Experiments 1-3 investigated the relationship between working memory and syllogistic and five-ten-n series spatial inference. A secondary aim was to replicate the findings of Shah and Miyake (1996) who suggested the use of separate central resources of working memory for spatial and verbal ability. The correlational analysis showed that the complex verbal and spatial working memory span tasks were associated together and consistently predicted reasoning performance in both verbal and visual modalities. The confirmatory factor analysis showed that three factors best accounted for the data -a verbal, a spatial, and a general resource. All the span tasks and most of the reasoning tasks significantly and consistently loaded the general factor. Experiments 4-6 investigated the relationship between working memory and a range of reasoning tasks - identified as either propositional. spatial, or quantifiable tasks. These experiments were based on the work of Stanovich and West (1998) who found that a range of reasoning tasks were predicted by cognitive ability and a reasoner's thinking style. The correlational anaylsis showed that the complex verbal and spatial working memory span tasks were associated together and consistently predicted reasoning perforinance. Two clusters of reasoning task emerged from the correlational analysis - one cluster related to the propositional and simple spatial reasoning tasks, whilst the other related to the quantifiable and complex spatial reasoning tasks. The confin-natory factor analysis showed that four factors best accounted for the data -a verbal, a spatial, a general, and a thinking style resource. All the span tasks and the reasoning tasks loaded the general factor, and most of the reasoning tasks further loaded the thinking disposition factor. These results are discussed in light of models of workino memory, theories of reasoning, and how to best characterise factor 3 (executive function) and factor 4 (thinking style) from tile factor analysis.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:22:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2011-07-29Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:07:53Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 ferreira_ms_me_prud.pdf: 1897420 bytes, checksum: 1aede604709494154b2f75d18806c9fc (MD5) / O conhecimento da distribuição espacial da concentração de componentes da água é de fundamental importância para inferir a respeito dos processos ecológicos que ocorrem num sistema hídrico sendo, entretanto, de difícil obtenção. Dentre as variáveis que merecem atenção no monitoramento de ambientes aquáticos, destaca-se a clorofila a, a qual é uma substância presente em algas responsáveis pela fotossíntese, organismos que constituem a base da cadeia alimentar nesses ambientes. Por se tratar de um pigmento fotossintetizante, a clorofila a apresenta a propriedade de interagir com a radiação eletromagnética, e dessa interação resultam diferentes processos, identificáveis por meio de sensores remotos. Assim sendo, a presente pesquisa se propôs a desenvolver um método de inferência da concentração de clorofila a utilizando Redes Neurais Artificiais (RNA). Utilizou-se como dados de entrada para a inferência combinações de bandas espectrais de uma imagem World View-2 e valores de concentração de clorofila a obtidos com um fluorômetro de campo, o qual possibilitou uma amostragem densa na área de estudos. A imagem multiespectral foi corrigida radiometricamente, eliminando efeitos de instrumentação e atmosféricos. Ainda, efetuou-se uma suavização espectral em cada uma das bandas e foi avaliado se esse tratamento na imagem possibilitaria... / The knowledge of the spatial distribution of water components concentrations is of fundamental importance to infer about the ecological processes that occur in an aquatic system, however, is difficult to obtain it. Among the variables that deserve attention in the monitoring of aquatic environments, cite the chlorophyll a, which is a substance of photosynthetic algae, organisms that are the basis of the food chain in these environments. Because it is a photosynthetic pigment, chlorophyll a has the property to interact with electromagnetic radiation, and it results in different processes, identifiable through remote sensing. Thus, this research intended to develop a chlorophyll a concentration inference method using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). As input for the inference, it was used combinations of World View-2 spectral bands and chlorophyll a concentration values obtained with a field fluorometer, which allowed a dense sampling in the study area. The multispectral imagery was radiometrically corrected, eliminating the instrumentation and atmospheric effects. Still, it was performed a spectral smoothing in each of the spectral bands and evaluated whether this treatment would give... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

Orientador: Maria de Lourdes Bueno Trindade Galo / Banca: Luciana de Resende Londe / Banca: Aluir Porfirio Dal Poz / Resumo: O conhecimento da distribuição espacial da concentração de componentes da água é de fundamental importância para inferir a respeito dos processos ecológicos que ocorrem num sistema hídrico sendo, entretanto, de difícil obtenção. Dentre as variáveis que merecem atenção no monitoramento de ambientes aquáticos, destaca-se a clorofila a, a qual é uma substância presente em algas responsáveis pela fotossíntese, organismos que constituem a base da cadeia alimentar nesses ambientes. Por se tratar de um pigmento fotossintetizante, a clorofila a apresenta a propriedade de interagir com a radiação eletromagnética, e dessa interação resultam diferentes processos, identificáveis por meio de sensores remotos. Assim sendo, a presente pesquisa se propôs a desenvolver um método de inferência da concentração de clorofila a utilizando Redes Neurais Artificiais (RNA). Utilizou-se como dados de entrada para a inferência combinações de bandas espectrais de uma imagem World View-2 e valores de concentração de clorofila a obtidos com um fluorômetro de campo, o qual possibilitou uma amostragem densa na área de estudos. A imagem multiespectral foi corrigida radiometricamente, eliminando efeitos de instrumentação e atmosféricos. Ainda, efetuou-se uma suavização espectral em cada uma das bandas e foi avaliado se esse tratamento na imagem possibilitaria... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The knowledge of the spatial distribution of water components concentrations is of fundamental importance to infer about the ecological processes that occur in an aquatic system, however, is difficult to obtain it. Among the variables that deserve attention in the monitoring of aquatic environments, cite the chlorophyll a, which is a substance of photosynthetic algae, organisms that are the basis of the food chain in these environments. Because it is a photosynthetic pigment, chlorophyll a has the property to interact with electromagnetic radiation, and it results in different processes, identifiable through remote sensing. Thus, this research intended to develop a chlorophyll a concentration inference method using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). As input for the inference, it was used combinations of World View-2 spectral bands and chlorophyll a concentration values obtained with a field fluorometer, which allowed a dense sampling in the study area. The multispectral imagery was radiometrically corrected, eliminating the instrumentation and atmospheric effects. Still, it was performed a spectral smoothing in each of the spectral bands and evaluated whether this treatment would give... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

It has been proposed that as animals explore their environment they build and maintain a cognitive map, an internal representation of their surroundings (Tolman, 1948). We tested this hypothesis using a task designed to assess the ability of rats to make a spatial inference (take a novel shortcut)(Roberts et al., 2007). Our findings suggest that rats are unable to make a spontaneous spatial inference. Furthermore, they bear similarities to experiments which have been similarly unable to replicate or support Tolman’s (1948) findings. An inability to take novel shortcuts suggests that rats do not possess a cognitive map (Bennett, 1996). However, we found evidence of alternative learning strategies, such as latent learning (Tolman & Honzik, 1930b) , which suggest that rats may still be building such a representation, although it does not appear they are able to utilise this information to make complex spatial computations. Neurons found in the hippocampus show remarkable spatial modulation of their firing rate and have been suggested as a possible neural substrate for a cognitive map (O'Keefe & Nadel, 1978). However, the firing of these place cells often appears to be modulated by features of an animal’s behaviour (Ainge, Tamosiunaite, et al., 2007; Wood, Dudchenko, Robitsek, & Eichenbaum, 2000). For instance, previous experiments have demonstrated that the firing rate of place fields in the start box of some mazes are predictive of the animal’s final destination (Ainge, Tamosiunaite, et al., 2007; Ferbinteanu & Shapiro, 2003). We sought to understand whether this prospective firing is in fact related to the goal the rat is planning to navigate to or the route the rat is planning to take. Our results provide strong evidence for the latter, suggesting that rats may not be aware of the location of specific goals and may not be aware of their environment in the form of a contiguous map. However, we also found behavioural evidence that rats are aware of specific goal locations, suggesting that place cells in the hippocampus may not be responsible for this representation and that it may reside elsewhere (Hok, Chah, Save, & Poucet, 2013). Unlike their typical activity in an open field, place cells often have multiple place fields in geometrically similar areas of a multicompartment environment (Derdikman et al., 2009; Spiers et al., 2013). For example, Spiers et al. (2013) found that in an environment composed of four parallel compartments, place cells often fired similarly in multiple compartments, despite the active movement of the rat between them. We were able to replicate this phenomenon, furthermore, we were also able to show that if the compartments are arranged in a radial configuration this repetitive firing does not occur as frequently. We suggest that this place field repetition is driven by inputs from Boundary Vector Cells (BVCs) in neighbouring brain regions which are in turn greatly modulated by inputs from the head direction system. This is supported by a novel BVC model of place cell firing which predicts our observed results accurately. If place cells form the neural basis of a cognitive map one would predict spatial learning to be difficult in an environment where repetitive firing is observed frequently (Spiers et al., 2013). We tested this hypothesis by training animals on an odour discrimination task in the maze environments described above. We found that rats trained in the parallel version of the task were significantly impaired when compared to the radial version. These results support the hypothesis that place cells form the neural basis of a cognitive map; in environments where it is difficult to discriminate compartments based on the firing of place cells, rats find it similarly difficult to discriminate these compartments as shown by their behaviour. The experiments reported here are discussed in terms of a cognitive map, the likelihood that such a construct exists and the possibility that place cells form the neural basis of such a representation. Although the results of our experiments could be interpreted as evidence that animals do not possess a cognitive map, ultimately they suggest that animals do have a cognitive map and that place cells form a more than adequate substrate for this representation.