bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Précis of Sensory Analysis
Authors: Laming Donald 
Published: February 2010

AbstractSensory analysis is that initial, preconscious stage of perception at which primitive features (edges, temporal discontinuities, and periodicities) are picked out from the random fluctuations that characterize the physical stimulation of sensory receptors. Sensory analysis may be studied by means of signal-detection, psychometric-function, and threshold experiments, and Sensory Analysis presents a succinct, quasi-quantitative account of the phenomena revealed thereby. This account covers all five sensory modalities, emphasising the similarities between them.A succinct account depends on identifying simple principles of wide generality, of which the most fundamental are that (a) sensory discriminations are differentially coupled to the physical stimuli and that (b) small stimuli are subject to a square-law transform which makes them less detectable than they would otherwise be. These two principles are established by comparisons between different configurations of two stimulus levels to be discriminated; they are realized within a simple physical-analogue model which affords certain low-level comparisons with neurophysiological observation. That physical-analogue model consists of a sequence of elementary operations on the stimulus constituting a stage of sensory processing. The concatenation of two or three stages in cascade accommodates an increased range of experimental phenomena, especially the detection of sinusoidal gratings.This précis is organized in three parts: Part I surveys Sensory Analysis as economically as may be, beginning from the simplest, most fundamental ideas and working toward phenomena of increasing complexity. A rather shorter Part II reviews the most important alternative models addressed to some part or other of the phenomena surveyed. Finally, a very short Part III contributes some metatheoretic remarks on the function of a theory of sensory discrimination.
On the proper treatment of connectionism
Authors: Smolensky Paul 
Published: February 2010

AbstractA set of hypotheses is formulated for a connectionist approach to cognitive modeling. These hypotheses are shown to be incompatible with the hypotheses underlying traditional cognitive models. The connectionist models considered are massively parallel numerical computational systems that are a kind of continuous dynamical system. The numerical variables in the system correspond semantically to fine-grained features below the level of the concepts consciously used to describe the task domain. The level of analysis is intermediate between those of symbolic cognitive models and neural models. The explanations of behavior provided are like those traditional in the physical sciences, unlike the explanations provided by symbolic models.Higher-level analyses of these connectionist models reveal subtle relations to symbolic models. Parallel connectionist memory and linguistic processes are hypothesized to give rise to processes that are describable at a higher level as sequential rule application. At the lower level, computation has the character of massively parallel satisfaction of soft numerical constraints; at the higher level, this can lead to competence characterizable by hard rules. Performance will typically deviate from this competence since behavior is achieved not by interpreting hard rules but by satisfying soft constraints. The result is a picture in which traditional and connectionist theoretical constructs collaborate intimately to provide an understanding of cognition.
Implications of the “initial brain” concept for brain evolution in Cetacea
Authors: Glezer Ilya I. , Jacobs Myron S. , Morgane Peter J. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractWe review the evidence for the concept of the “initial” or prototype brain. We outline four possible modes of brain evolution suggested by our new findings on the evolutionary status of the dolphin brain. The four modes involve various forms of deviation from and conformity to the hypothesized initial brain type. These include examples of conservative evolution, progressive evolution, and combinations of the two in which features of one or the other become dominant. The four types of neocortical organization in extant mammals may be the result of selective pressures on sensory/motor systems resulting in divergent patterns of brain phylogenesis. A modular “modification/multiplication” hypothesis is proposed as a mechanism of neocortical evolution in eutherians. Representative models of the initial ancestral group of mammals include not only extant basal Insectivora but also Chiroptera; we have found that dolphins and large whales have also retained many features of the archetypal or initial brain. This group evolved from the initial mammalian stock and returned to the aquatic environment some 50 million years ago. This unique experiment of nature shows the effects of radical changes in environment on brain-body adaptations and specializations. Although the dolphin brain has certain quantitative characteristics of the evolutionary changes seen in the higher terrestrial mammals, it has also retained many of the conservative structural features of the initial brain. Its neocortical organization is accordingly different, largely in a quantitative sense, from that of terrestrial models of the initial brain such as the hedgehog.
A framework for the functional analysis of behaviour
Authors: Houston Alasdair I. , McNamara John M. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractWe present a general framework for analyzing the contribution to reproductive success of a behavioural action. An action may make a direct contribution to reproductive success, but even in the absence of a direct contribution it may make an indirect contribution by changing the animal's state. We consider actions over a period of time, and define a reward function that characterizes the relationship between the animal's state at the end of the period and its future reproductive success. Working back from the end of the period using dynamic programming, the optimal action as a function of state and time can be found. The procedure also yields a measure of the cost, in terms of future reproductive success, of a suboptimal action. These costs provide us with a common currency for comparing activities such as eating and drinking, or eating and hiding from predators. The costs also give an indication of the robustness of the conclusions that can be drawn from a model. We review how our framework can be used to analyze optimal foraging decisions in a stochastic environment. We also discuss the modelling of optimal daily routines and provide an illustration based on singing to attract a mate. We use the model to investigate the features that can produce a dawn song burst in birds. State is defined very broadly so that it includes the information an animal has about its environment. Thus, exploration and learning can be included within the framework.
Why are children in the same family so different from one another?
Authors: Plomin Robert , Daniels Denise 
Published: February 2010

AbstractOne of the most important findings that has emerged from human behavioral genetics involves the environment rather than heredity, providing the best available evidence for the importance of environmental influences on personality, psychopathology, and cognition. The research also converges on the remarkable conclusion that these environmental influences make two children in the same family as different from one another as are pairs of children selected randomly from the population.The theme of the target article is that environmental differences between children in the same family (called “nonshared environment”) represent the major source of environmental variance for personality, psychopathology, and cognitive abilities. One example of the evidence that supports this conclusion involves correlations for pairs of adopted children reared in the same family from early in life. Because these children share family environment but not heredity, their correlation directly estimates the importance of shared family environment. For most psychological characteristics, correlations for adoptive “siblings” hover near zero, which implies that the relevant environmental influences are not shared by children in the same family. Although it has been thought that cognitive abilities represent an exception to this rule, recent data suggest that environmental variance that affects IQ is also of the nonshared varietyafter adolescence.The article has three goals: (1) To describe quantitative genetic methods and research that lead to the conclusion that nonshared environment is responsible for most environmental variation relevant to psychological development, (2) to discuss specific nonshared environmental influences that have been studied to date, and (3) to consider relationships between nonshared environmental influences and behavioral differences between children in the same family. The reason for presenting this article inBBSis to draw attention to the far-reaching implications of finding that psychologically relevant environmental influences make children in a family different from, not similar to, one another.
Précis ofVaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature
Authors: Kitcher Philip 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe debate about the credentials of sociobiology has persisted because scholars have failed to distinguish the varieties of sociobiology and because too little attention has been paid to the details of the arguments that are supposed to support the provocative claims about human social behavior. I seek to remedy both deficiencies. After analysis of the relationships among different kinds of sociobiology and contemporary evolutionary theory, I attempt to show how some of the studies of the behavior of nonhuman animals meet the methodological standards appropriate to evolutionary research. I contend that the efforts of E. O. Wilson, Richard Alexander, Charles Lumsden, and others to generate conclusions about human nature are flawed, both because they apply evolutionary ideas in an unrigorous fashion and because they use dubious assumptions to connect their evolutionary analyses with their conclusions. This contention rests on analyses of many of the major sociobiological proposals about human social behavior, including: differences in sex roles, racial hostility, homosexuality, conflict between parents and adolescent offspring, incest avoidance, the avunculate, alliances in combat, female infanticide, and gene–culture coevolution.Vaulting Ambitionthus seeks to identify what is good in sociobiology, to expose the errors of premature speculations about human nature, and to prepare the way for serious study of the evolution of human social behavior.
How adaptive behavior is produced: a perceptual-motivational alternative to response reinforcements
Authors: Bindra Dalbir 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe sway that the response-reinforcement framework (Spencer, Thorndike, Hull, Skinner) has held on the behavioral sciences for nearly a hundred years is finally ending. The strength of this framework lay in providing concepts and methods for studying the effects of hedonic (reinforcing) stimuli on the repetition of specified responses acquired in instrumental training situations of various kinds. Its weakness lay in the invalidity of its central assumptions, stimulus-response association and response-reinforcement, which could not deal with motor-equivalence and flexibility (or “intelligence”) in behavior. To the four decades of incisive criticism on particular theoretical and empirical grounds, a more comprehensive challenge to the response-reinforcement framework is now added by the newer ideas about the nature of cognitive, motivational, and response-production processes that have emerged from the work of ethologists, neuroscientists, and cognitive psychologists. An alternative framework, incorporating the newer ideas, is clearly needed.The particular framework proposed here is based on the ideas of perceptual learning of stimulus-stimulus correlations and of a motivational (rather than reinforcing) role of hedonic (incentive) stimuli. According to it, an act is produced when its act-assembly is activated by a pexgo (perceptual representation) of a certain eliciting stimulus complex (ES). When certain eliciting stimuli are correlated with incentive stimuli, they acquire motivational properties that serve to strengthen the pexgos generated by those eliciting stimuli and thereby increase the probability of activation of the corresponding act-assemblies. Motivation thus influences response production, not by directly instigating “existing” responses, but by modulating the strength of pexgos of eliciting stimuli for the succession of acts that comprise a response. Therefore, a response is always constructed afresh on the basis of current perceptions; not even a stable and stereotyped response occurs as a mere activation of a preformed motor program. The topography of any response that emerges is determined by the nature of the motivational state and the momentary spatiotemporal distribution of eliciting stimuli of changing motivational valence.By suggesting that the animal learns the overlapping and nested correlations between the stimulus events that commonly occur in a given situation, and by separating what is learned from the processes of response production, the proposed perceptual-motivational framework seems capable of dealing with the problems of motor equivalence and flexibility in adaptive behavior. Some implications of this approach for further behavioral and brain research on such problems as behavior modification, learning by observation of models, analysis of causality, and search for neural substrates of learning and response production, are outlined.
On the biological basis of human laterality: I. Evidence for a maturational left–right gradient
Authors: Corballis Michael C. , Morgan Michael J. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractIn this paper, we consider human handedness and cerebral lateralization in a general biological context, and attempt to arrive at some conclusions common to the growth of human laterality and of other structural asymmetries. We suggest that many asymmetries appear to be under the influence of a left-right maturational gradient, which often seems to favor earlier or more rapid development on the left than on the right. If the leading side is damaged or restricted, this gradient may be reversed so that growth occurs with the opposite polarity. A mechanism of this sort appears to underlie the phenomenon ofsitus inversus viscerum et cordis, and the same principle may help explain the equipotentiality of the two sides of the human brain with respect to the representation of language in the early years of life. However we must also suppose that the leading side normally exerts an inhibitory influence on the lagging side, for otherwise one would expect language ultimately to develop in both halves of the brain. Examples of an inhibitory influence of this kind can also be found in other biological asymmetries; for instance, in the crabAlpheus heterochelis, one claw is normally greatly enlarged relative to the other, but if the larger claw is removed the smaller one is apparently released from its inhibitory influence and grows larger.This last example is particularly interesting because it suggests a mechanism comparable to that proposed by Annett to account for the distribution of handedness in the human population. She argued, in effect, that there is a “right shift” factor among the majority of the population, but that among a minority who lack this factor handedness is determined at random. If it is supposed that cerebral lateralization is also determined at random among this recessive minority, the model can be extended to provide a reasonable fit to the data on the correlation between handedness and cerebral lateralization. However this genetic model (or any other) still fails to account for the near-binomial distribution of handedness among twins and among nontwin siblings. We suggest that right-handedness and leftcerebral dominance for language are manifestations of an underlying gradient which is probably coded in the cytoplasm rather than in the genes. We must leave open the question as to whether departures from this pattern are due to a recessive gene which effectively cancels the asymmetry to environmental influences, or to both genetic and cytoplasmic factors.
Interpersonal expectancy effects: the first 345 studies
Authors: Rosenthal Robert , Rubin Donald B. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe research area of interpersonal expectancy effects originally derived from a general consideration of the effects of experimenters on the results of their research. One of these is the expectancy effect, the tendency for experimenters to obtain results they expect, not simply because they have correctly anticipated nature's response but rather because they have helped to shape that response through their expectations. When behavioral researchers expect certain results from their human (or animal) subjects they appear unwittingly to treat them in such a way as to increase the probability that they will respond as expected.In the first few years of research on this problem of the interpersonal (or interorganism) self-fulfilling prophecy, the “prophet” was always an experimenter and the affected phenomenon was always the behavior of an experimental subject. In more recent years, however, the research has been extended from experimenters to teachers, employers, and therapists whose expectations for their pupils, employees, and patients might also come to serve as interpersonal self-fulfilling prophecies.Our general purpose is to summarize the results of 345 experiments investigating interpersonal expectancy effects. These studies fall into eight broad categories of research: reaction time, inkblot tests, animal learning, laboratory interviews, psychophysical judgments, learning and ability, person perception, and everyday life situations. For the entire sample of studies, as well as for each specific research area, we (1) determine the overall probability that interpersonal expectancy effects do in fact occur, (2) estimate their average magnitude so as to evaluate their substantive and methodological importance, and (3) illustrate some methods that may be useful to others wishing to summarize quantitatively entire bodies of research (a practice that is, happily, on the increase).
Cortical long-axoned cells and putative interneurons during the sleep-waking cycle
Authors: Steriade Mircea 
Published: February 2010

AbstractKnowledge of the input-output characteristics of various neuronal types is a necessary first step toward an understanding of cellular events related to waking and sleep. In spite of the oversimplification involved, the dichotomy in terms of type I (long-axoned, output) neurons and type II (short-axoned, local) interneurons is helpful in functionally delineating the neuronal circuits involved in the genesis and epiphenomena of waking and sleep states. The possibility is envisaged that cortical interneurons, which are particularly related to higher neuronal activity and have been found in previous experiments to be more active during sleep than during wakefulness, might be involved in complex integrative processes occurring during certain sleep stages. Electrophysiological criteria for the identification of output cells and interneurons are developed, with emphasis on various possibilities and difficulties involved in recognizing interneurons of the mammalian brain. The high-frequency repetitive activity of interneurons is discussed, together with various possibilities of error to be avoided when interpreting data from bursting cells. Data first show opposite changes in spontaneous and evoked discharges of identified output cells versus putative interneurons recorded from motor and parietal association cortical areas in behaving monkeys and cats during wakefulness (W) compared to sleep with synchronized EEG activity (S): significantly increased rates of spontaneous firing, enhanced antidromic or synaptic responsiveness, associated with shorter periods of inhibition in type I (pyramidal tract, cortico-thalamic and cortico-pontine) cells during W versus significantly decreased frequencies of spontaneous discharge and depression of synaptically elicited reponses of type II cells during W compared to S. These findings are partly explained on the basis of recent iontophoretic studies showing that acetylcholine, viewed as a synaptic transmitter of the arousal system, excites output-type neurons and inhibits high-frequency bursting cells. Comparing W and S to the deepest stage of sleep with desynchronized EEG activity (D) in type I and type II cells revealed that: (a) the increased firing rates of output cells in D, over those in W and S, is substantially due to a tonic excitation during this state, and rapid eye movements (REMs) only contribute to the further increase of discharge frequencies; (b) in contrast, the increased rates of discharge in interneurons during D is entirely ascribable to REM-related firing. On the basis of experiments reporting that increased duration of D has beneficial effects upon retention of information acquired during W, the suggestion is made that increased firing rates of association cortical interneurons during REM epochs of D sleep are an important factor in maintaining the soundness of a memory trace.
Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?
Authors: Premack David , Woodruff Guy 
Published: February 2010

AbstractAn individual has a theory of mind if he imputes mental states to himself and others. A system of inferences of this kind is properly viewed as a theory because such states are not directly observable, and the system can be used to make predictions about the behavior of others. As to the mental states the chimpanzee may infer, consider those inferred by our own species, for example, purpose or intention, as well as knowledge, belief, thinking, doubt, guessing, pretending, liking, and so forth. To determine whether or not the chimpanzee infers states of this kind, we showed an adult chimpanzee a series of videotaped scenes of a human actor struggling with a variety of problems. Some problems were simple, involving inaccessible food – bananas vertically or horizontally out of reach, behind a box, and so forth – as in the original Kohler problems; others were more complex, involving an actor unable to extricate himself from a locked cage, shivering because of a malfunctioning heater, or unable to play a phonograph because it was unplugged. With each videotape the chimpanzee was given several photographs, one a solution to the problem, such as a stick for the inaccessible bananas, a key for the locked up actor, a lit wick for the malfunctioning heater. The chimpanzee's consistent choice of the correct photographs can be understood by assuming that the animal recognized the videotape as representing a problem, understood the actor's purpose, and chose alternatives compatible with that purpose.