bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Quantitative passive soil vapor sampling for VOCs – part 4: flow-through cell
Authors: McAlary Todd , Groenevelt Hester , Seethapathy Suresh , Sacco Paolo , Crump Derrick , Tuday Michael , Schumacher Brian , Hayes Heidi , Johnson Paul , Parker Louise , Górecki Tadeusz
Published: March 2014

Passive diffusive samplers can be used in a flow-through cell to monitor VOC vapor concentrations during vapor intrusion investigations.
Temperature-dependent solvation modulates the dimensions of disordered proteins
Authors: Wuttke René , Hofmann Hagen , Nettels Daniel , Borgia Madeleine B. , Mittal Jeetain , Best Robert B. , Schuler Benjamin
Published: March 2014

Significance

A large number of naturally occurring proteins are now known to be unstructured under physiological conditions. Many of these intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) bind other biological macromolecules or ligands and are involved in important regulatory processes in the cell. For understanding the structural basis of these functional properties, it is essential to quantify the balance of interactions that modulate the heterogeneous conformational distributions of IDPs and unfolded proteins in general. In contrast to the behavior expected for simple polymers with temperature-independent intramolecular interactions, unfolded proteins become more compact when the temperature is raised. Here, we show that the temperature dependence of the interactions of the constituent amino acid residues with the aqueous solvent have a dominant effect on this behavior.
T cells down-regulate macrophage TNF production by IRAK1-mediated IL-10 expression and control innate hyperinflammation
Authors: Inoue Makoto , Arikawa Tomohiro , Chen Yu-Hsun , Moriwaki Yasuhiro , Price Michael , Brown Michael , Perfect John R. , Shinohara Mari L.
Published: March 2014

Significance

Appropriate development of inflammation is essential to protect hosts from microbial infections, but inflammation can occasionally overshoot and cause collateral damage in hosts. Such hyperinflammation happens during endotoxemia and sepsis, and is attributed to excessive production of proinflammatory cytokines by host cells, such as macrophages. In this study, we demonstrate an unconventional mechanism by which T cells regulate cytokine production of macrophages. It is our general understanding that fast-acting immune cells (such as macrophages) “instruct” how T cells should behave through the step termed antigen presentation. However, what we show here is that T cells instruct macrophages to down-regulate a key proinflammatory cytokine, TNF, within hours after the initiation of endotoxemia.
Chapter 1. The reasonableness of confrontational strategic maneuvering in political interviews
Authors: Andone Corina
Published: March 2014

The goal of this paper is to evaluate a politician’s responses to an interviewer’s accusation that his current standpoint is inconsistent with an earlier expressed standpoint on the same issue. The author focuses on the case in which the politician responds to such criticism by retracting the earlier expressed standpoint and subsequently reformulating it. Taking a pragma-dialectical perspective on argumentation, the author assesses whether the politician’s sequence of moves contributes to a reasonable resolution of the difference of opinion that is at stake in a political interview. To this end, the author formulates a set of soundness conditions that should be fulfilled if a politician is to reasonably retract a standpoint that is afterwards reformulated. The author applies the soundness conditions to a number of concrete cases taken from BBC political interviews to judge whether the responses are reasonable or not.
Chapter 6. Making history by analogy
Authors: Ray Angela G.
Published: March 2014

Most scholarship on historical analogies emphasizes the dangers of misperception of current events through facile comparisons with the past. Instead, through a detailed rhetorical and historical analysis, this essay argues that an extended historical analogy that highlights difference as well as likeness has the potential to generate new and productive understandings of recent experience. The essay examines the public lecture “William the Silent,” written and delivered by African American civil rights advocate Frederick Douglass in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War. This lecture analogizes the history of the Netherlands in the sixteenth century to recent U.S. history, suggesting explanations for political decisions and military strategies. Douglass’s careful comparison and contrast of William of Orange and Abraham Lincoln are key elements of the analogy. Through the analysis presented here, this neglected popular lecture emerges as a significant part of Douglass’s own rhetorical trajectory as he sought to make sense of the recent war and the turbulent peace, as he made history by analogy. The dynamics of this case call attention to the importance of contextualizing analogies by form and function, in order to enrich our understanding of specific analogical uses and to deepen our comprehension of the power of analogy generally.
Chapter 7. Analogy in history
Authors: Mazzi Davide
Published: March 2014

Over the last few decades, there has been a remarkable spate of interest for history. Thus, this academic discipline has been tackled for the captivating copresence of narrative and argumentative components in professional historians’ scientific prose. Additionally, a few attempts have been made to classify the most widely spread forms of argument. However, in spite of the inspiring nature of available studies, only tangentially have scholars examined the inherently textual dimension of historical argumentation. The aim of this paper is thus to bring insights into the linguistic construction of argumentation in historical text, by choosing argument by analogy as a case in point. The study is based on a corpus of authentic research articles taken from specialised journals. By combining quantitative with qualitative methods, findings show that the reiterated expression of analogy serves as a clue to understand some crucial features of the organisation of historical text, e.g. the formulation of the writer’s own evaluation and the overall fleshing out of the meta-discursive substance characterising the interactive plane of historical text. The thesis argued here is that analogy is a chiefly interactive device, which combines with a set of discursive tools securing a fruitful relationship between writers and readers in the development of historical narrative and argument.
Chapter 11. Student speech in public schools
Authors: Herbeck Dale A.
Published: March 2014

In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), the United States Supreme Court famously held that public school students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gates.” Recognizing that these rights are necessarily limited, the Court added that school officials retained the authority to punish expression that “would materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school.” In that decades that followed, judges applying Tinker have used the case to dramatically limit student speech rights. This result was achieved through two distinct argumentative moves. These decisions subtly broadened a legal standard that originally required actual disruption to include student speech that had the potential to disrupt. At the same time, these decisions delegated the authority to characterize expression to school officials. Using this power to define, it was easy for administrators to repress student speech by asserting that the possibility for disruption was sufficient to satisfy the “material” and “substantial” criteria set out in Tinker. Taken together, these simple definitional moves allowed judges to transform a landmark decision originally intended to protect student speech rights into a powerful precedent that can be offered to restrict student speech.
Chapter 14. Drug advertising and clinical practice
Authors: Goodnight G. Thomas , Gilbert Kara
Published: March 2014

The field of medical practice is influenced by biopolitics, an expanding domain of global controversies over health and medicine. The growth of direct-to-consumer advertising raises questions of influence upon doctor-patient communication. The study makes the case for critical inquiry to advance competent, clinical communicative practices.
Chapter 15. Argumentative insights for the analysis of direct-to-consumer advertising
Authors: Mohammed Dima , Schulz Peter J.
Published: March 2014

In spite of the increasing awareness of the central role that argumentation plays in direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, argumentative considerations have not yet been adequately incorporated into the analysis of DTC ads. In this paper, we argue that taking argumentative considerations into account when designing codebooks for the content analysis of DTC ads is necessary in order for the analysis of DTC advertising to be insightful. We critically examine the codebooks used in influential studies in which the method of content analyses is applied to DTC ads in order to highlight the shortcomings of the existing codebooks. For example, because existing coding schemes do not incorporate argumentative insight into the coding schemes applied to DTC ads, these schemes can only identify the recurrence of particular messages but not identify the argumentative role these messages play in the text. We propose an alternative coding scheme that can capture argumentative features of DTC ads which are not captured in the existing coding schemes.
Chapter 18. The effects of hedges and pledges in advertisements for high and low reputation brands
Authors: Hornikx Jos
Published: March 2014

Claims in advertising may vary in their use of probability markers that signal the degree to which the claim is true. Experimental research has compared hedges (which mark a claim as moderately probable) and pledges (which mark a claim as very probable). This research has generally neglected the proponent of the claims: the brand. There are reasons to believe that the brand behind the advertising affects to what extent people are persuaded by advertising claims. In two studies it was therefore investigated whether the reputation of the brand affects the persuasiveness of hedges and pledges. It was expected that hedges would be more persuasive for low-reputation brands, whereas pledges would be more persuasive for high-reputation brands. This expectation was tested in two experiments. In Study 1, hedges and pledges were compared in an ad that was provided after information about a brand’s reputation. In Study 2, hedges, plegdes and no markers were compared in an ad in which the brand’s reputation was incorporated. Both studies did not find empirical support for the hypothesis. In Study 1, hedges and pledges were found to be equally persuasive; in Study 2, pledges were found to be more persuasive than hedges.
Chapter 20. The diversifying of contextual constraints and argumentative strategies in friendly and hostile takeover bids
Authors: Palmieri Rudi
Published: March 2014

This paper investigates how the argumentative situation affects arguers’ strategic maneuvering in a financial context, devoting particular attention to the situational characteristics at the confrontational level. To this purpose, this study considers takeover bids, a class of financial activities in which one company (the bidder), in order to acquire the control of another company (the target), proposes to the shareholders of it to sell their shares. When seen from an argumentative perspective, takeover bids manifest an interesting and original aspect: beside a composite audience (corresponding to the shareholders and other stakeholders of the two corporations), a multiple arguer is always involved since the bidder and the target boards of directors are both requested to argumentatively justify their respective position. The important distinction made in financial economics between bids supported by the target board (friendly) and those that are opposed (hostile) is reinterpreted from the perspective of argumentation analysis. Hence, friendly and hostile bids are specified as two kindred activity types belonging to the class of takeover bids, i.e. two species of the same genus, differing mostly because they imply two different confrontational situations which evidently condition the strategies of the concerned arguers. In friendly offers, the bidder and target boards devise a coordinated argumentation in which each side moves within the boundaries set by the interaction field, i.e. the commitments implied by their institutional role and those imposed by takeover rules. Hostile offers show a higher complexity as bidder and target directors separately try to persuade the same audience of the acceptability of their respective standpoints, while reacting to the argumentation advanced by the other side.
Undercurrents of consciousness
Authors: Ashton Heather
Published: March 2014

The endocannabinoid system acts as a neuromodulator, interacting with other neuromodulators such as the opioids. It influences all vital body functions and sets the tone of every conscious thought and feeling. It operates largely below conscious levels but occasionally floats into consciousness where it is perceived as perfect bliss and pain-free calm.
Consciousness and neural time travel
Authors: Hasselmo Michael E.
Published: March 2014

Consciousness is described in this article as a perception of self that is constructed for guidance of voluntary goal-directed behaviour, including neural mechanisms for mental time travel into the future during planning and into the past during episodic retrieval. Neural time travel draws on the distributed cortical perceptual processes for detecting the state of the self along multiple dimensions, including spatial location, head direction, speed, temporal duration, and egocentric relationships to items. These circuit mechanisms are regulated by neuromodulatory influences such as muscarinic acetylcholine receptors that activate intrinsic properties of neurons involved in maintaining an internal representation of self.
Noise in the brain, decision-making, determinism, free will, and consciousness
Authors: Rolls Edmund T.
Published: March 2014

Noise caused by randomness in the spiking times of neurons in the brain has a number of advantages, including contributing to probabilistic decision-making. However, noise results in the brain operating effectively as a non-deterministic system, which has implications for free will. Noise also results in decisions being taken probabilistically between the reasoning system and the implicit reward system. I propose that free will can be used to describe the operation of the reasoning system, and that consciousness is a property of a reasoning system that must use higher order syntactic thoughts (HOSTs) to correct its first order thoughts. When the implicit system takes a decision, we may confabulate a reason for the decision, and in that case the feeling of free will may be an illusion.
The visual unconscious
Authors: ffytche Dominic H.
Published: March 2014

Neurobiological accounts of consciousness typically partition brain activity into two components: one correlated with conscious experience (the neural correlate of consciousness) and the other not. Here I use evidence derived from visual hallucinations in the context of eye disease – the Charles Bonnet Syndrome – to examine the nature of what might be termed the visual unconscious. Forcing us to reconsider the nature of the unconscious, this hidden system of modular processing underlies our apparently seamless conscious visual experience of the world with many of its complex functions yet to be recognised by visual science.
Potential contributions of research on meditation to the neuroscience of consciousness
Authors: Lutz Antoine
Published: March 2014

Exploring the initial findings of neuroscientific research on meditation, new horizons of further inquiry in consciousness research are apparent. While such studies of contemplative practices are still in their infancy, early findings promise to contribute in three key areas. These include: Neuroplasticity – physiological and psychological indices of short and long terms responses of the brain circuits that underlie complex mental functions associated with specific types of meditation techniques ; Mind body Interactions – revealing mechanisms by which such training may exert beneficial effects on physical health; and Subjectivity – well developed introspective skills of practitioners potentially shedding new light on the neural counterpart of subjectivity.
Beyond the boundaries of the brain
Authors: Radin Dean
Published: March 2014

Does telepathy – a purported means of communication unmediated by the ordinary senses – exist? Experimental evidence, meta-analyses and debates suggesting an affirmative answer can be found in a growing number of mainstream journals, and a physical basis for telepathy appears to be increasingly plausible based upon considerations of quantum holism and advancements in quantum information processing. Future neuroscience models of conscious and unconscious perception may be obliged to take into account a common human experience once dismissed as mere superstition.
Chapter 1. The phenomenology of body memory
Authors: Fuchs Thomas
Published: March 2014

Memory comprises not only one’s explicit recollections of the past, but also the acquired dispositions, skills, and habits that implicitly influence one’s present experience and behavior. This implicit memory is based on the habitual structure of the lived body, which connects us to the world through its operative intentionality. The memory of the body appears in different forms, which are classified as procedural, situational, intercorporeal, incorporative, pain, and traumatic memory. The life-long plasticity of body memory enables us to adapt to the natural and social environment, in particular, to become entrenched and to feel at home in social and cultural space. On the other hand, the structures accrued in body memory are an essential basis of our experience of self and identity: The individual history and peculiarity of a person is also expressed by his or her bodily habits and behavior. Finally, sensations or situations experienced by the lived body may function as implicit memory cores, which, under suitable circumstances, can release their enclosed content, as in Proust’s famous madeleine experience. This unfolding or explication of body memory is of particular importance for therapeutic approaches working with bodily experience.
Chapter 3. Kinesthetic memory
Authors: Sheets-Johnstone Maxine
Published: March 2014

This essay expands and broadens a 2003 article on kinesthetic memory. It does so by
critically examining currently favored taxonomies of memory as put forward by scientists,
philosophers, and neuroscientists, and, in turn, by presenting a phenomenological
perspective on body memory based on investigations by a Jungian analyst/phenomenological
philosopher. The perspective brings to light highly complex and subtle dimensions of body
memory, thus challenging us to enrich our understanding of body memory by turning
studious attention to experience and actively investigating living experiences of body
memory.
Chapter 8. Embodied concepts
Authors: Bermeitinger Christina , Kiefer Markus
Published: March 2014

There is a long-standing debate within philosophy and psychology on the question
whether concepts are abstract mental entities or based on reactivation of sensory and
motor representations. The chapter reviews what concepts are and what they are for. The relation of concepts and semantic memory is pointed out. The classical views on conceptual representations proposing an amodal representation of concepts are contrasted with recent embodiment theories, which assume that concepts are essentially grounded in perception and action. Different sources of evidence from behavioral psychology and neuropsychology foster the view that concepts are represented in the sensory and motor systems. We attempt an integration of embodied and classical views on conceptual representation and discuss embodied processes in related areas of cognitive psychology.
Chapter 13. Body memory and the emergence of metaphor in movement and speech
Authors: Kolter Astrid , Ladewig Silva H. , Summa Michela , Müller Cornelia , Koch Sabine C. , Fuchs Thomas
Published: March 2014

The present study is an empirical documentation of body memory and the transition from implicit to explicit memory from the cognitive-linguistic, movement analytic, and philosophical perspectives in a therapeutic application. The transition from implicit memory to explicit memory is described using the concept of activated metaphoricity. It is argued that body movements executed in the absence of speech may provide the experiential source for multimodal metaphors. Tracing these bodily movements from speechless contexts to contexts encompassing speech and body movement allows for the empirical documentation of the transition from implicit body memory to explicit verbalized memory. In this chapter, these theoretical claims are substantiated from the results of an interdisciplinary case study in a dance/movement therapy context.
Chapter 17. Memory, metaphor, and mirroring in movement therapy with trauma patients
Authors: Eberhard-Kaechele Marianne
Published: March 2014

This chapter defines trauma and describes some of its long term consequences, in particular traumatic body memory. A model of the formation of traumatic body memory is used as a reference to discuss the potential of dance/movement therapy to address this phenomenon. After a brief reflection on ground rules for trauma-focused therapy, four interrelated approaches in dance/movement therapy with trauma patients are considered. These include (1) the psycho-educational retraining of trauma-based action patterns, (2) the modulation of arousal through the deconstruction of affects, (3) the transformation of the subjective meaning of traumatic experience through experiential movement metaphors, and (4) the development of affect regulation and reflective distance to traumatic memory through interpersonal mirroring.
Chapter 19. The embodied word
Authors: Panhofer Heidrun , Payne Helen , Parke Timothy , Meekums Bonnie
Published: March 2014

During the last decades a narrative outlook has become very popular in many disciplines, including psychotherapy whose central model is based on the exteriorisation of inner worlds through verbalisation. The following chapter assesses the narrative tradition from an embodiment perspective and explores the extent to which the embodied experience can and needs to be worded. Stemming from the discipline of Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP), a psychotherapeutic approach which makes use of embodied perceptual practices such as movement, play and dance, it draws on a recent study (Panhofer 2009) which shows some of the limitations of language. Supporting a psycho-corporeal integration, it emphasizes other possible ways of communicating the embodied experience, such as through metaphors, images, and poetry. Where it is difficult to communicate an inner experience through verbal narration, such as practiced in verbal psychotherapy, metaphors, images and poetry may offer a useful alternative, alongside the embodied perceptual practices such as play, movement, and dance.
Chapter 22. Nakedness, hunger, hooks and hearts
Authors: Winther Helle
Published: March 2014

In spite of many different theoretical approaches, there is today substantial agreement that body and psyche must be regarded as a coherent dynamic and organic system with innate cultural and social significance, some of which may be observed directly in the body and movement of the individual. This article is based on this often primarily theoretically grounded observation, and reveals, through narratives from movement pedagogic and dance therapeutic contexts, a need for regarding the multidimensional meanings of not just the body, but also of movement. The narratives in the article about embodied memories concern emotional nakedness, existential hunger, felt “hooks” and wounded hearts. The question is whether investigations of body and movement may create a counterweight to the pervasive focus on verbalization, and give occasion to examine problems and possibilities for solutions through concrete and direct access to the body’s basic expressivity, rooted in embodied experience.
Chapter 8. Attending to olfactory short-term memory
Authors: White Theresa L.
Published: March 2014

Short-term memory generally refers to the temporary internal representation of a limited amount of information. Trygg Engen’s early results on olfactory short-term memory were so dissimilar to those found in other sensory systems that they led him to question the very existence of this type of memory (Engen, 1987). His later work, however, suggests that he came to support the concept of olfactory short-term memory (Engen, Gilmore, & Mair, 1991), though he felt that it functioned quite differently from other memory systems (Herz & Engen, 1996). Although a variety of general models regarding the nature of short-term memory exist (e.g., Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Jonides et al., 2008), most recognize the role of attention as an integral part of the memory process. Likewise, general models of attention include short-term memory as a fundamental component (Knudsen, 2007). So, in other sensory systems, attention has been shown to both determine the contents of memory (Broadbent, 1958) and be guided by short-term memory in perceptual tasks (Downing, 2000). The question remains, however, as to whether olfactory short-term memory enjoys the same two-way relationship with attention. The most recent model of olfactory memory (Wilson & Stevens, 2006) does not include attention as an aspect of the memory process. An examination of the literature gives evidence that although olfactory short-term memory has some unique characteristics when compared to memory for other types of stimuli, attention is still a highly relevant component.
Chapter 10. Remembering what the nose knows
Authors: Mair Robert G.
Published: March 2014

In 1973 Trygg Engen came up with the idea of studying olfaction by examining the effects of brain damage on odor perception. This work led to two fundamental insights that have stood the test of time. First, central brain lesions can disrupt higher functions like odor identification, naming, or recognition memory without affecting the ability to detect and discriminate differences between odors. Second, the ability to make sense of what we smell depends on brain regions beyond the olfactory bulb and its immediate projection areas in primary olfactory cortex. A lot has been learned about neural mechanisms that give rise to the sense of smell since these early neuropsychological studies were conducted. This chapter reviews this early work in light of more recent discoveries of olfactory neuroscience.
Chapter 12. The psychophysics of olfaction in the human newborn
Authors: Lipsitt Lewis P. , Rovee-Collier Carolyn
Published: March 2014

Until the early 1960s, little was known about the human newborn’s ability to detect odors. At that time, the modern study of newborn olfaction was introduced by Trygg Engen in collaboration with Lewis Lipsitt, colleagues in the Psychology Department of Brown University. In two seminal studies, they demonstrated that newborns could not only detect pure olfactory stimuli, as opposed to odorous trigeminal irritants, but also could habituate to them over repeated presentations. These studies introduced numerous now-standard control procedures and compound stimuli to the habituation literature. In another series of experiments on newborn olfactory psychophysics, infants directly scaled the subjective intensity of a log2 dilution series of concentrations of five members of an homologous series of aliphatic alcohols, which differ only in the number of carbons in their chemical chains. Newborn’s data were described by power functions that were inversely related to chain length. These functions permitted the role of chain length in newborn sensory adaptation to be examined. Two alcohol pairs, each composed of different chain lengths, were formed from concentrations that were equated for magnitude of responding within pairs. Members of each pair served as both the adapting stimulus and the test stimulus after two adapting intervals. Newborns exhibited either selective cross-adaptation or selective cross-facilitation, depending on the physical properties of odorants with different chain lengths, their order of presentation, and the adapting interval within each odor pair. This body of work exemplifies Engen’s innovations in the science of olfaction with the human newborn. The systematic studies of Engen and his colleagues were the first to document the newborn’s highly developed and acute sense of smell and the significant effect of olfactory experience on newborn learning.
Chapter 13. Emerging chemosensory preferences
Authors: Schaal Benoist
Published: March 2014

As in many other domains of perception and cognition, two opposite conceptions about the causes of emergence of odor preferences were raised by empirical research in newborn infants, one defending the blank slate view while the other endorsed the innate view. Although these conceptions were expressed some decades ago, they remain still alive in the domain of chemosensory research. The present chapter aims to weigh the evidence for both of these views on human newborns’ hedonic propensities towards odors in the light of current knowledge. It will address first how far we can consider that neonatal responses to odors depend exclusively on learning. Secondly, it will address how far we can consider that infantile responses to odors, or at least some of them, are “innate”. This will lead us to attempt clarifying the meaning of the concept of innateness and how it is applied in theorizing chemosensory abilities. Finally, we will consider whether the concept of innateness can stand the considerable plasticity of the olfactory system that appears to be generalized at all levels of its functioning.
Chapter 14. The acquisition of odour preferences via evaluative olfactory conditioning
Authors: Zucco Gesualdo M.
Published: March 2014

Odours are powerful in bringing back distant memories linked to emotional content. This inherent hedonic property of olfactory stimuli, together with poor accessibility to semantic processing and language, makes odour particularly suitable for studies on evaluative conditioning, a variant of Pavlovian classical conditioning, through which a neutral stimulus acquires the affective valence of another stimulus with which it is paired (Hermans & Baeyens, 2002; Levey & Martin, 1975, 1987). Investigations on olfactory evaluative learning have undergone a surge in recent decades, ranging from literature on taste aversions, emergence of phobias, unconscious and subliminal conditioning, and cross-modal conditioning (De Howver et al., 2001; Li et al., 2007; Rozin et al., 1998; Zucco et al., 2009), to the effect of odour conditioning on consuming attitude, cognitive performance, and somatic syndromes in humans (Schneider et al., 1999; Van den Bergh et al., 1999; Vermetten & Bremner, 2003; Zucco, Militello, & Doty, 2008). The aim of this chapter is, therefore, to examine the most relevant literature on preference acquisition via evaluative olfactory conditioning, from the earliest demonstrations to the most recent investigations.
What reason could there be to believe in pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness?
Authors: Alsmith Adrian
Published: March 2014

This paper aims to examine the reasons for endorsing the idea of pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness. The guiding question will be: why should one think that any description of consciousness that posits PBS is correct? The aim of this discussion is to show how hard this question is to answer and the kinds of considerations that one should bring to bear in attempting to answer it. Keywords: explanation; phenomenology; bodily self-consciousness; attention; introspection
The extended mind and the boundaries of perception and action
Authors: Gangopadhyay Nivedita
Published: March 2014

The extended mind hypothesis (EM) (Clark & Chalmers 1998; Clark 2008) is an influential hypothesis in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. In this paper I discuss the support waiting for EM in social cognition, particularly in some cases of embodied intersubjective interactions or action-understanding. A main claim to be defended by way of defending EM is the elimination of the boundary between perception and action (Chalmers 2008). I explore the possibility that embodied intersubjectivity may supply the much needed interdependence of perception and action required to ground a robust EM. I discuss two theories of action-understanding for exploring the support for EM in embodied intersubjective interactions, namely, simulation theory (ST) and a perceptual account (PT). However, using the support from embodied intersubjectivity requires EM to abandon two cornerstones of Clark’s philosophical framework, namely, representationalism and the basic functional dichotomy between perception and action. I argue that if EM adopts a simulation theory of action-understanding it rejects representationalism. If it adopts a perceptual account of action-understanding it relies on an action-oriented account of perception hitherto criticised by Clark. Keywords: extended mind; perception-action interdependence; simulation theory; perceptual theory; embodied intersubjectivity
Two dynamical themes in Husserl
Authors: Yoshimi Jeffrey
Published: March 2014

I describe and partially formalize two aspects of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy, in a way that highlights their relevance to cognitive science. First, I describe “constitutive phenomenology”, the study of structures (what I call phenomenological “models”) that constitute a person’s sense of reality. These structures develop incrementally over the course of a person’s life, and serve a variety of functions, e.g. generating expectations relative to actions, and determining the contents of context awareness. Second, I describe “transcendental-eidetic phenomenology”, which posits a hierarchy of laws, each governing the way consciousness must be organized in order for a particular type of thing (a physical thing, a person, a social institution, etc.) to appear.
Styles of observation and embodiment
Authors: Halsall Francis
Published: March 2014

To know anything in space (for instance, a line), I must draw it, and thus synthetically bring into being a determinate combination of the given manifold, so that the unity of this act is at the same time the unity of consciousness (as in the concept of a line); and it is through this unity of consciousness that an object (a determinate space) is first known.Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 138 (2007)
Psychophysics of binocular rivalry
Authors: Brascamp Jan W. , Baker Daniel H.
Published: March 2014

For a given visual stimulus, much can be inferred about its neural representation by measuring an observer’s responses on simple behavioral tasks. This is the essence of psychophysics, the method of examining sensory processing by studying the relation between stimulation and perception or behavior. Binocular rivalry is the phenomenon of alternating perception that occurs when the two eyes receive conflicting images. Psychophysical techniques have been used extensively in combination with rivalry, both to investigate the phenomenon itself, and using rivalry as a tool for addressing other questions. Recent techniques have permitted major advances in both areas, as we discuss here. We will also summarize the value and limitations of rivalry for consciousness research.
Investigating the structure and function of the brain
Authors: Thomson Richard H. , Fitzgerald Paul B.
Published: March 2014

Our understanding of the inner workings of the human brain is increasing exponentially. This is due in no small part to the rapidly advancing technology that has evolved from the application of engineering to neuroscience. This chapter reviews some of the more influential tools that are in widespread use in research institutes throughout the world. Beginning with the basics of electrophysiology, a broad overview of the current methods for resolving and modulating neural activity in the fields of imaging and brain stimulation is presented. Special attention is paid to temporal and spatial resolution, i.e., the capacity of the technologies to resolve small detail in time and space. The chapter concludes with a discussion of technical obstacles and future directions.
Functional neuroimaging of binocular rivalry
Authors: Sterzer Philipp
Published: March 2014

Binocular rivalry has intrigued researchers for over two centuries, but research into its neural mechanisms was until recently limited to behavioral and animal studies. The availability of functional magnetic resonance imaging since the 1990s has boosted the neuroscientific investigation of binocular rivalry in humans. Functional neuroimaging has revealed an involvement of all levels of the brain’s visual processing hierarchy in rivalry dynamics, including early subcortical and cortical stages, functionally specialized visual areas, and non-sensory frontoparietal regions. Moreover, variants of binocular rivalry have helped to elucidate the neural fate of unconscious information during binocular rivalry suppression. The findings from neuroimaging research are integrated into a comprehensive view on how different processing stages interact to resolve perceptual conflict in the human brain.
The future of binocular rivalry research
Authors: Klink P. Christiaan , van Wezel Richard J.A. , van Ee Raymond
Published: March 2014

Binocular rivalry is often considered an experimental window on the neural processes of consciousness. We propose three distinct approaches to exploit this window. First, one may look through the window, using binocular rivalry as a passive tool to dissociate unaltered sensory input from wavering perceptual output. Second, the mechanisms underlying binocular rivalry may yield detailed knowledge of the neuronal underpinnings of binocular vision and increase the value of rivalry as a tool to study consciousness. Finally, smart experimental manipulations allow experimenters to ‘reach through the window’ and interact with mechanisms of conscious visual perception. Within this distinction, we discuss the major open questions in binocular rivalry research and examine how recent technological developments may be incorporated in future studies
What can forest guenons “tell” us about the origin of language?
Authors: Lemasson Alban
Published: March 2014

Human language is by far the most elaborated communication system, but talking, like any behaviour, has not left any clear physical signs of its evolution. Although plausible but quantitatively limited explanations can be drawn from archaeological studies, we will probably never find real direct evidence of the evolutionary path of language. Consequently, the phylogenetic origin of language is still currently debated intensively. A number of recent theoretical and empirical advances show that the evolution of language is a tractable problem when approached at an interdisciplinary level (Hauser et al. 2002, Oller & Griebel 2008). One way to solve this problem is to compare the anatomy, the communicative mechanisms and the cognitive capacities of humans and other more or less phylogenetically-related animals. The question addressed is then ‘Can we find the roots of the complex human language in animal vocal communication?’
Validating characterizations of sociality in HRI
Authors: Kahn Peter H. , Reichert Aimee L. , Gill Brian T. , Kanda Takayuki , Ishiguro Hiroshi , Ruckert Jolina H.
Published: March 2014

As the HRI field evolves, researchers increasingly seek to provide characterizations of sociality in human-robot interaction. But how does one assess whether the characterizations are valid? Using design work on “interaction patterns” as a case in point, this paper offers 5 approaches toward establishing validity: psychometric, literary, modelling, philosophical, and structural. We argue that when it comes to validating characterizations of sociality in HRI, too often people ask for evidence of psychometric validity, without clarity of what that involves, and without awareness of the benefits of these other approaches.
Language strategies for color
Authors: Bleys Joris
Published: March 2014

This chapter studies three strategies giving rise to color categories and descriptions for them:
a strategy for basic hue terms (``yellow'', ``blue'', ``green'', etc.), for brightness terms
(``shiny'', ``dull'', etc.) and for graded membership terms (as in: ``very blue'' or ``slightly blue'').
For each strategy, experiments are performed for the reconstruction, acquisition and formation
of a language system. The paper then turns to an investigation of the selectionist dynamics at
the level of strategies, modelling the competition between a brightness-based and hue-based color
system and achieving a shift from brightness to hue as attested in the historical record.
Emergent mirror systems for body language
Authors: Steels Luc , Spranger Michael
Published: March 2014

This chapter investigates how a vocabulary for talking about
body actions can emerge in a population of
grounded autonomous agents instantiated as humanoid robots.
The agents play a Posture Game in which the speaker asks
the hearer to take on a certain posture. The speaker either
signals success if the hearer indeed performs an action to
achieve the posture or he shows the posture himself so that
the hearer can acquire the name. The challenge of emergent
body language raises not only fundamental issues in how a
perceptually grounded lexicon can arise in a population of
autonomous agents but also more general questions of human
cognition, in particular how agents can develop a body model
and a mirror system so that they can recognize actions of
others as being the same as their own.
Multi-dimensional meanings in lexicon formation
Authors: Wellens Pieter , Loetzsch Martin
Published: March 2014

This chapter introduces a language game experiment for studying the
formation of a shared lexicon when word meanings are not restricted
to a single domain, but instead
consist of any combination of perceptual features from many different domains. The main
difficulty for the language users is that upon hearing a novel word
they cannot be sure which aspects or properties of the referred
object comprise the meaning of the word. We introduce an Adaptive Language
Strategy which pays considerable attention to the adaptive nature of
individual word meanings and allows the language user to use its
linguistic items in a flexible manner, leading to extensive re-use.
Using grounded language game experiments we show that this Adaptive
Strategy elegantly copes with the problems introduced by using
embodied robotic data and allows scaling towards large meaning
spaces and population sizes. The strategy is further compared to a
second one which lacks some of the adaptive and flexible features of
the first strategy, and show that this non-adaptive strategy
struggles to keep a high level of performance under taxing
conditions.
A language strategy for aspect
Authors: Gerasymova Kateryna , Spranger Michael , Beuls Katrien
Published: March 2014

This chapter explores a possible language strategy for verbalizing
aspect: the encoding of Aktionsarten by means of morphological markers.
Russian tense-aspect system is used as a model. We first operationalize
this system and reconstruct the learning operators needed for acquiring
it. Then we perform a first language formation experiment in which a
novel system of Aktionsarten emerges and gets coordinated between the
agents, driven by a need for higher expressivity.
The emergence of quantifiers
Authors: Pauw Simon , Hilferty Joseph
Published: March 2014

Human natural languages use quantifiers as ways to designate the number of objects
of a set. They include numerals, such as ``three'', or circumscriptions, such as ``a few''.
The latter are not only underdetermined but also context dependent.
We provide a cultural-evolution explanation for the emergence of
such quantifiers, focusing in particular on the role of environmental constraints on
strategy choices. Through a series of situated interaction experiments, we show how a
community of robotic agents can self-organize a quantification system.
Different perceptions of the scene make underdetermined quantifiers useful and
environments in which the distribution of objects exhibits some degree of predictability creates
favorable conditions for context-dependent quantifiers.
Introduction
Authors: Wachsmuth Ipke , de Ruiter Jan , Jaecks Petra , Kopp Stefan
Published: March 2014

Alignment in Communication is the theme of a novel direction in communication research, which focuses on interactive adaptation processes assumed to be more or less automatic in humans. Originating from an international workshop organized at Bielefeld’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), the book presents cornerstones of a forming new theory of communication, the ultimate purpose of which is to extend our knowledge about cognitive processes in human communication, as well as creating a foundation for natural multimodal dialogue in human-machine interaction. The introduction chapter, in addition to giving a brief overview of the content of the book, provides a definition of alignment in communication, justifies the need for this new perspective, and outlines a general framework for alignment research.
Interaction phonology – A temporal co-ordination component enabling representational alignment within a model  of communication
Authors: Wagner Petra , Malisz Zofia , Inden Benjamin , Wachsmuth Ipke
Published: March 2014

This chapter contrasts mechanisms and models of temporal co-ordination with models of representational alignment. We argue that alignment of linguistic representations needs a logistic component explaining the underlying co-ordinative processes between interlocutors in time, yielding a more profound understanding of how information exchange is managed. The processes and structures subject to this logistic component – or Interaction Phonology – must rely on the rhythmic-phonological structure of individual languages. In this way, interlocutors are able to guide their attention to relevant phonetic detail and to attune to the fine-grained organization underlying the linguistic structure encoded in the incoming speech signal. It is furthermore argued that dynamically entraining oscillators provide testable formal models of such a temporal co-ordination between interlocutors’ speech productions and perceptions.
“The hand is no banana!” On communicating natural kind terms to a robot
Authors: Peltason Julia , Rieser Hannes , Wachsmuth Sven
Published: March 2014

Dialogic exchange is at the heart of anthropological, social and cultural evolution. Most of basic human interaction is mediated by dialogue. So it seems a natural step to transfer similar competences also to robots. Current prototypes reveal that this aim presupposes the implementation of a lot of skills and capabilities, which might pass unnoticed at ﬁrst sight. In order to identify a roadmap towards further improvement, human-robot communication (HRC) has to be analyzed more deeply using methods from dialogue theory, conversational analysis and pragmatics. In our paper, we show this paradigmatically in the context of a particular multi-modal tutorial setting. In addition, we provide answers to the question how HRC contributes to a new theory of communication and vice versa.