Touching history – to create interesting entrances is a thesis in the field of information design focusing on spatial design. Many museum experiences have been characterized by the gaze. Different barriers in forms of showcases, ropes and exhortations have made the visitor into an observer. With the digitalization this has become even more noticeable. But humans, no matter how young or old, are still physical beings with different senses which offer different ways to experience the world, also in regards of museum experiences. The purpose of this study is to investigate the haptic experience of an object as an information channel in exhibitions. This has been done to investigate if information that is communicated in the interaction between the body and the object has any significance for children’s interest in history.  The scientific theoretical basis for the study focuses, among other things, on the correlation between cognition, emotion and the physical body. This means theories in embodied cognition and haptic perception and previous research about sensory experiences in museums. The purpose for the methodological work has been to thoroughly explore the subject. The work includes interviews through video call, telephone and e-mail with persons working in the museum sector. This to establish the study firmly into the field it aims to explore, and from a museum perspective receive experiences and important inputs. Moreover different workshops and one prototype test have been conducted, this to explore and get an understanding of the subject from the users perspective and to meet their needs. The workshops and the prototype test have been conducted in collaboration with school classes.  With support from theories, previous research and methodological work a design has been created that aims to provide and make haptic experiences available in an exhibition context. This to arouse interest in children, so that the interest works as an entrance in regards to wanting to know more about history. / Att känna historien – ett skapande av intresseväckande ingångar för barn är ett examensarbete inom informationsdesign med inriktning mot rumslig gestaltning. Många museiutställningar har under en tid präglats av visuella intryck, där olika barriärer i form av montrar, rep och förmaningar gjort besökaren till en betraktare. Detta har genom digitaliseringar av museibesök blivit allt mer påtagligt. Samtidigt är människan, gammal som ung, en fysisk varelse med flera sinnen vilka erbjuder en möjlighet att uppleva världen på flera olika sätt, så även med avseende på museibesöket. Studien syftar till att utforska den haptiska upplevelsen av föremål som informationskanal i utställningssammanhang. Detta har gjorts för att undersöka huruvida information som erhålls i samspelet mellan kropp och föremål har betydelse för barns intresse av historia.   Studiens vetenskapliga teoretiska grund fokuserar främst på samspelet mellan kognition, emotion och den fysiska kroppen. Det innebär teorier om förkroppsligad kognition och haptisk perception samt tidigare forskning om betydelsen av sensoriska upplevelser i museisammanhang. Studiens metodiska arbete har syftat till att utforska ämnet från grunden. Arbetet har inbegripit intervjuer via videosamtal, telefon och mejl med personer verksamma inom museisektorn. Detta för att förankra arbetet i det område vilket det avser att utforska och utifrån ett museiperspektiv erhålla erfarenheter och betydelsefulla insikter. Därtill har olika workshops och ett prototyptest genomförts, detta för att utforska och förstå ämnet ur användarens perspektiv och förankra gestalningsförslaget i de behov som föreligger. Genomförande av workshops och prototyptest har skett tillsammans med två skolklasser.   Med stöd i teori och tidigare forskning samt metodiskt arbete har ett gestaltningsförslag för ett utställningsrum arbetats fram som syftar till att tillhandahålla och tillgängliggöra haptiska upplevelser av föremål i utställningssammanhang. Detta för att väcka intresse hos barn, ett intresse som i sin tur är tänkt att fungerar som ingångar till att vilja veta mer om historien.

Ownership of mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, has quickly risen in the last decade. Unsurprisingly, they are now being integrated into the training and classroom setting. Specifically, the U.S. Army has mapped out a plan in the Army Learning Model of 2015 to utilize mobile devices for training purposes. However, before these tools can be used effectively, it is important to identify how the tablets' unique properties can be leveraged. For this dissertation, the touch interface and the interactivity that tablets afford were investigated using a procedural-motor task. The procedural motor task was the disassembly procedures of a M4 carbine. This research was motivated by cognitive psychology theories, including Cognitive Load Theory and Embodied Cognition. In two experiments, novices learned rifle disassembly procedures in a narrated multimedia presentation presented on a tablet and then were tested on what they learned during the multimedia training involving a virtual rifle by performing a rifle disassembly on a physical rifle, reassembling the rifle, and taking a written recall test about the disassembly procedures. Spatial ability was also considered as a subject variable. Experiment 1 examined two research questions. The primary research question was whether including multiple forms of interactivity in a multimedia presentation resulted in higher learning outcomes. The secondary research question in Experiment 1 was whether dynamic multimedia fostered better learning outcomes than equivalent static multimedia. To examine the effects of dynamism and interactivity on learning, four multimedia conditions of varying levels of interactivity and dynamism were used. One condition was a 2D phase diagram depicting the before and after of the step with no animation or interactivity. Another condition utilized a non-interactive animation in which participants passively watched an animated presentation of the disassembly procedures. A third condition was the interactive animation in which participants could control the pace of the presentation by tapping a button. The last condition was a rifle disassembly simulation in which participants interacted with a virtual rifle to learn the disassembly procedures. A comparison of the conditions by spatial ability yielded the following results. Interactivity, overall, improved outcomes on the performance measures. However, high spatials outperformed low spatials in the simulation condition and the 2D phase diagram condition. High spatials seemed to be able to compensate for low interactivity and dynamism in the 2D phase diagram condition while enhancing their performance in the rifle disassembly simulation condition. In Experiment 2, the touchscreen interface was examined by investigating how gestures and input modality affected learning the disassembly procedures. Experiment 2 had two primary research questions. The first was whether gestures facilitate learning a procedural-motor task through embodied learning. The second was whether direct touch input using resulted in higher learning outcomes than indirect mouse input. To examine the research questions, three different variations of the rifle disassembly simulation were used. One was identical to that of Experiment 1. Another incorporated gestures to initiate the animation whereby participants traced a gesture arrow representing the motion of the component to learn the procedures. The third condition utilized the same interface as the initial rifle disassembly simulation but included "dummy" gesture arrows that displayed only visual information but did not respond to gesture. This condition was included to see the effects (if any) of the gesture arrows in isolation of the gesture component. Furthermore, direct touch input was compared to indirect mouse input. Once again, spatial ability also was considered. Results from Experiment 2 were inconclusive as no significant effects were found. This may have been due to a ceiling effect of performance. However, spatial ability was a significant predictor of performance across all conditions. Overall, the results of the two experiments support the use of multimedia on a tablet to train a procedural-motor task. In line with vision of ALM 2015, the research support incorporating tablets into U.S. Army training curriculum.

Shepard and Metzler (1971) argued that mental rotation is analogous to the real world in that people imagine the rotation of an object as if it were being physically rotated. This study tested this assertion by exposing participants to physical shapes that increased in size and weight. Participants interacted with blocks designed after Shepard and Metzler mental rotation size that differed in size and weight then performed subsequent mental rotation. We found no difference in reaction time but found that increased size reduced accuracy. We discuss the implications of this study as they pertain to embodied cognition.

Research over the past several decades suggests there are persistent political knowledge gaps among electoral cohorts in the United States. Of particular concern to many scholars is a generational gap in political knowledge that appears to be widening. The current generation of young voters has lower levels of political knowledge than any of its cohorts of past generations despite having higher levels of formal education. Although formal education is a significant predictor of political knowledge, the strength of this relationship has declined in recent years. Since the 1950s, overall levels of formal education in the United States have significantly increased, yet there has not been a proportionate increase in overall levels of political knowledge. Some scholars attribute this decline in the relationship between formal education and political knowledge to a preceding decline in the quality of civic education in our primary and secondary schools. Quality civic education is important because it provides young people with civic knowledge—knowledge of how their system of government functions and how they can become effective participants within that system. Civic knowledge is important because it also provides a context for a deep understanding of information disseminated in the media about current political issues. Although voters can learn about political issues by encountering information in various types of media, there is a strong correlation between consumption of text-based news media and levels of political knowledge. Newspaper readership has declined, however, especially for traditional print newspapers, which is at its lowest level since 1945. Digital readership is difficult to assess, but there is some evidence that digital newspaper readership is not nearly enough to account for the decline in readership for traditional print newspapers. Civic background knowledge and interest in reading about political issues can enhance deep-level comprehension of text-based political information. Finding ways to make civic background information interesting for young voters could stimulate their interest in reading about political issues and result in increasing their levels of political knowledge. If the Millennial generation continues to be less knowledgeable than their predecessors, it could erode this cohorts’ ability to effectively represent its interests and could eventually result in a polity in which the “vox populi” is reduced to a mere whisper. This study examined text comprehension and interest within the context of an embodied cognition perspective in which the abstract symbols of language are viewed as fundamentally grounded in our bodily responses to our environment. Emerging media, such as interactive computer simulations and virtual environments, provide a way to ground unfamiliar and complex political text-based information in embodied, experiential contexts that could increase comprehension of abstract concepts. These media often evoke the perception of “being there,” in a virtual space. The sense of “being there,” or virtual spatial presence, creates a degree of spatial uncertainty that can result in an increase in arousal that stimulates interest in the information encountered in the virtual space. A within-subjects experiment was conducted to determine whether providing civic background information in a more embodied media format (i.e., an interactive desktop computer simulation) versus a less embodied format (i.e., an onscreen document) for newspaper articles about Obamacare increased interest in and comprehension of the articles. The data were analyzed with paired t-tests and repeated-measures ANOVA. Other statistical tests were also performed to determine relationships among the variables of text comprehension, virtual spatial presence, situational interest, self-reported core affect, and physiological arousal. The findings indicate that surface-level text comprehension of a newspaper article about Obamacare was significantly higher when civic background information for the article was presented in the more embodied format; however, format did not have a significant effect on deep-level comprehension. The findings also indicate that levels of virtual spatial presence and self-reported core affect were significantly higher when participants read information in the more embodied format. Although the results did not reveal a significant effect of format on situational interest in the information, there was a significant order effect of format on situational interest. This was likely the result of a novelty effect and not specifically a result of the level of embodiment the format provided. Within the more embodied format, significant positive correlations emerged between virtual spatial presence and situational interest and between virtual spatial presence and self-reported core affect (i.e., subjective feelings of arousal and enjoyment); however, a negative correlation emerged between virtual spatial presence and skin conductance level. Significant positive correlations also emerged across format conditions between situational interest and self-reported core affect and between situational interest in civic background information for a newspaper article and situational interest in the article itself. The main predictors of overall text comprehension of the newspaper articles about Obamacare were posttest civic knowledge and situational interest. / Media & Communication

Text in Afrikaans / A study of the philosophical and historical foundations of infinity highlights the problematic development of infinity. Aristotle distinguished between potential and actual infinity, but rejected the latter. Indeed, the interpretation of actual infinity leads to contradictions as seen in the paradoxes of Zeno. It is difficult for a human being to understand actual infinity. Our logical schemes are adapted to finite objects and events. Research shows that students focus primarily on infinity as a dynamic or neverending process. Individuals may have contradictory intuitive thoughts at different times without being aware of cognitive conflict. The intuitive thoughts of students about both the actual (at once) infinite and potential (successive) infinity are very complex. The problematic nature of actual infinity and the contradictory intuitive cognition should be the starting point in the teaching of the concept infinity. / Educational Studies / M.Ed. (Mathematic Education)

Le vieillissement et la maladie d’Alzheimer (MA) sont caractérisés par des difficultés mnésiques associées à leurs altérations sensorielles et perceptives. Ces liens s’expliqueraient naturellement par les approches incarnées de la cognition qui définissent les connaissances comme ancrées dans leurs propriétés modales (sensori-motrices). Afin de tester ces approches incarnées, deux séries d’expériences ont été conduites auprès de jeunes adultes, personnes âgées saines et patient MA. Ces expériences combinaient une batterie complète de tests neuropsychologiques et un paradigme d’amorçage intersensoriel (audition vers vision). L’originalité fut l’ajout, pour la moitié des amorces auditives, d’un masque visuel sans signification. L’Expérience 1 était constituée deux phases distinctes, alors que dans l’Expérience 2, l’amorce et la cible étaient présentées dans un même essai. Les résultats démontrent un effet d’amorçage intersensoriel pour les jeunes adultes et les personnes âgées. Le masque a interféré avec cet effet d’amorçage, mais uniquement lorsque l’amorce et la cible correspondent à une même connaissance. Cette interférence et sa spécificité démontrent que les jeunes adultes comme les personnes âgées auraient des connaissances modales. En revanche, les patients MA ne présentent pas d’effet d’amorçage alors que celui-ci est de nature perceptive. Ces résultats supportent l’idée d’une déconnexion cérébrale dans la MA. L’ensemble des données permet de supposer que les difficultés mnésiques dans le vieillissement s’expliqueraient essentiellement par une dégradation de la qualité de leurs connaissances en lien avec leur perception. Les troubles mnésiques dans la MA proviendraient quant à eux d’un déficit d’intégration dynamique des différentes composantes des connaissances. Ces approches placent les interactions entre mémoire et perception au cœur du fonctionnement mnésique. / Normal aging as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are characterized by memory disorders associated with the sensory and perceptive decline. These links may be easily explained in the embodied cognition theory, because in this one, knowledge remains grounded in its properties (mainly sensory-motor). The objective of the present research is to assess the embodied cognition theory applied to young adults, healthy elderly and patient with AD. In two experiments, a complete neuropsychological battery was associated with a cross-modal priming paradigm (audition to vision). The novelty of the paradigm was to present a visual meaningless mask for half of the sound primes. Experiment 1 was composed of two distinct phases, whereas the prime and the target were presented in the same trial in Experiment 2. The results demonstrated a significant cross-modal priming effect in young and healthy elderly adults. The mask has interfered with the priming effect only in the semantic congruent situations. The mask interference and its specificity demonstrate that young and elderly adults have modal knowledge. Reversely, the patients with AD did not show any priming effect while the effect is perceptual. This result supports the cerebral disconnection hypothesis in AD. The data taken together suggest that memory disorders in normal aging could be related to a degradation of the quality of their perception and thus of knowledge. Memory impairments in AD might come from an integration disorder to dynamically bind the different components of a memory. The present research support the embodied cognition theory and demonstrates the interest of this kind of approach to explore memory functioning in neuropsychology, such as in aging. These approaches put on the foreground the interactions between memory and perception.

Il razionale di questo progetto affonda le sue radici nelle recenti teorie che considerano il linguaggio come fondato sull’azione, e quindi strettamente collegato al sistema motorio. Negli ultimi decenni, infatti, la scoperta dei neuroni specchio, prima nella scimmia e poi negli esseri umani, ha portato ad un filone di ricerca spesso denominato “embodied language”. Grazie alle metodiche messe a disposizione dalle neuroscienze, ad oggi sono stati raccolti molti dati sperimentali a favore del legame tra sistema motorio e linguaggio, anche se la natura di questo legame non è del tutto chiara. In questa prospettiva, in aggiunta ai tradizionali strumenti di indagine come la Risonanza Magnetica Funzionale (fMRI) o la Stimolazione Magnetica Transcranica (TMS), anche la Realtà Virtuale (RV), che consente di provare un’”esperienza incorporata”, sembra possa aiutare i ricercatori a far luce sulle questioni ancora aperte. Il presente progetto, quindi, si compone di tre ricerche distinte, ciascuna delle quali pone ad oggetto di indagine una sfaccettatura diversa del complesso fenomeno dell’embodied language. Il primo esperimento è finalizzato ad indagare il ruolo della corteccia motoria primaria nei compiti di comprensione, utilizzando la rTMS; nel secondo esperimento viene introdotta la realtà virtuale per valutare se e come un’azione virtuale, grazie a un processo di simulazione, modula la comprensione di verbi; il terzo studio, infine, usando lo stesso ambiente virtuale del secondo studio, si propone di indagare il ruolo dell’azione virtuale durante l’apprendimento di una lingua straniera. / The rational of this project is rooted in the recent theories that consider language as grounded in action, and thus tightly tied to the motor system. In the last decades, the discovery of the mirror neurons in monkeys, and of the correspondent mirror neuron system in humans, led to a new research topic often called “embodied language”. Thanks to the methodics supplied by neuroscience, nowadays a great corpus of experimental data has been collected that support the link between language and motor system, even if the nature of this link is still not completely understood. In this perspective, beyond traditional tools such as Functional Magnetic Resonance (fMRI) or Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), also Virtual reality (RV), which allows to create an embodied experience, seems suitable to shed light on the open questions. The present project, thereby, is structured in three independent researches, each one aiming at investigating one specific facet of the complex phenomenon of embodied language. The first experiment is designed to investigate the role of the primary motor cortex during language comprehension, using rTMS; in the second one, the virtual reality is introduced, in order to test if and how a virtual action, thanks to simulation, modulates verbs comprehension; the third study, finally, using the same virtual environment, aims at examining the role of the virtual action during foreign language learning.

Traditional ritual studies approaches to the body are effective for illuminating how the body functions as an entity that absorbs and expresses a variety of social, and political dynamics; however, they are less productive for understanding the body as a physical organism. This interdisciplinary thesis applies theoretical models from cognitive science, social psychology and ritual studies to the Śrī Cakra Pūjā in order to develop a more complete understanding of the ritual body as a physical body. Using Lawrence Barsalou’s theory of embodied cognition, which focuses on the impact of human experiences on the creation and integration of neural pathways, this essay, argues that Śrī Cakra Pūjā affects the mind by shaping the neural architecture of the brain. This cognitive perspective on religious ritual practice is compared with the more traditional ritual studies approach of Catherine Bell in an effort to provide a more complete understanding of the religious ritual body, brain and mind.

La domanda "Che cos’è lo spazio?" è sempre stata un tema centrale per la filosofia, ed è diventata di interesse anche per la psicologia cognitiva e per le neuroscienze, con una domanda cruciale strettamente legata: "Dove sono io?". Lo sforzo per collegare le risposte a queste due domande mira proprio a comprendere la complessa relazione che esiste tra lo spazio interno ed esterno, che è l'obiettivo finale di questo lavoro. L'idea è che la nostra posizione nel mondo influenzi fortemente il modo in cui codifichiamo, archiviamo e recuperiamo dalla memoria un layout spaziale. Inoltre, questo layout spaziale serve da impalcatura che vincola tutte le informazioni relative al nostro passato, presente e futuro, e tutte le esperienze legate al nostro corpo. All’interno di un approccio enattivo, si suggerisce una sincronizzazione continua (cioè, il “mental frame syncing") tra una rappresentazione allocentrica indipendente dal punto di vista allocentrica (i.e. che include solo relazioni oggetto-oggetto astratte) e una rappresentazione allocentrica dipendente dal punto di vista (i.e. che include informazioni sulla nostra direzione egocentrica attuale) possa permettere di posizionare il corpo nello “spazio memorizzato” rendendo più semplice la traduzione di questo in un “lived space” di cui si necessita per navigare, per ricordare il passato e per sentire il corpo. Sulla base di queste premesse teoriche, quattro studi sperimentali saranno presentati per studiare il ruolo del mental frame syncing come un principio di allineamento centrato sull’osservatore nei processi di codifica e di recupero delle informazioni. / The question "What is space?" has always been a central topic for philosophy, and a closely linked crucial question becomes of interest for cognitive psychology and neuroscience, that is "Where am I?" The efforts to answer these two questions are means to better understanding of the complex relation between the outer and the inner space, which is the final goal of this work. The idea is that that our bodily position in the world strongly affects the way in which we encode, store and retrieve a spatial layout. Moreover, this spatial layout serves as a scaffold, binding all the information of our past, present, future and body-related experiences. Within an enactive approach, it is suggested that this continuous synchronization (namely, the “mental frame syncing”) of an allocentric viewpoint-independent representation (i.e. including only abstract object-to-object relations) and an allocentric viewpoint-dependent representation (i.e. comprising information about our current heading) may permit to place current bodily position in the “memorized space" making easy the translation of it into a “lived space” that it is needed to navigate, remember the past and feel the body. On these theoretical premises, four experimental studies will be presented to investigate the role of mental frame syncing as an alignment principle centred on observer the processes of encoding and retrieval of information

In this thesis, the evolution of adaptive behaviour in artificial agents is studied. More specifically, two types of adaptive behaviours are studied: articulated and cognitive ones. Chapter 1 presents a general introduction together with a brief presentation of the research area of this thesis, its main goals and a brief overview of the experimental studies done, the results and conclusions obtained. On chapter 2, I briefly present some promising methods that automatically generate robot controllers and/or body plans and potentially could help in the development of adaptive robots. Among these methods I present in details evolutionary robotics, a method inspired on natural evolution, and the biological background regarding adaptive behaviours in biological organisms, which provided inspiration for the studies presented in this thesis. On chapter 3, I present a detailed study regarding the evolution of articulated behaviours, i.e., behaviours that are organized in functional sub-parts, and that are combined and used in a sequential and context-dependent way, regardless if there is a structural division in the robot controller or not. The experiments performed with a single goal task, a cleaning task, showed that it is possible to evolve articulated behaviours even in this condition and without structural division of the robot controller. Also the analysis of the results showed that this type of integrated modular behaviours brought performance advantages compared to structural divided controllers. Analysis of robots' behaviours helped to clarify that the evolution of this type of behaviour depended on the characteristics of the neural network controllers and the robot's sensorimotor capacities, that in turn defined the capacity of the robot to generate opportunity for actions, which in psychological literature is often called affordances. In chapter 4, a study seeking to understand the role of reactive strategies in the evolution of cognitive solutions, i.e. those capable of integrating information over time encoding it on internal states that will regulate the robot's behaviour in the future, is presented. More specifically I tried to understand whether the existence of sub-optimal reactive strategies prevent the development of cognitive solutions, or they can promote the evolution of solutions capable of combining reactive strategies and the use of internal information for solving a response delayed task, the double t-maze. The results obtained showed that reactive strategies capable of offloading cognitive work to the agent/environmental relation can promote, rather than prevent the evolution of solutions relying on internal information. The analysis of these results clarified how these two mechanisms interact producing a hybrid superior and robust solution for the delayed response task.