At the heart of statistical learning lies the concept of uncertainty. Similarly, embodied agents such as robots and animals must likewise address uncertainty, as sensation is always only a partial reflection of reality. This thesis addresses the role that uncertainty can play in a central building block of intelligence: categorization. Cognitive agents are able to perform tasks like categorical perception through physical interaction (active categorical perception; ACP), or passively at a distance (distal categorical perception; DCP). It is possible that the former scaffolds the learning of the latter. However, it is unclear whether DCP indeed scaffolds ACP in humans and animals, nor how a robot could be trained to likewise learn DCP from ACP. Here we demonstrate a method for doing so which involves uncertainty: robots perform ACP when uncertain and DCP when certain. Furthermore, we demonstrate that robots trained in such a manner are more competent at categorizing novel objects than robots trained to categorize in other ways. This suggests that such a mechanism would also be useful for humans and animals, suggesting that they may be employing some version of this mechanism.

The social and emotional lives of people are highly interdependent. Incipient evidence suggests that attention may also play an essential role in determining one’s social and emotional well-being. Mindfulness, as a manner of attending, entails greater moment-to-moment awareness to internal and external events, and is thought to have both intra- and inter-personal benefits. Here a study of mindfulness training (MT) examined whether training mindful attention would improve emotion regulation in social contexts as indexed by neural, behavioral, and experience sampling measures. More specifically, 60 participants in romantic relationships were randomly assigned to either four brief (20 min.) MT sessions or a structurally-equivalent control procedure. Romantic partners of these participants also completed questionnaires and experience sampling measures. Findings across the variety of measures supported hypotheses that MT would benefit social emotion regulation. Relative to control participants, those in MT demonstrated greater early attention to facial expressions on an Emotional Go/No-Go task, as indexed by the N200, a neural marker of conflict monitoring. Response time and accuracy during this task revealed more sustained efficient discrimination of facial expressions for MT participants. During day-to-day social interactions, MT participants reported more positive and less negative emotion as well as less negative emotion lability from one interaction to the next. A mediation analysis found improved accuracy on the Emotional Go/No-Go task mediated the relation between MT and more positive emotion during daily social interactions. Given that social emotion regulation places unique demands on attention for which mindfulness appears well-suited, research on both topics can build from these findings to better understand both intra- and inter-personal benefits of MT.

Although internalizing and externalizing problems are often considered in isolation from one another, the frequently co-occur in individuals leading to unique behavior profiles. The current study examined the associations between the forms, functions, and subtypes of aggression, anxiety, hostile attributional bias (HAB), and perceived (proactive or reactive) provocateur motivation in a sample of youth (mean age = 13.84 years, 51% male, 37.5% Caucasian). Results indicated that only reactive relational aggression significantly predicted anxiety, while relational and reactive aggression did not. HAB was not significantly associated with either anxiety or any type of aggression. Perceived proactive provocateur motivation was significantly associated with anxiety, but not aggression, and reactive motivation was not significantly associated with either. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

The purpose of the project was to determine if testosterone reactivity and neural changes could be observed in response to a reward-seeking competitive task, respectively, and whether testosterone was related to neural activation. Forty nine undergraduate students were recruited playing the Monetary Incentive Delay (MID). We found that a subset of participants (N=20) showed testosterone reactivity to the task (ps < .05). During the EEG analyses, cue had a main effect on FRN amplitude in a trend level (p = .084): The large incentive cue triggered smaller (less negative) FRN amplitude than the small incentive cue did (p < .05), especially during the second reward seeking block (A’) (p = .065) and especially within males (p < .05). Testosterone level and reactivity were not further associated with FRN amplitude (ps > .1). Taken together, results show both testosterone and FRN amplitude may be sensitive to a complex reward-seeking and competition.

All athletes are driven by motivation, sources or reasons to push their bodies to their limits and continue to do so regularly. There have been several studies concerning motivation in typical athletes, and many regarding social motivation in people with High Functioning Autism (HFA), however most have been limited to children, and there have been no investigations into HFA athletes’ motivation. The current study looks into the role of social dimensions in athletics, and tests how one’s gender and placement on the Empathy Questionnaire (EQ), Systemizing Questionnaire (SQ), and on the Autism Questionnaire (AQ) affect intrinsic motivation in athletics. It was predicted that athletes with HFA would demonstrate greater levels of intrinsic motivation than those with lower scores on the Systemizing and Autism Questionnaires. The second hypothesis predicted that those who are more prone to systematizing (and perhaps higher on the AQ) would be more intrinsically motivated than those who are more prone to empathizing, as social rewards may not be as important to them. To uncover the differences between intrinsic motivation due to placement on the AQ, SQ and EQ, as well as differences between sexes and coaching feedback, a combination of Linear Regression Analyses, Independent Groups T-Tests and Correlations (n=25) were used. The first hypothesis was invalid due to lack of recruitment of HFA participants, but the second was supported by the data.

<p>Neuroimaging studies of episodic memory, or memory of events from our personal past, have predominantly focused their attention on medial temporal lobe (MTL). There is growing acknowledgement however, from the cognitive neuroscience of memory literature, that regions outside the MTL can support episodic memory processes. The medial prefrontal cortex is one such region garnering increasing interest from researchers. Using behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging measures, over two studies, this thesis provides evidence of a mnemonic role of the medial PFC. In the first study, participants were scanned while judging the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the sociopolitical views of unfamiliar individuals. Behavioral tests of associative recognition revealed that participants remembered with high confidence viewpoints previously linked with judgments of strong agreement/disagreement. Neurally, the medial PFC mediated the interaction between high-confidence associative recognition memory and beliefs associated with strong agree/disagree judgments. In an effort to generalize this finding to well-established associative information, in the second study, we investigated associative recognition memory for real-world concepts. Object-scene pairs congruent or incongruent with a preexisting schema were presented to participants in a cued-recall paradigm. Behavioral tests of conceptual and perceptual recognition revealed memory enhancements arising from strong resonance between presented pairs and preexisting schemas. Neurally, the medial PFC tracked increases in visual recall of schema-congruent pairs whereas the MTL tracked increases in visual recall of schema-incongruent pairs. Additionally, ventral areas of the medial PFC tracked conceptual components of visual recall specifically for schema-congruent pairs. These findings are consistent with a recent theoretical proposal of medial PFC contributions to memory for schema-related content. Collectively, these studies provide evidence of a role for the medial PFC in associative recognition memory persisting for associative information deployed in our daily social interactions and for those associations formed over multiple learning episodes. Additionally, this set of findings advance our understanding of the cognitive contributions of the medial PFC beyond its canonical role in processes underlying social cognition.</p> / Dissertation

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfillment of the requirements of the Degree of Masters of Arts. / Technological advancement has changed the nature of interactions within modern man-machine systems, with workload becoming more a load on the mental capacities of the human systems component than on his/her physical capabilities. Moreover increased system capabilities may have disproportionately reduced the time available to perform these mental operations, thereby adding new and more complex cognitive tasks. A concept crucial to the evaluation of modern man-machine systems is that of the resulting implications of loading and overloading the cognitive capabilities of the human systems component, namely the measurement of mental workload. ( Abbreviation abstract ) / AC2017

L’expérience que les utilisateurs vivent est récemment devenu un facteur majeur de différenciation entre les entreprises de produits et de services (comme Toyota Motor Europe), menant à des recherches plus approfondies dans les domaines de l’expérience utilisateur et de l’interaction. Ces recherches prônent une plus grande considération de la perception subjective plutôt que les propriétés objectives des produits.Partant de cette approche de la ‘recherche en design’ à travers la perception subjective, cette étude tente de comprendre et de formaliser l’influence réciproque entre interaction et expérience utilisateur, définissant quels paramètres affectent les réactions subjectives. À partir de ces paramètres, cette recherche a isolée les propriétés physiques et digitales d’un produit dans le but de mettre en avant ces effets sur les réactions affectives et cognitives d’un utilisateur.Grâce à cette approche, cette recherche aboutit à des apports à la fois scientifique et industriel: cette recherche a rendu possible la formalisation de l’interdépendance entre l’expérience utilisateur et les interactions; la mise en place d’une taxonomie des produits interactifs à travers l’approche métaphorique des interaction physique et digitale; et la matérialisation d’une méthodologie et d’outils pour à la fois évaluer et créer des interactions à partir de l’approche expérientielle. / Users’ experience with products recently became a major differentiation factor for products and services companies (such as Toyota Motor Europe), leading to deeper researches on both user experience and interaction. These researches preach for a deeper consideration of the subjective perception rather than artifacts’ objective properties.From this approach of ‘design research’ through the subjective perception, this study intends to understand and formalize the reciprocal influence between Interaction and user experience, highlighting which parameters are affecting subjective reactions. From these parameters, this research isolated the artifact’s physical and digital properties in order to highlight its effects on user’s affective and cognitive reactions.By doing so, this research resulted in both academic and industrial contributions. In terms of the former, it made possible to formalize the interdependency between User Experience and Interactions, to define a taxonomy of interactive products through the metaphorical approach of physical and digital interactions and to materialize a methodology with tools for both evaluating and designing interactions from the User Experience perspective.

This study examined the role that attributional style played in the academic achievement and school performance of a sample of 150 black primary school learners in grades 5 and 6 in an inner city school in the Johannesburg area. The Children’s Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ, 1984) was administered to determine the attributional styles. The questionnaire was comprised of 10 subscales and from this an overall level of optimism or pessimism was obtained. The academic achievement of the learners was measured by obtaining the end of year academic results of 1997 and 1998 from the mark schedules of each teacher. The results did not reveal significant correlations between attributional styles and academic achievement. This was contradictory to the existing literature. It appears that, in this disadvantaged group in South Africa, it is not attributional style that impacts upon academic achievement and school performance. However it appears that learned helplessness in terms of Seligman and Maier’s (1967) original formulation, rather than attributional style as in the reformulated theory of Abramson, Seligman & Teasdale (1978) may impact upon academic achievement in this community.

A presente pesquisa identificou as concepções de leitura em programas televisivos que manipulam oral e visualmente a linguagem em português voltados ao público infantil de 0 a 7 anos de idade veiculados na programação televisiva da cidade de São Paulo e em DVDs vendidos em lojas de porte nacional. Pesquisaramse os programas de televisão voltados ao público infantil por meio da programação dos canais transmitidos na cidade de São Paulo e identificaram-se os DVDs infantis vendidos nas lojas virtuais Americanas.com e Submarino.com. Informações para identificação da manipulação da linguagem oral e visual em português e sobre a produção dos programas infantis foram levantadas no site de televisão de veiculação do mesmo e no caso de DVDs, no site de vendas. Dos 211 programas veiculados na televisão gratuita e paga e aproximadamente dos 2000 títulos de DVDs levantados que são voltados ao público infantil, apenas 1 programa de televisão e 2 séries de DVDs apresentaram manipulação visual e oral da linguagem em português. Estes programas foram analisados com base nas duas principais concepções teóricas de leitura Construtivista e da Psicologia Cognitiva, identificando-se em seu conteúdo a presença de uma ou dessas duas (mista) concepções. O programa de televisão Vila Sésamo, de acordo com sua produtora é baseado nas concepções da Psicologia Cognitiva, dado que foi confirmado por meio desta pesquisa. As séries Galinha Pintadinha e Xuxa só para baixinhos apresentaram a manipulação visual em português no formato de legendas, estilo close caption. Apresentaram concepção mista de leitura os 3 volumes do DVD Galinha Pintadinha e os volumes 4 a 11 da série Xuxa só para baixinhos. Os volumes 1 a 3 de Xuxa só para baixinhos apresentaram concepção construtivista de leitura. As produtoras de Galinha Pintadinha e Xuxa só para baixinhos não descrevem se utilizaram alguma concepção de leitura para a criação dos programas. Conclui-se que a programação infantil com manipulação visual da linguagem em português é escassa e que apenas a produtora do programa Vila Sésamo identifica a concepção de leitura utilizada para sua criação com intuito de auxiliar o desenvolvimento de habilidades necessárias à aquisição de leitura pelas crianças / This research identified the conceptions of reading in television programs that manipulate oral and visual language in Portuguese geared to children 0-7 years of age aired on television programming in the city of São Paulo and through DVDs sold in national scale stores. Television programs focused on children were surveyed through the schedule program of channels transmitted in São Paulo and identified through the DVDs for children that were sold in virtual stores \"Americanas.com\" and \"Submarino.com.\" Information identifying the manipulation of visual and oral language in Portuguese on the production of children\'s programs were surveyed on site serving the television and in the case of DVDs, the sales site. Of the 211 programs available on free and cable television and the 1906 DVD titles that were surveyed that are directed to children, only 1 television show and 2 DVDs series demonstrated manipulation of visual and oral language in Portuguese. These programs were analyzed based on the concepts of constructivist and cognitive psychology reading literature and its contents was identified in the presence of one or two of these (mixed) conceptions. The television program \"Sesame Street,\" according to its producer is based on the concepts of Cognitive Psychology, as was confirmed by this research. The series \"Galinha Pintadinha\" and \"Xuxa só para baixinhos\" presented visual manipulation of Portuguese on subtitles format, style \"closed captioning\". The 3 volumes of the DVD \"Galinha Pintadinha\" and volumes 4 - 8 of the series \"Xuxa só para baixinhos\" showed mixed concepts of reading. Volumes 1-3 and 9-11 of \"Xuxa só para baixinhos\" presented constructivist conception of reading. The producers of \"Galinha Pintadinha\" and \"Xuxa só para baixinhos\" did not report if there was any conception of reading basing the creation of the programs. We conclude that tv show programing for children with oral and visual manipulation of language in Portuguese is scarce. It was verified also that only the producer of the program \"Sesame Street\" identifies the conception of reading basing its creation which is assisting the development of skills necessary reading acquisition by children