Psycholinguistic research shows that it is unreasonable to expect programmers to easily find minor typos in their otherwise correct code. The Python Error Support Tool PEST was designed and developed to address this. PEST offers an explanation for why the error happened and presents a list of possible fixes that will allow the user’s code to compile. This tool was evaluated by several students with a beginner’s level of expertise in Python, and feedback was generally positive with tangible steps for improvement.

Masters of Art / Many empirically supported versions of stage and componential models of the cognitive processing underlying the completion of various tasks spanning a wide range of domains have been developed by cognitive scientists of various kinds. These include models of scientific (e.g. Dunbar 1999), mathematical (e.g. Schoenfeld 1985), artistic (e.g. Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi 1976), engineering (e.g. Purzer et al 2018), legal (e.g. Ronkainen 2011), medical (e.g. Vimla et al 2012) and even culinary cognition (e.g. Stierand and Dörfler 2015) (and this list is nowhere near exhaustive). Yet, despite the existence of fields such as experimental and metaphilosophy which take philosophy as their object, often by using methods from the cognitive sciences, a stage or componential model of philosophizing is conspicuously missing from even an exhaustive list of the kind just produced.

To see is to act. Most obviously, we are continuously scanning different regions of the world with the movement of our eyes, head, and body. These overt movements are intrinsically linked to two other, more subtle, actions: (1) the prior process of deciding where to look; and (2) the prediction of the sensory consequences of overt movements. In this thesis I describe a series of experiments that investigate different mechanisms underlying the first process and that evaluate the existence of the second one. The aiming of eye movements, or spatial visual selection, has traditionally been explained with either goal-oriented or stimulus-driven mechanisms. Our experiments deal with the tension of this dichotomy and present further evidence in favor of two other type of mechanisms, not usually considered: global orienting based on non-visual cues and viewing biases that are independent of stimulus and task. Firstly, we investigate whether stimulus-driven selection based on low-level features can operate independently of top-down constraints. If this is the case, the inhibition of areas higher in the hierarchy of visual processing and motor control should result in an increased influence of low-level features saliency. The results presented in Chapter 2 show that inhibition of the posterior parietal cortex in humans, by a permanent lesion or by transient inhibition, result in similar effects: an increased selection of locations that are characterized by higher contrast of low-level features. These results thus support a selection system in which stimulus-driven decisions are usually masked by top-down processes but can nevertheless operate independently of them. Secondly, we investigate how free-viewing selection can be guided by non-visual content. The work in Chapter 3 indicates that touch is not only an effective local spatial cue, but that, during free viewing, it can also be a powerful global orienting signal. This effect occurs always in an external frame of reference, that is, to the side where the stimulation occurred in the external world instead of being anchored to the side of the body that was stimulated. Thirdly, we investigate whether selection can operate even without reference to any sensory stimulus or goal. Results from our experiments presented in Chapters 2 to 5, demonstrate normal and pathological biases during free-viewing. First, patients with neglect syndrome show a strong bias to explore only the right side of images (ch. 2). In contrast, healthy subjects present a strong leftward bias, but only during the early phase of exploration (ch. 3 & 4). Finally, patients with Parkinson’s disease show a subtle overall bias to the right and no initial leftward bias (ch. 5). The results described so far indicate that visual selection operates based on diverse mechanisms which are not restricted to the evaluation of visual inputs according to top-down constraints. Instead, selection can be solely guided by the stimulus, which can be of a multimodal nature and result in global rather than local orienting, and by strong biases that are also independent of both stimuli and goals. The second part of this thesis studies the possibility that eye movements result in predictions of the inputs they are about to bring into sight. To investigate this with electroencephalography (EEG) we had to first learn how to deal with the strong electrical artifacts produced by eye movements. In Chapter 6, a taxonomy of such artifacts and the best way of removing them is described. On this basis, we studied trans-saccadic predictions of visual content, presented in Chapter 7. The results were compatible with the production of error signals after a saccade-contingent change of a target stimulus. These errors signals, coding the mismatch between trans-saccadic predictions and sensory inputs, depend on the reliability of pre-saccadic input. The violation of predictions about veridical input (presented outside the blind spot) results in stronger error signals than when the pre-saccadic stimulus is only inferred (presented inside the blind spot). Thus, these results support the idea of active predictive coding, in which perception consists in the integration of predictions of future input with incoming sensory information. In conclusion, to see is to act: We actively explore the visual environment. We actively select which area to explore based on various competing factors. And we make predictions about the sensory consequences of our actions.

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The objective of this research is to elucidate motivation and emotion processing inan AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) system NARS (Non-Axiomatic Reasoning System). Under the basic assumption that an artificial general intelligence system should work with insufficient resources and knowledge, the emotion module can help direct the selection of internal tasks, and allow the autonomous allocation of internal resources and rapid response with urgency, so that the inference capability of AGI system can be improved. The psychological and AI theories related to emotion are extensively reviewed,including the source of emotion, the appraisal process in emotional experience, the cognitive processing and coping process, and the necessity of emotion for Artificial General Intelligence design. This dissertation describes the conceptual design, realization process and application process of emotion in NARS. The process of internal resource allocation triggeredby different emotions based on NARS reasoning framework is proposed, and the design can be applied to any scene. The similarity and difference between human emotion and artificial intelligence emotion are discussed. At the same time, the advantages and disadvantages of the design and its theory are also discussed. A recent implementation of the NARS model, will be discussed with examples. and the emotion model has been tested preliminarily in a new version of OpenNARS. New Temporal Induction model, Anticipation model, Goal processing model, and Emotion model which is implemented in the new system will also be discussed in detail. The dissertation concludes with suggestions and ideas that are put forward forthe role of emotion in future human-computer interaction. / Computer and Information Science

The present study explores the nature and structure of spiritual and aesthetic experiences through the interdisciplinary application of neurophenomenology (NP). This approach merges aspects of psychology, neurophysiology, and phenomenology into a unified methodology. The study is nested within a larger project, Space, Science, and Spirituality, and as such, it carries a common goal to use simulation to evoke spiritual and aesthetic responses similar to those expressed by astronauts and cosmonauts. Careful analysis of previous work in NP provided methodological “lessons learned”, which guided the experimental design, execution, and analysis of the present study. The data collected provides support for experience as a phenomenon that can be studied through empirical means. Further, the articulation of spiritual and aesthetic experiences akin to astronaut experiences corresponds to specific neurological and psychological indicators. Among those indicators are differences in EEG measures during simulation time relative to expressions of spiritual experience following the simulation and changes in visual processing across theta, alpha, and beta signals as correlated with self-identification. These findings support an embodied theory of experience that incorporates memory, executive function, perception, and consciousness. In addition to its academic contribution, this research holds implications for commercial space flight, long-term space missions, post-traumatic stress disorder therapies, and the entertainment industry

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No description available.

Time is not only the fundamental organizing principle of the universe, it is also the primary organizer of information about the world we perceive. Our brain encodes these perceptions in sequential patterns of spiking activity. But different stimuli lead to different information encoded on different timescales; sometimes the same stimulus carries information pertaining to different perceptions on different timescales. The orders of time are many and the computational circuits of the brain must disentangle these interwoven threads to decode the underlying structure. This thesis deals with solutions to this disentanglement problem implemented not at the network level, but in smaller systems and single neurons that represent the past by clever use of internal mechanisms. Often, these solutions involve the intricate tools of the neural dendrite or other peculiar aspects of neural circuits that are well known to physiologists and biologists but disregarded in favor of more homogeneous models by many theoreticians. It is at the intersection of the diverse biological reality of the brain and the difficulty of the computational problem to disentangle the threads of temporal order that we find new and powerful computational principles: Symbolic computation on the level of single neurons via dendritic plateau potentials, embedding history in delayed feedback dynamics or consecutive filter responses, or the idea that learning a generalized differential description of a systems can largely forgo the need to remember the past – instead, patterns can freely be generated. Together, the different challenges that information ordered in different, asynchronous times present require a diverse palette of solutions. At the same time, computation and the structure imposed by time are deeply connected.

Peter Carruther's Interpretive Sensory-Access (ISA) theory of self-knowledge is an interesting account of the opaqueness of our own minds that draws upon a wide range of theories from cognitive science and philosophy. In the present paper, I argue that the theory's assumptions support the conclusion that the available perceptual evidence massively underdetermines all of an agent's second-order beliefs about her own beliefs. Such a result is far more negative than the ISA's well-known pessimism regarding self-knowledge. Furthermore, I also argue that, from the same assumptions, it is possible to build an argument to the effect that cognitive scientists trying to determine an agents' true behavior-causing attitude face similar underdetermination problems. Toward the end of the paper, I suggest that the theory's problems arise from a conflation of two different ways in which terms denoting propositional attitudes, such as 'belief', are used in its formulation. Distinguishing between the two usages of these terms, in turn, leads to a further distinction between two different senses in which we can talk about the 'opaqueness' of our own minds. / Master of Arts