Right now you are reading a sentence. Earlier, you might have been looking at a realistic picture, such as a photograph, or an outline drawing in a set of instructions. If you are a programmer, you work with sentence-like structures, such as code, or a system diagram. These are all graphic representations. To varying degrees, the effectiveness of every graphic representation relies on its ability to convey the designer’s intended meaning and elicit the intended reaction from its audience. However, the design of graphic representations, even in technical domains such as visual programming language design or interactive information visualization, currently relies heavily on general principles based solely on practice, intuition, and informal measures of effectiveness from the applied art and craft of design (as opposed to scientific analysis or theory). There is an increasing demand for a scientific understanding of design and its evaluation from stakeholders (who seek evidence for effectiveness) and designers (who seek to advance their field). Because both the creation of graphic displays and their perception are literally embodied experiences, a model was developed with an embodiment orientation, specifically based on how graphics are perceptually and cognitively processed. In my research, I found that graphic representations are constituted of two properties, pictorial and symbolic information, that emerge through two interrelated aspects of perception. In sighted individuals, for example, every graphic representation makes use of biological capabilities to process visual sensation (i.e., light hitting the retina), which are processed in relation to culturally-learned capabilities (i.e., writing). I observed how graphic representations – such as pictures, diagrams, and sentences – are “naturally selected” (i.e., during different phases of design or problem solving). From these observations, I developed a model that distinguishes and predicts the effectiveness of pictures, diagrams, and sentences, in terms of how object relations and attributes are pictorially or symbolically represented, relative to the functional roles of those representations, contexts, and in some cases, individual perceptual-cognitive differences among perceivers. This model is a step toward a science of graphics that could lead to evaluation techniques for information systems, theories for inclusive design, and ergonomically designed software programming tools.

An initial aim of this thesis was to determine whether training of a specific executive function (updating) produces improvements in performance on trained and transfer tasks, and whether the effects are maintained over time. Neural systems underlying training and transfer effects were also investigated and one question considered is whether transfer depends on general or specific neural overlap between training and transfer tasks. An additional aim was to identify how individual differences in executive functioning are mapped to functional brain changes. In Study I, significant training-related changes in performance on the letter memory criterion task were found in both young and older adults after 5 weeks of updating training. Transfer to a 3-back test of updating was also demonstrated in the young adults. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) revealed overlapping activity in letter memory and 3-back tasks in fronto-parietal areas and striatum pre-training, and a joint training-related activity increase for the tasks in a striatal region. No transfer was observed to a task (Stroop) that engaged fronto-parietal areas, but not the striatal region and updating per se. Moreover, age-related striatal changes imposed constraints on transfer. In Study II, additional transfer tasks and a test of long-term maintenance were included. Results revealed that training-related gains in performance were maintained 18 months post-training in both young and older adults, whereas transfer effects were limited to tasks requiring updating and restricted to young participants. In Study III, analyses of brain activity and performance during n-back (1/2/3-back) were executed. This task enables manipulation of executive demand, which permits examination of how individual differences in executive functioning can be mapped to functional brain changes. Relative to a young high- performing group, capacity constraints in executive functioning were apparent between 1–2-back for the elderly participants and between 2–3-back for a young low-performing group. Capacity constraints in neural activity followed this pattern by showing a monotonically increasing response in the parietal cortex and the thalamus for young high performers, whereas activity levelled off at 1-back for elderly performers and at 2-back for young low performers. The response in the dorsal frontal cortex followed a similar pattern. Together, these findings indicate that fronto-parietal as well as sub-cortical areas are important for individual differences in executive functioning, training of updating and transfer effects.

The diploma thesis "Cognition and Ritual: Application of the divergent Modes of Religiosity Theory to the Jewish Ritual Praxis of the Community Bejt Praha" presents the application of the divergent Modes of Religiosity theory to the Jewish ritual praxis. The thesis is based on the method of textual analysis and ethnographic data collection. The theory by anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse seeks to explain ritual dynamics of the doctrinal mode and of the imagistic mode in terms of underlying cognitive mechanisms. I show the limitations of Whitehouse's cognitive model with regard to the application of the theory to the ethnographic data. The main goal of the thesis is the critical evaluation of the divergent Modes of Religiosity argument.

ix, 203 p. : ill. / As critic Jonathan Gottschall notes, "The literary scholar's subject is ultimately the human mind - the mind that is the creator, subject, and auditor of literary works." The primary aim of this dissertation is to use modern cognitive science to better understand the early modern mind. I apply a framework rooted in cognitive science--the interdisciplinary study of how the human brain generates first-person consciousness and relates to external objects through that conscious framework--to reveal the role of consciousness and memory in subject formation and creative interpretation, as represented in period drama. Cognitive science enables us as scholars and critics to read literature of the period through a lens that reveals subjects in the process of being formed prior to the "self-fashioning" processes of enculturation and social discipline that have been so thoroughly diagnosed in criticism in recent decades. I begin with an overview of the field of cognitive literary theory, demonstrating that cognitive science has already begun to offer scholars of the period a vital framework for understanding literature as the result of unique minds grappling with uniquely historical problems, both biologically and socially. From there, I proceed to detailed explications of neuroscience-based theories of the relationship between the embodied brain, memory, and subject identity, via detailed close reading case studies. In the primary chapters, I focus on what I consider to be three primary elements of embodied subjectivity in drama of the period: basic identity reification through unique first-person memory (the Tudor interlude Jake Juggler ), more complex subject-object relationships leading to alterations in behavioral modes (Hamlet ), and finally, the blending of literary structures and social context in the interpretation of subject behavior (Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One ). / Committee in charge: Lisa Freinkel, Chairperson; George Rowe, Member; Ben Saunders, Member; Lara Bovilsky, Member; Ted Toadvine, Outside Member

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:25:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2006-10-30Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:28:51Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 junqueira_lhp_me_mar_prot.pdf: 265340 bytes, checksum: daf69a1d10690f402ce7b118240d49da (MD5) / É antiga a preocupação do ser humano com as questões relacionadas ao conhecimento, incluindo as discussões sobre a sua origem, seu aprendizado, sobre a nossa capacidade de utiliza-lo e sobre as características específicas da cognição humana. Essa preocupação remonta aos antigos filósofos gregos (2.500 A.C.), desenvolvendo-se posteriormente a partir da abordagem da Epistemologia, originária da Filosofia ocidental, e mais recentemente a partir do Funcionalismo, pertencente aos estudos em Filosofia da Mente e em Ciência Cognitiva. Essa última abordagem, em particular, contribuiu para o surgimento de programas de pesquisas que procuram entender o funcionamento da mente humana com a ajuda do computador. A Ciência Cognitiva possui fortes ligações com as pesquisas em Inteligência Artificial, e ambas vem se desenvolvendo desde a década de 1950. Mais recentemente, a partir da década de 1980, uma nova área de estudos surgiu, formada por pesquisas em Vida Artificial, que trabalha com a possibilidade de síntese de entidades vivas, por meios artificiais, e desde então vem chamando a atenção de pesquisadores interessados no estudo da cognição. Enquanto a Ciência Cognitiva tem ligações estreitas com a Filosofia e a Psicologia, a Vida Artificial tem uma forte inspiração na Biologia. Neste trabalho, procuramos investigar o encontro entre essas disciplinas, e seus programas de pesquisas, considerando as possibilidades de contribuição para o estudo da cognição humana, a partir de uma abordagem conjunta entre essas áreas. / It is na old thing the human concern about knowledge related questions, including discussions on its origin, its learning, about our capacity to utilize it and about specific characteristics of the human cognition. That concern remounts to the ancient greek philosophers (2.500 B.C.), developing itself later from the approach of Epistemology, originated in the occidental Philosophy, and more recently from the Functionalism, that makes part of the studies of Philosophy of Mind and of Cognitive Science. This last approach, particularly, contributed to appearing of research programs that try to understand the function of the human mind with the help of the computer. The Cognitive Science has strong relation with research in Artificial Intelligence, and both areas have been growing since the 1950 decade. More recently, from the decade 1980 on, a new area of atudies appeared, formed by researches in Artificial Life, that work with the possibility of synthesis of alive entities, by artificial means, and sice then has been attracting the attention of researchers interested in the study of Cognition. While Cognitive Science has strict relations with the Philosophy and the Psychology, Artifiical life has a strong inspiration in the Biology. In this work, we tried to investigate the meeting between these subjects, and their research programs, considering the possibilities of the contribution to the study of the human cognition, by means of an integrated approach of these areas.

This master’s thesis is built around a design case and aims to explore the possibility of combining three methods in the design process: contextual inquiry in the pre-study phase, the creation of personas to guide the design, and cooperative evaluation to test the prototype. The methods were used in a design project proposed by EssNet AB in Stockholm, an international company in the gaming business, for whom a prototype for their touchscreen interface was developed. The contextual inquiry consisted in visits to four different vendors, where the work situation and the current use of computer systems for game registration were studied. The results from the inquiry lay ground for the creation of two personas, one primary and one secondary. These personas then guided the design of both Lo-Fi and Hi-Fi prototypes. The design ideas of the Lo-Fi design phase were evaluated in several discussion sessions and the Hi-Fi prototype was finally tested by six participants, using the cooperative evaluation method. The conclusion drawn from the study is that although the three methods are indeed compatible, there is still a creative leap to make between the data gathered in the contextual inquiry and the creation of the personas. It is also of importance that the participants in the cooperative evaluation match the personas to some degree in order to confirm the personas’ validity.

The philosophy of linguistics is a rich philosophical domain which encompasses various disciplines. One of the aims of this thesis is to unite theoretical linguistics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science (particularly mathematics and modelling) and the ontology of language. Each part of the research presented here targets separate but related goals with the unified aim of bringing greater clarity to the foundations of linguistics from a philosophical perspective. Part I is devoted to the methodology of linguistics in terms of scientific modelling. I argue against both the Conceptualist and Platonist (as well as Pluralist) interpretations of linguistic theory by means of three grades of mathematical involvement for linguistic grammars. Part II explores the specific models of syntactic and semantics by an analogy with the harder sciences. In Part III, I develop a novel account of linguistic ontology and in the process comment on the type-token distinction, the role and connection with mathematics and the nature of linguistic objects. In this research, I offer a structural realist interpretation of linguistic methodology with a nuanced structuralist picture for its ontology. This proposal is informed by historical and current work in theoretical linguistics as well as philosophical views on ontology, scientific modelling and mathematics.

Submitted by Irene Nascimento (irene.kessia@ufpe.br) on 2016-07-08T17:49:19Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação_de_mestrado_Julio Antunes Barreto Lins 1.pdf: 1178353 bytes, checksum: 037cedb3694724a34ebe3b2109f0538f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-08T17:49:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação_de_mestrado_Julio Antunes Barreto Lins 1.pdf: 1178353 bytes, checksum: 037cedb3694724a34ebe3b2109f0538f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-04-29 / Programas chamados de Mindfulness Based Therapy, de meditação atenção-conscientização, têm apresentado resultados significativos em meta-análises. Devido a isso, diversos estudos qualitativos têm investigado as transformações pessoais e construído teorias, sendo a principal a teoria da transformação da situação perceptiva. Mas apenas recentemente, em 2014, foi publicada a primeira investigação qualitativa investigando transformações interpessoais consequentes de tais intervenções. Já no Brasil, a Política Nacional de Práticas Integrativas e Complementares no SUS incentiva o ensino da meditação para promoção da saúde. Localmente, o programa Atentamente de ensino de práticas no SUS compõe, com outras práticas integrativas, as abordagens do Núcleo de Apoio em Práticas Integrativas (NAPI) SUS Recife. Nesse programa o aprendizado de atenção-conscientização é apresentado em consonância com as vivências dos participantes. Quanto à metodologia, o presente estudo de caso construiu roteiro de entrevista qualitativa semi-estruturada e dialogada a partir das teorias fundamentadas. Foram entrevistados seis informantes chaves sobre as experiências com os estágios de desenvolvimento em intenção, atitude e atenção. Além disso, foram acompanhados quatro turmas do curso com observação participante. Quanto aos resultados, as categorias mais importantes elencadas no processo de transformação intrapessoal foram Aceitação, leveza, permitir mudança e deixar os pensamentos irem. Já na compreensão das transformações interpessoais as de maior significância foram Estar presente com o Outro, reagir menos, pensar melhor e autoconfiança. A teoria da dádiva se mostrou potente na elucidação da mudança de atitude frente ao outro a partir das práticas contemplativas, e recirculação de dádivas fundamentais. / Programs classified as “Mindfulness Based Therapies” have shown significant results in meta-analyzes teaching attention-awareness meditation. Because of this, several qualitative studies have investigated the personal transformations building theories, the main theory being the transformation of the perceptual situation theory. But only recently, in 2014, was published the first qualitative research investigating interpersonal transformations related to such interventions. In Brazil, the National Policy on Integrative and Complementary Practices in the SUS encourages the teaching of meditation for health promotion. Locally, the mindfulness-awareness based educational program Atentamente (“mindfully”) is part of the governmental strategy, the Center for Support in Integrative Practices (NAPI) SUS Recife. In this program attention-awareness of learning is presented in line with the experiences of the participants. As for the methodology, this is a case study built with qualitative interviews based upon the grounded theories. 6 key informants were interviewed about the experiences with the development stages in intention, attitude and attention. In addition, were followed four courses with participant observation. As for the results, the most important categories listed in personal transformation process were “Acceptance”, “lightness”, “enable change” and “let the thoughts go”. In the understanding of interpersonal transformations the main categories were “present with the Other”, “less reactive”, “better thinking” and “self-confidence”. The Gift theory proved powerful in elucidating the change of attitude from the other contemplative practices, and recirculation fundamental gifts.

Orientadores: Fernando José Von Zuben, Jônatas Manzolli / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-17T09:26:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Costa_CesarRenno_M.pdf: 8817422 bytes, checksum: f05c86a8d8717568f1afd9da373b6a55 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007 / Resumo: Este trabalho sugere novos paradigmas de controle de mecanismos de síntese sonora. Utilizando conceitos das ciências cognitivas, o processo gerativo é modelado como um sistema de conversões entre representações, da atuação subjetiva do usuário, passando pela descritiva e culminando no material sonoro. A partir do estudo da analogia descritiva, engendra-se a analogia acústica, representação por amostras sonoras, e a analogia semântica, representação por linguagem. Aplicadas à arquitetura modelada, essas analogias permitem que o processo de síntese sonora tenha um caráter mais intuitivo. São apresentadas duas implementações práticas, sendo que técnicas de computação bio-inspirada fornecem o maquinário computacional para a realização do mapeamento entre representações e controle do processo de síntese / Abstract: This work suggests novel control paradigms of sound synthesis mechanisms. Applying cognitive science concepts, the generative process is modeled as a system of conversions throughout representations: from user's insight, through descriptive, to the sound material. From descriptive analogy studies, the acoustic analogy (representation through sound) and the semantic analogy (representation through language) are engendered. Applied to the modeled architecture, these analogies allow the synthesis process to have a more intuitive nature. Two practical implementations are presented. Bio-inspired computing provides the computational machinery used to map different representations and to control the synthesis process / Mestrado / Mestre em Engenharia Elétrica

Orientador: Ricardo Ribeiro Gudwin / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia e de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-14T22:03:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Silva_RicardoCapitanioMartinsda_M.pdf: 6323710 bytes, checksum: efe31176ea68444cc98c3b8ca83d7ad5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Resumo: Há muito tempo, a consciência humana tem desafiado cientistas de várias áreas do conhecimento. Em computação, na última década, tem se observado um crescimento significativo dos estudos sobre consciência artificial. Uma abordagem computacional promissora é a da arquitetura Baars-Franklin desenvolvida por Stan Franklin e inspirada na teoria do workspace global de Bernard Baars. Esse trabalho visa examinar essa tecnologia e verificar as vantagens e desvantagens do seu uso na implementação de agentes inteligentes. Como o estudo de consciência artificial é inerentemente multidisciplinar, inicialmente apresentam-se as principais teorias gerais de consciência. Em seguida, é feito um levantamento dos principais trabalhos na área de consciência artificial. Por fim, utiliza-se a arquitetura Baars-Franklin no controle de uma criatura virtual em um problema de navegação autônoma. Esta dissertação traz uma série de contribuições teóricas, agrupando teorias de outras áreas do conhecimento fundamentais para o desenvolvimento de agentes com consciência artificial, clarifica a arquitetura Baars-Franklin e realiza um estudo de caso da aplicação desse modelo na construção de um agente autônomo. / Abstract: For years, the human consciousness has challenged scientists from several areas of knowledge. In computer science, over the last decade, a significant growth in the number of studies about artificial consciousness has been observed. The architecture Baars-Franklin, developed by Stan Franklin, is a computational promising approach which is inspired by the Bernard Baars' global workspace theory. This work aims to discuss this technology and verify its advantages and disadvantages. Due to the intrinsic multidisciplinary characteristic of the study of artificial consciousness, first of all, the main general theories about consciousness are presented. After that, the most relevant studies about artificial consciousness are surveyed. Finally, the architecture Baars-Franklin is applied to control a virtual creature in an autonomous navigation problem. This dissertation brings some theoretical contributions, aggregating theories from other areas of knowledge, clarifying the architecture Baars-Franklin and showing a practical case study of the application of this model in order to build an autonomous agent. / Mestrado / Automação / Mestre em Engenharia Elétrica