Top-down Instructions Research Articles

Pandemic-induced Migration From Campus to Digital Mode: Experiences From Social Work Students and Teachers in India and Sweden

The article explores the rapid COVID-19 pandemic-induced migration from campus to digital modes of education in 2020–2021. The process of this migration offers an opportunity to examine some important issues related to digital teaching, learning, and education during the pandemic. Based on our study of the School of Social Work at Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India, and the School of Social Work at Lund University, Sweden, we explore and compare the social component in the experiences of students and teachers at the two institutions. The data collection draws on focus group sessions and interviews complemented by various relevant institutional documents and our own experiences at our respective institutions. The core argument we put forth in the article is that the Swedish student and teacher response to the pandemic-induced crisis and the migration to digital classes was a case of ‘trusting the state’, as they were passively waiting for top-down initiatives and instructions. On the other hand, the response at the Indian institution was a case of ‘trusting ourselves’, not waiting for top-down instructions and support but creating bottom-up solutions within the internal community of teachers and students. We also highlight the different perceptions and the impact of teaching and studying from home on physical and emotional levels. While we present the differences and specificity around the expectations of teachers and students at the two institutions, we also elucidate their patience, perseverance and innovation while engaging with the realities of work and studying from home while being kept away from campus.

Top-down instructions influence the attentional weight on color and shape dimensions during redundant search

Top-down instructions influence the attentional weight on color and shape dimensions during redundant search

Mnemonic brain state engagement is diminished in healthy aging.

Healthy older adults typically show impaired episodic memory - memory for when and where an event oc-curred - but intact semantic memory - knowledge for general information and facts. As older adults also have difficulty inhibiting the retrieval of prior knowledge from memory, their selective decline in episodic memory may be due to a tendency to over engage the retrieval state, a brain state in which attention is focused internally in an attempt to access prior knowledge. The retrieval state trades off with the encoding state, a brain state which supports the formation of new memories. Therefore, episodic memory declines in older adults may be the result of differential engagement in mnemonic brain states. Our hypothesis is that older adults are biased toward a retrieval state. We recorded scalp electroencephalography while young, middle-aged and older adults performed a memory task in which they were explicitly directed to either encode the currently presented object stimulus or retrieve a previously presented, categorically-related object stimulus. We used multivariate pattern analysis of spectral activity to decode engagement in the retrieval vs. encoding state. We find that all three age groups can follow top-down instructions to selectively engage in encoding or retrieval and that we can decode mnemonic states for all age groups. However, we find that mnemonic brain state engagement is diminished for older adults relative to middle-aged adults. Our interpretation is that a combination of executive control deficits and a modest bias to retrieve modulates older adults' mnemonic state engagement. Together, these findings suggest that dif-ferential mnemonic state engagement may underlie age-related memory changes.

Human-like scene interpretation by a guided counterstream processing

In modeling vision, there has been a remarkable progress in recognizing a range of scene components, but the problem of analyzing full scenes, an ultimate goal of visual perception, is still largely open. To deal with complete scenes, recent work focused on the training of models for extracting the full graph-like structure of a scene. In contrast with scene graphs, humans' scene perception focuses on selected structures in the scene, starting with a limited interpretation and evolving sequentially in a goal-directed manner [G. L. Malcolm, I. I. A. Groen, C. I. Baker, Trends. Cogn. Sci. 20, 843-856 (2016)]. Guidance is crucial throughout scene interpretation since the extraction of full scene representation is often infeasible. Here, we present a model that performs human-like guided scene interpretation, using an iterative bottom-up, top-down processing, in a "counterstream" structure motivated by cortical circuitry. The process proceeds by the sequential application of top-down instructions that guide the interpretation process. The results show how scene structures of interest to the viewer are extracted by an automatically selected sequence of top-down instructions. The model shows two further benefits. One is an inherent capability to deal well with the problem of combinatorial generalization-generalizing broadly to unseen scene configurations, which is limited in current network models [B. Lake, M. Baroni, 35th International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML 2018 (2018)]. The second is the ability to combine visual with nonvisual information at each cycle of the interpretation process, which is a key aspect for modeling human perception as well as advancing AI vision systems.

Top-down and bottom-up approaches to teaching English verb-particle constructions

Abstract The present study examines two cognitive linguistics approaches to foreign language teaching. One draws on the conventionality of language use that a variety of expressions can be understood as instances of more general patterns, e.g., kick them out and eat it up as verb-object-particle, whereas the other centers on linguistic creativeness such as novel combinations or associations, e.g., chest down the ball. Noting that English verb-particle constructions (VPCs) exemplify both linguistic conventionality and creativeness, two types of instruction have been developed–namely, top-down instruction and bottom-up instruction. The top-down instruction presents VPCs as instances of conventional argument structures such as motion and resultative constructions (Goldberg, 2015), whereas the bottom-up instruction focuses on creative compositions of literal and metaphorical meanings (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). The two types of instruction were provided for Korean EFL learners, and their knowledge of VPCs was measured by a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a four-week delayed posttest. Results of the immediate posttest showed that both types of instruction were effective in improving the learners’ knowledge of literal and figurative VPCs. In the delayed posttest, significantly greater retention was observed for the construction-based top-down instruction. This finding highlights the importance of argument structures as super-constructions in teaching VPCs to EFL learners.

OPTIMIZING PT SEMEN PADANG PERFORMANCE POST-COMMERCIAL CENTRALIZATION TO THE HOLDCO

This research aims to explores the beneficial extension of the Holdco strategy and formulates the suitable meso-level strategies for PT Semen Padang. This research uses primary and secondary data collection methods, identifies the environments through generic frameworks, analyses qualitative data through thematic frameworks, and formulates the result as corporate and business strategies. According to the research, Holdco set the sales target in a top-down instruction without PT Semen Padang's interference on the procurement, marketing of cement and clinker, and supply chain functions. These functions are essential and inseparable from sales targets but withdrawn to Holdco. However, Holdco allows PT Semen Padang to develop the plant process, non-cement product, non-clinker product, and enter the non-cement business. Therefore, PT Semen Padang could fulfill the strategy gap and gain a global subsidiary mandate by building a university-industry collaboration, strengthening the vertical integration, utilizing cost-saving technologies, and the outside cement chain diversification.
 Keywords : Commercial Centralization, Global Subsidiary, Collaboration, Vertical Integration, Diversification

Adaptive processing and perceptual learning in visual cortical areas V1 and V4

Neurons in visual cortical areas primary visual cortex (V1) and V4 are adaptive processors, influenced by perceptual task. This is reflected in their ability to segment the visual scene into task-relevant and task-irrelevant stimulus components and by changing their tuning to task-relevant stimulus properties according to the current top-down instruction. Differences between the information represented in each area were seen. While V1 represented detailed stimulus characteristics, V4 filtered the input from V1 to carry the binary information required for the two-alternative judgement task. Neurons in V1 were activated at locations where the behaviorally relevant stimulus was placed well outside the grating-mapped receptive field. By systematically following the development of the task-dependent signals over the course of perceptual learning, we found that neuronal selectivity for task-relevant information was initially seen in V4 and, over a period of weeks, subsequently in V1. Once the learned information was represented in V1, on any given trial, task-relevant information appeared initially in V1 responses, followed by a 12-ms delay in V4. We propose that the shifting representation of learned information constitutes a mechanism for systems consolidation of memory.

Top-down then automatic: Instructions can continue to influence visual search when no longer actively implemented.

The present study investigated the automaticity of top-down instructions in visual search when the instruction was no longer actively implemented. To do so, we exploited the Priming of Pop-out (PoP) effect, a selection history phenomenon that reflects faster responses when the target and distractor colors are repeated than switched across trials of singleton search. We then had participants perform a color singleton search task where they implemented the instruction of imagining the opposite color of the previous target, which put the target colors underlying PoP and the imagery instruction in opposition. To assess automaticity, on some trials participants were instructed to stop implementing the imagery instruction. When the imagery instruction was implemented, responses were faster when the target and distractor colors switched (i.e., imagery congruent) than repeated (i.e., imagery incongruent) across search displays - a pattern of results opposite to the PoP effect. When participants were to not implement this instruction, the PoP effect was absent, indicating the imagery instruction had a lingering influence on visual search. This remained true even when participants reported successfully not implementing the instruction, and only when the imagery abandonment instruction was supplanted by a different top-down task was the lingering influence removed such that the PoP effect returned. Overall, the present study demonstrates that top-down instructions can continue to influence visual search despite the will of the observer.

Accountability intensity and bureaucrats’ response to conflicting expectations: a survey experiment in China

Grassroots bureaucrats are confronted with multiple accountability pressures which result in diverse or even conflicting expectations. Based on a survey experiment conducted in China, this study examines how bureaucrats respond to the divergent expectations of upper-level authorities and local citizens and how the intensity of such accountability influences those responses. The findings show that although bureaucrats tend to put more effort into tasks that are aligned with citizens’ interests, over-stringent accountability may crowd out their intrinsic motivation to serve the public and push them to follow top-down instructions mechanically. Intensified accountability may not necessarily lead to better policy outcomes.

Agent-based modelling of juvenile eel migration via selective tidal stream transport

Recruitment of temperate eel species Anguilla anguilla, A. rostrata &A. japonica has declined over the last few decades due to human activities, such as overfishing and construction of migratory barriers (e.g. dams, weirs and sluices) and hazardous energy infrastructure (e.g. turbines, intakes and outfalls). Numerical models, substantiated with data from field and laboratory studies, can potentially predict and quantify the relative impacts of such activities, thereby assisting in the sustainable management of eel populations. Here, we present an agent-based model (ABM) of juvenile eel migration up estuaries. The model includes relevant eel behaviours and environmental conditions that, according to the literature, influence upstream migration. Crucially, by assessing the local salinity gradient and relative flow direction, the modelled eels (agents) self-determine whether the tide is flooding or ebbing and orientate themselves for navigation, with no top-down instructions. This allows the agents to decide which particular behaviour to undertake as part of Selective Tidal Stream Transport (STST). The developed ABM is coupled to a hydrodynamic model of the Thames Estuary and the results substantiated by comparison against eel trap data. Combinations of the various STST behaviours are systematically tested and the influence they have on up-estuary migration is assessed in terms of relative energy expenditure. The parameterised model is then used predictively at Milford Haven Waterway to investigate potential impacts on the juvenile eel population due to entrainment in a power plant cooling water intake and outfall. Results from the Thames model case study indicate that including bed anchoring behaviour is essential for achieving a good comparison with the eel trap data and the choice of salinity detection threshold is also important. If daylight avoidance (diel) behaviour is not included, the most energy efficient migration is achieved using just two STST behaviours (ebb tide bed anchoring and upward migration during flood). With diel behaviour included, energy expenditure is greater, but some efficiency is regained by including all of the STST behaviours. For the Milford Haven case study, the model predicted a juvenile eel intake and outfall entrainment rate of 2.0% and 4.7%, respectively. It is concluded that the ABM is a valuable tool for assessing potential impacts on the recruitment of eels (extendable to other species) and could be used to assist in site-selection and low impact design of energy infrastructure in tidal environments.

Alternative lifeworlds on the Internet: Habermas and democratic distance education

ABSTRACT Current distance education practices can be susceptible to the types of content-heavy, top-down instruction often seen in physical classrooms. These practices are similar to the activities of corporations, which use recommendation systems and game theory to mold the public sphere and fragment it. We propose that free knowledge creation through open, multichannel communication needs to be used in distance education to permit both individual and collective agency for students to process knowledge and develop higher order reflectivity. Such frameworks would help students of distance education and instructors to use critical thinking to discuss concepts as equal stakeholders and develop varied ideological outcomes that could contribute to creating social change. This conceptual paper places current distance education practices within Habermasian theory, discusses ways in which the Internet and its educative potential has come to be viewed thus far, and suggests platforms that could open distance learning to new possibilities.

Mitigating cue competition effects in human category learning.

When people learn perceptual categories, if one feature makes it easy to determine the category membership, learning about other features can be reduced. In three experiments, we asked whether this cue competition effect could be fully eradicated with simple instructions. For this purpose, in a pilot experiment, we adapted a classical overshadowing paradigm into a human category learning task. Unlike previous reports, we demonstrate a robust cue competition effect with human learners. In Experiments 1 and 2, we created a new warning condition that aimed at eradicating the cue competition effect through top-down instructions. With a medium-size overshadowing effect, Experiment 1 shows a weak mitigation of the overshadowing effect. We replaced the stimuli in Experiment 2 to obtain a larger overshadowing effect and showed a larger warning effect. Nevertheless, the overshadowing effect could not be fully eradicated. These experiments suggest that cue competition effects can be a stubborn roadblock in human category learning. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The Management of Unequal Patient Status in Fertility Medicine: Donors' and Intended Parents’ Experiences of Participatory and Imposed Enrollment

This paper explores the micro-dynamics of medicalization and unequal patient statuses across donors and intended parents in assisted fertility practices. Based on twelve months of fieldwork in a fertility clinic, including direct observations of 108 patient-medical expert consultations and interviews with donors, I develop an “epistemic-orientation (EO) continuum” to examine the emergence and differing consequences of unequal patient status. Patients who experience practices closer to the “participatory” epistemic orientation end of the continuum enjoy joint decision-making, personal and emotional recognition, and incorporation of their personal values in interactions with medical experts in the clinic. Patients whose experiences align more closely to the “imposed” epistemic orientation end of the continuum experience top-down instruction, neglected personhood, and medical objectification. I find that medical experts rely upon their professional authority to enroll intended parents in participatory epistemic orientations, while donors more likely experience imposed epistemic orientations. Blended orientations also occur within each patient group, often based on individuals’ prior fertility experiences. The EO continuum approach carries implications for future research to note how patients of various social identities (i.e. race, class, gender) and patient groups are positioned along the continuum, as well as practical interventions into micro-dynamics of social inequalities in healthcare.

Implementing public policy in a non-directive manner: capacities from an intermediary organization.

We investigate the capacities of an organization responsible for bridging top-down instructions emanating from a law on public health with the bottom-up realities of health service providers working on population-based health. This article traces the implementation of this law, which requires service-provider organizations to base their actions (planning, prevention, and curative activities) upon the expressed and non-expressed needs of the local population. We investigate a case in the province of Québec that took place over more than 10years. The state strategy involved a key structure: an intermediary organization named IPCDC/KSCDI. We first describe how the organization emerged; the expertise involved from the academic, service, and policy domains; the support provided to service-provider organizations; and the achievements. We then highlight the critical capacities the intermediary organization had to nurture. We identify five critical capacities of the intermediary organization: the business intelligence to read and adjust to the given environment of certain organizations, a dedication to collective means, a win-win mentality, scientific connectivity, and the animation of safe havens. It may be important to focus attention on a capacity approach to intermediary organizations. These capacities can potentially enable governmental organizations to compile a stock of resources that can be mobilized and transferred to support future implementations of other reforms. They could also benefit public health partners in the community who collaborate with service providers and actors who aspire to become intermediary organizations. Finally, the performance measurement of implementing reforms in a non-directive manner could be based on indicators related to these five critical capacities.

Task instructions can accelerate the early preference for social features in naturalistic scenes.

Previous research demonstrated that humans rapidly and reflexively prioritize social features (especially heads and faces) irrespective of their physical saliency when freely viewing naturalistic scenes. In the current study, we investigated whether this preference for social elements already occurs maximally fast during free exploration or whether it is possible to additionally accelerate it by means of top-down instructions. To examine this question, we presented participants with colour photographs of naturalistic scenes containing social features (e.g. heads and bodies) while recording their eye movements. For half of the stimuli, observers were instructed to freely view the images; for the other half of the stimuli, their task was to spot depicted people as fast as possible. We replicated that social elements (especially heads) were rapidly preferred over physically salient image parts. Moreover, we found the orienting towards social elements to be additionally enhanced and accelerated when participants were instructed to detect people quickly. Importantly, this effect was strongest for heads and already evident at the very first fixation. Thus, the present study not only corroborates that the prioritization of social features in naturalistic scenes partially relies on reflexive processes, but also demonstrates that these mechanisms can be additionally accelerated by top-down instructions.

The Indonesian Family Welfare Guidance Programme (PKK) and the Revitalisation of Corporatist state organisations: A Case Study of the Mobilisation of Support for Dewanti Rumpoko in the 2017 Batu Municipal Election

This article is intended to explore the use of the Family Welfare Guidance Programme (Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga, PKK) in the Municipality of Batu by one candidate as a means of mobilising political support during the 2017 municipal election. Within the current democratic climate, it is interesting to examine how the PKK, as a state corporate organisation that should ideally remain politically neutral, can be exploited to mobilise political support. The main argument of this article is that several factors, including deep-rooted hierarchies, top-down instruction, and clientelism enabled the PKK to be exploited by the incumbent in her mobilisation of political support. To sidestep the principle of neutrality and support the incumbent, PKK cadres used various means during the municipal election. The data for this article was collected using the qualitative approach, with in-depth interviews and participatory observation over the course of the Batu municipal election (January–February 2017).

Try to look on the bright side: Children and adults can (sometimes) override their tendency to prioritize negative faces.

We used eye tracking to examine 4- to 10-year-olds' and adults' (N = 173) visual attention to negative (anger, fear, sadness, disgust) and neutral faces when paired with happy faces in 2 experimental conditions: free-viewing ("look at the faces") and directed ("look only at the happy faces"). Regardless of instruction, all age groups more often looked first to negative versus positive faces (no age differences), suggesting that initial orienting is driven by bottom-up processes. In contrast, biases in more sustained attention-last looks and looking duration-varied by age and could be modified by top-down instruction. On the free-viewing task, all age groups exhibited a negativity bias which attenuated with age and remained stable across trials. When told to look only at happy faces (directed task), all age groups shifted to a positivity bias, with linear age-related improvements. This ability to implement the "look only at the happy faces" instruction, however, fatigued over time, with the decrement stronger for children. Controlling for age, individual differences in executive function (working memory and inhibitory control) had no relation to the free-viewing task; however, these variables explained substantial variance on the directed task, with children and adults higher in executive function showing better skill at looking last and looking longer at happy faces. Greater anxiety predicted more first looks to angry faces on the directed task. These findings advance theory and research on normative development and individual differences in the bias to prioritize negative information, including contributions of bottom-up salience and top-down control. (PsycINFO Database Record

The Impact of Depth of Aesthetic Processing and Visual-Feature Transformations on Recognition Memory for Artworks and Constructed Design Patterns

We conducted a study to examine how people perceptually encode and then recognize real artworks and constructed design patterns. We first manipulated depth of processing during an incidental perceptual encoding task (Phase 1) wherein participants made both affective/aesthetic and cognitive judgments. For painting stimuli, the contrast was between liking (yes/no) and a search for food in the paintings (present/absent). For design stimuli, the comparison was between liking and relative similarity of figure and ground in terms of color or texture. In Phase 2, we examined the effects of transforming visual features (i.e., color and texture) of the original stimuli on performance in a surprise recognition-memory task. Consistent with a depth-of-processing hypothesis, affective (i.e., liking) processing led to deeper perceptual encoding but, counter to our predictions, did not lead to better performance in the recognition-memory task. This benefit of aesthetic processing in the encoding phase was only observed with artworks but not with constructed design patterns that lacked salient semantic content. Moreover, texture transformations were discerned more accurately than color transformations across the different stimulus sets and tasks. This underscores the primacy of bottom-up processing of elementary stimulus features over top-down instructions to make affective judgments or search for semantic content.

Top-down and bottom-up aspects of active search in a real-world environment.

Visual search has been studied intensively in the labouratory, but lab search often differs from search in the real world in many respects. Here, we used a mobile eye tracker to record the gaze of participants engaged in a realistic, active search task. Participants were asked to walk into a mailroom and locate a target mailbox among many similar mailboxes. This procedure allowed control of bottom-up cues (by making the target mailbox more salient; Experiment 1) and top-down instructions (by informing participants about the cue; Experiment 2). The bottom-up salience of the target had no effect on the overall time taken to search for the target, although the salient target was more likely to be fixated and found once it was within the central visual field. Top-down knowledge of target appearance had a larger effect, reducing the need for multiple head and body movements, and meaning that the target was fixated earlier and from further away. Although there remains much to be discovered in complex real-world search, this study demonstrates that principles from visual search in the labouratory influence gaze in natural behaviour, and provides a bridge between these labouratory studies and research examining vision in natural tasks.

The Comparative Effect of Top-down Processing and Bottomup Processing through TBLT on Extrovert and Introvert EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension

This research seeks to examine the effect of two models of reading comprehension, namely top-down and bottom-up processing, on the reading comprehension of extrovert and introvert EFL learners’ reading comprehension. To do this, 120 learners out of a total number of 170 intermediate learners being educated at Iran Mehr English Language School were selected all taking a PET (Preliminary English Test) first for homogenization prior to the study. They also answered the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI) which in turn categorized them into two subgroups within each reading models consisting of introverts and extroverts. All in all, there were four subgroups: 30 introverts and 30 extroverts undergoing the top-down processing treatment, and 30 introverts and 30 extroverts experiencing the bottom-up processing treatment. The aforementioned PET was administered as the post test of the study after each group was exposed to the treatment for 18 sessions in six weeks. After the instructions finished, the mean scores of all four groups on this post test were computed and a two-way ANOVA was run to test all the four hypotheses raise in this study. the results showed that while learners generally benefitted more from the bottom-up processing setting compared to the top-down processing one, the extrovert group was better off receiving top-down instruction. Furthermore, introverts outperformed extroverts in bottom-up group; yet between the two personalities subgroups in the top-down setting no difference was seen. A predictable pattern of benefitting from teaching procedures could not be drawn for introverts as in both top-down and bottom-up settings, they benefitted more than extroverts.