateral regions, which includes a zone previously characterized as secondary visual cortex. At present, very little is known regarding the relative connectivity of these parietal subdivisions. Thus, we set out to map the connectivity of the entire anterior-posterior and medial-lateral span of this region. To do this we used anterograde and retrograde tracers in conjunction with open source neuronal segmentation and tracer detection tools to generate whole brain connectivity maps of parietal inputs and outputs. Our present results show that inputs to the parietal cortex varied significantly along the medial-lateral, but not the rostral-caudal axis. Specifically, retrosplenial connectivity is greater medially, but connectivity with visual cortex, though generally sparse, is more significant laterally. Finally, based on connection density, the connectivity between parietal cortex and hippocampus is indirect and likely achieved largely via dysgranular retrosplenial cortex. Thus, similar to primates, the parietal cortex of rats exhibits a difference in connectivity along the medial-lateral axis, which may represent functionally distinct areas.

Využití kvantifikace celospolečenských funkcí lesů v krajinném a územním plánování

Considering that forests are the important segment of the natural and human environment, their use in landscape should be highly controlled. Practical solving of this topic asked for the use of the geographic information system (GIS) for its wide possibilities of data processing and presentation. The study deal with the possible utilisation of the quantified forest function values in the process of landscape and land-use planning. The analyses representing the results of this study were created with respect to the pre­sence of existing relations among the forest functions and landscape elements. The analyses were also created with respect to the presentation of practical situations in the decision-making process of landscape and land-use planning. The values of the real potentials serve as the source of objective information of the forest stand function abilities. The values of the real potentials graphically processed in 2-D or 3-D allow the representation of spatial and functional relations among forest stands and other landscape elements. The presented results show that the calculated values of the forest functions in cooperation with GIS software seem to be the effective instrument in the decision-making process of landscape and land-use planning.

The Influence of Our Native language on Cognitive Representations of Colour, Spatial Relations and Time

The current literature review offers a critical evaluation of the extent to which our native language determines the ways in which we conceptualise the external world. Experimental studies regarding colour perception, spatial cognition and spatial representation of events in time are examined. It is argued that the available evidence supports the hypothesis of (a flexible) linguistic relativity, instead of the linguistic determinism hypothesis. Moreover, it is suggested that the impact of language on thought is mediated by three pathways: (i) the intention of an individual to express their thoughts; (ii) the environmental and cultural context; and (iii) the ability of an individual to learn different modes of reasoning.

Computational modeling of the development of detailed facial representations along ventral pathway

Experimental studies have shown that neurons at an intermediate stage of the primate ventral visual pathway encode the conformation and spatial relations of facial features [1], while neurons in the later stages are selective to the full face [2]. In this study, we investigate how these cell firing properties may develop through visually-guided learning. A hierarchical neural network model of the primate’s ventral visual pathway is trained by presenting many randomly generated faces to the hierarchical competitive neural network while a local learning rule modifies the strengths of the synaptic connections between successive layers [3] (Figure ​(Figure1A).1A). After training, the model is found to have developed the experimentally observed cell firing properties. In particular, we have demonstrated how the primate brain learns to represent facial expression independently of facial identity as reported in [4] (Figure ​(Figure1B).1B). We have also shown how the visual system forms separate representations of facial features such as the eyes, nose and mouth (Figure ​(Figure1C)1C) as well as representations of spatial relationships between these facial features, as have been reported in single unit recording studies [1]. Therefore, this research makes an important contribution to understanding visual processing in the primate brain. Figure 1 A. Stylized image of the 4 layer network model. B. Gabor filter inputs which had strong connectivity through the layers to full face selective neuron (left) Firing activity plots of cells, of which each encodes specific facial identity or expression, ...

Contextual Object Detection With Spatial Context Prototypes

Contextual information is widely exploited in state-of-the-art object detection systems, most of which utilize pre-defined spatial relationships (e.g., above, below, next to, etc.). However, we observe that the spatial arrangement manifests heterogeneous statistical distributions for different object class pairs, which suggests mining class-specified prototypes of spatial contexts in a data-driven manner. This paper proposes a novel contrast K-Means clustering algorithm for automatically discovering spatial context prototypes to beyond the pre-defined spatial relationship representation in literature. Based on the learned prototypes, we further construct the spatial context features by using a simple localized soft assignment quantization method. Besides, considering the large number of real object categories that might lead to overcomplicated spatial context features, we propose a feature refinement method based on the number of context occurrences and K-L divergence to efficiently reduce the complexity of our contextual model. The experiment results on PASCAL VOC dataset and SUN 09 dataset demonstrate that our method can effectively capture meaningful spatial context prototypes as well as most contributing contextual features for different object class pairs and thus boost recognition performance on object detection task.

Symbolic Representation for Introduction of Concept of Decimal System in Mexican School Children

The present study describes the usage of strategies of symbolic representation during teaching introduction of decimal system in primary school in Mexico. Our research is based on Activity Theory conception of teaching-learning process and of gradual introduction of scientific concepts in school age. The method includes symbolic external representation of mathematic, logic and spatial relations. Children from the second grade of primary school took part in the study. The children were included in joined actions with constant orientation of the teacher. Specific Program was designed for introduction of decimal system and applied during 6 month 3 times per weak. The results showed that children acquired significant symbolic abilities necessary for understanding the concept of decimal system. We consider that proposed method could be a new approximation for solution of common difficulties which arise at primary school during initial teaching of mathematics.

A Teleoperation Approach for Mobile Social Robots Incorporating Automatic Gaze Control and Three-Dimensional Spatial Visualization

The teleoperation of mobile social robots requires operators to understand facial gestures and other nonverbal communication from a person interacting with the robot. It is also critical for the operator to comprehend the surrounding environment in order to facilitate both navigation and human-robot interaction. Allowing the operator to control the robot's gaze direction can help the operator observe a person's nonverbal communication; however, manually actuating a gaze increases the operator's workload and conflicts with the use of the robot's camera for navigation. To address these problems, the authors developed a teleoperation system that combines automatic control of the robot's gaze and a 3-D graphical representation of the surrounding environment, such as location of items and configuration of a shop. A study where a robot plays the role of a shopkeeper was conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed gaze-control technique and control interface. It was demonstrated that the combination of automatic gaze control and representations of spatial relationships improved the quality of the robot's interaction with the customer.

Schemas reveal spatial relations to a patient with simultanagnosia

Maps, graphs, and diagrams use simplified graphic forms, like lines and blobs, to represent basic spatial relations, like boundaries and enclosures. A schema is an iconic representation where perceptual detail has been abstracted away from reality in order to provide a more flexible structure for cognition. Unlike truly symbolic representations of spatial relations (i.e., prepositions) a schema preserves some analog spatial qualities of the relation it stands in for. We tested the efficacy of schemas in facilitating the perception and comprehension of spatial relations in a patient with bilateral occipitoparietal damage and resulting simultanagnosia. Patient E.E. performed six matching tasks involving WORDS (in, on, above, below), photographic PICTURES of objects, and/or SCHEMAS depicting the same spatial relations. E.E. was instructed to match a single spatial relation to a corresponding image from an array of four choices. On the two tasks that did not include matching to or from schemas, E.E. performed at chance levels. On tasks with schemas, performance was significantly better, indicating that schematic representations make spatial relations visible in a manner that symbols and complex images do not. The results provide general insight as to how schemas facilitate spatial reasoning when used in graphic depictions, and how such theoretically intermediate representational structures could serve to link perceptual and verbal representations of spatial relations in the brain.

DOES A DOZEN YEARS CHANGE A THING? ESTONIAN CHILDREN’S DRAWINGS OF EUROPE IN 2000 AND 2012

1. Introduction All knowledge of the world is gained through different means, i.e. direct action and observation of the world, as well as through indirect means such as listening to verbal explanations or reading (Brewer, Chinn, and Samarapungavan 2000, Kikas 2003) and that knowledge has to be integrated to form scientific understanding. Examining children's geographical knowledge has a long history. For example, Piaget (1928) examined children's concept of country and found that children under the age of nine are likely to be confused on the issue. Piaget's work was later replicated and criticized by Jahoda (1963) who showed that 6 to 11-yearold children are progressively less confused about the relations between cities and countries. Jahoda (1963, 1964) claimed that conceptual understanding and repre sentation of spatial relationships can be very differently developed. It was demonstrated that some 6 to 7-year-olds had a good understanding of spatial relationships whereas even some 10 to 11-year-olds did not have any knowledge of the spatial relationship between their hometown and country. Therefore, a general understanding of spatial relationships does not automatically indicate that the child can construct a spatially correct representation. Instead, conceptual development proceeds from first spontaneous concepts that are tied to direct experience and cannot be used to form abstractions to scientific concepts that provide the understanding that any concept can be formulated in terms of other concepts through intermediate steps (Vygotsky 1934/1997). As travelling is one of the most obvious sources of personal knowledge in geography, one would expect to find that personal experience with travelling forms knowledge upon which representations of one's surroundings are built. Axia et al. (1998) demonstrated that even children who had not studied geography at school and had to rely on their own spontaneous knowledge (derived from TV, internet, or travelling) reproduced better those countries which were neighbouring their home country. However, other studies failed to find any systematic relationship between travel experience and either effect or knowledge, and claim that travelling experience is not the main source of geographical knowledge but only as a helping factor (Barrett et al. 1997, Barrett and Farroni 1996). Furthermore, research in other areas of conceptual development has shown that knowledge of central facts about a topic is needed before learners can take the more global perspective and proceed beyond descriptions of the imminently visible world (Hannust and Kikas 2010). In the 1990s, Barrett and his colleagues provided new knowledge about children's acquisition of European identity (Barrett 1996) and on their images of European people (Barrett and Short 1992). These studies demonstrated that with increasing age children develop a better factual knowledge about Europe, for example they can name more European countries. According to Spencer and Blades (2006) children start to gain knowledge of their own country from about five years of age and by eight years they are rapidly expanding their knowledge of other countries. These studies indicated that mental maps are important structures to help organise geographical knowledge (Spencer and Blades 2006) and therefore research about knowledge of geography should examine how these maps are constructed. One methodological problem that the research of children's geographical knowledge faced was how to externalise people's mental map of the environment (Evans 1980). For example, when young children are asked to draw maps they may fail the task not because they lack the knowledge but because they have difficulty in combining perspectives and are uncertain how to depict their knowledge on paper (Blades and Spencer 1994, Karmiloff-Smith 1992), which in turn may lead to an underestimation of their knowledge (Spencer and Darvizeh 1981). Barrett and Farroni (1996) who examined the knowledge through geographical-spatial location (the relationship between cities, mountains, rivers) and the route (how to get from one point to another) concluded that although drawing maps is the best way to examine children's spatial knowledge, it is difficult to gain full understanding of children's geographical knowledge only on the basis of drawings. …