Do Eye Movements Have a Special Importance to Mental Activity?

1981 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 671-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara A. Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Eye Movements ◽  
Cognitive Functioning ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Quality Of Information ◽  
Peripheral Motor ◽  
The Brain

Several areas of research are reviewed in which associations between eye movements and the nature of mental processes have been attributed to hypothesized third factors. It is suggested that a simpler hypothesis—that eye movements are related in some fundamental manner to cognitive functioning—deserves consideration. A metaphor is presented to show that the quality of information processing need not exclusively reflect processes deep inside the brain but could also be affected by peripheral motor mechanisms.

scholarly journals Indicators of mental health of pre-school children in Irkutsk amid the wide introduction of information technologies

2013 ◽  
Vol 94 (6) ◽  
pp. 864-866 ◽  
Author(s):  
E A Tkachuk
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
School Children ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Quality Of Information ◽  
Speed Of Information Processing ◽  
Central District ◽  
Childcare Center

Aim. To assess the mental activity of pre-school children amid the wide introduction of information technologies. Methods. 176 children aged from 5.5 to 6.5 years were observed at the institution of pre-school education of Irkutsk central district from 1998 to 2012. Two groups were formed: the first group included 101 child who attended childcare center in 1998, the second group - 76 children who attended childcare center in 2012. Age groups of pre-school children were formed according to their age (from 5 years 5 months 30 days of age to 6 years 5 months 30 days of age). The mental activity was assessed using the figure tables by V.Y. Anfilov assessing the number of made mistakes and number of lines run through. Every missed line was equal to one mistake made. The productivity coefficient Q was calculated as Q=c2/c+d, where с - the number of lines run through; d - the number of mistakes (mistakes were not standardized). Results. The parameters of productivity did not change significantly in 2012 compared to 1998. The number of lines run through at Anfilov’s test increased by 1.8 times (р 0.05) in children of the second group (examined in 2012), the number of mistakes made increased by 7.5 times (р 0.05). Among the girls of the second group, the number of lines run through increased by 1.6 times (р 0.05), the number of mistakes made increased by 6.3 times (р 0.05). The trend was clearer in boys, in whom the number of lines run through increased by 2.0 times (р 0.05), the number of mistakes made increased by 8.3 times (р 0.05). Conclusion. The speed of information processing has increased, and the quality of information processing has dropped in contemporary pre-school children. The overall productivity did not change.

A Regional Health Care Network: eHealth.Braunschweig

2012 ◽  
Vol 51 (03) ◽  
pp. 199-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Bartkiewicz ◽  
W. Bautsch ◽  
A. Gerlach ◽  
M. Goldapp ◽  
R. Haux ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Information Processing ◽  
Regional Health ◽  
Quality Of Information ◽  
Care Network ◽  
Healthcare Network ◽  
Regional Health Care ◽  
Quality Of Patient Care ◽  
Health Care Network

SummaryBackground: Health care network eHealth.Braunschweig has been started in the South-East region of Lower Saxony in Germany in 2009. It composes major health care players, participants from research institutions and important local industry partners.Objectives: The objective of this paper is firstly to describe the relevant regional characteristics and distinctions of the eHealth.Braunschweig health care network and to inform about the goals and structure of eHealth.Braunschweig; secondly to picture and discuss the main concepts and domain fields which are addressed in the health care network; and finally to discuss the architectural challenges of eHealth.Braunschweig regarding the addressed domain fields and defined requirements.Methods: Based on respective literature and former conducted projects we discuss the project structure and goals of eHealth.Braunschweig, depict major domain fields and requirements gained in workshops with participants and discuss the architectural challenges as well as the architectural approach of eHealth.Braunschweig network.Results: The regional healthcare network eHealth.Braunschweig has been established in April 2009. Since then the network has grown constantly and a sufficient progress in network activities has been achieved. The main domain fields have been specified in different workshops with network participants and an architectural realization approach for the transinstitutional information system architecture in the healthcare network has been developed. However, the effects on quality of information processing and quality of patient care have not been proved yet. Systematic evaluation studies have to be done in future in order to investigate the impact of information and communication technology on the quality of information processing and the quality of patient care.Conclusions: In general, the aspects described in this paper are expected to contribute to a systematic approach for the establishment of regional health care networks with lasting and sustainable effects on patient-centered health care in a regional context.

On the Excitation Processes of the Conscious and Subconscious Mind

1929 ◽  
Vol 75 (310) ◽  
pp. 371-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Burridge
Keyword(s):  
Nerve Cell ◽  
Cell Activity ◽  
Nerve Cells ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Excitable Tissue ◽  
Excitation Processes ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Studies of the mind of man and of the heart of the frog, though normally deeply divided, can be bridged when two postulates are granted. The first postulate is that the quality of excitability, on which nerve-cell activity is based, can be studied in any other excitable tissue; the second is that mental activity, as we know it, depends on the presence of excitable nerve-cells in the brain. The postulates being granted, it becomes legitimate to apply the results of experiments on excitability performed with the frog's heart in explanation of the mode of working of the brain and mind.

scholarly journals Neural pattern similarity differentially affects memory performance of younger and older adults: Age differences in neural similarity and memory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Verena R. Sommer ◽  
Yana Fandakova ◽  
Thomas H. Grandy ◽  
Yee Lee Shing ◽  
Markus Werkle-Bergner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Quality Of Information ◽  
Neural Representations ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Pattern Similarity ◽  
The Brain

AbstractAge-related memory decline is associated with changes in neural functioning but little is known about how aging affects the quality of information representation in the brain. Whereas a long-standing hypothesis of the aging literature links cognitive impairments to less distinct neural representations in old age, memory studies have shown that high similarity between activity patterns benefits memory performance for the respective stimuli. Here, we addressed this apparent conflict by investigating between-item representational similarity in 50 younger (19–27 years old) and 63 older (63–75 years old) human adults (male and female) who studied scene-word associations using a mnemonic imagery strategy while electroencephalography was recorded. We compared the similarity of spatiotemporal frequency patterns elicited during encoding of items with different subsequent memory fate. Compared to younger adults, older adults’ memory representations were more similar to each other but items that elicited the most similar activity patterns early in the encoding trial were those that were best remembered by older adults. In contrast, young adults’ memory performance benefited from decreased similarity between earlier and later periods in the encoding trials, which might reflect their better success in forming unique memorable mental images of the joint picture–word pair. Our results advance the understanding of the representational properties that give rise to memory quality as well as how these properties change in the course of aging.Significance statementDeclining memory abilities are one of the most evident limitations for humans when growing older. Despite recent advances of our understanding of how the brain represents and stores information in distributed activation patterns, little is known about how the quality of information representation changes during aging and thus affects memory performance. We investigated how the similarity between neural representations relates to subsequent memory quality in younger and older adults. We present novel evidence that the interaction of pattern similarity and memory performance differs between age groups: Older adults benefited from increased similarity during early encoding whereas young adults benefited from decreased similarity between early and later encoding. These results provide insights into the nature of memory and age-related memory deficits.

Mind, Intelligence and Spirit

1998 ◽  
pp. 164-169
Author(s):  
Pascual F. Martínez-Freire
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Chinese Room ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Personal Project ◽  
Important Quality ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

The mind is a collection of various classes of processes that can be studied empirically. To limit the field of mental processes we must follow the criteria of folk psychology. There are three kinds of mind: human, animal and mechanical. But the human mind is the paradigm or model of mind. The existence of mechanical minds is a serious challenge to the materialism or the mind-brain identity theory. Based on this existence we can put forward the antimaterialist argument of machines. Intelligence is a class of mental processes such that the mind is the genus and the intelligence is a species of this genus. The capacity to solve problems is a clear and definite criterion of intelligence. Again, like in the mind, the human intelligence is the paradigm of the intelligence. There are also three kinds of intelligence: human, animal and mechanical. Searle’s Chinese room argument is misleading because Searle believes that it is possible to maintain a sharp distinction between syntax and semantics. The reasonable dualism in the brain-mind problem defends the existence of brain-mental processes, physical-mental processes, and nonphysical-mental (spiritual) processes. Constitution of the personal project of life, self-consciousness and free volitions are examples of spiritual processes. Usually the intelligence has been considered the most important quality of human beings, but freedom, or the world of free volitions, is a more specific quality of human beings.

scholarly journals Information Processing

Communication ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Bolls
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
General Term ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Mediated Messages ◽  
New Research

Information processing broadly refers to the mental activity emerging from processes the human mind engages in while processing information encountered in an individual’s environment. These mental processes have become particularly important to study in the context of communication research because features of communication-related stimuli— present in both mediated and interpersonal communication—construct the most meaningful parts of the social environment in which individuals engage in information processing. Historically, information processing has been considered to be representative of a distinct research approach as much as it defines a set of phenomena investigated by communication scientists. Information processing as a research approach emerged as part of the cognitive revolution in psychology, which brought about a significant paradigm shift in how researchers working in psychology attempted to understand the human mind. Scholars working in psychology at that time suggested that rigorous theoretical explanations of human nature and behavior could only emerge from research directed at systematically and objectively observing mental processes engaged in the minds and brains of individuals engaged in processing meaningful information in their environment. The adoption of this approach led to the establishment of new research methodologies involving psychophysiological measures in addition to self-report and behavioral measures designed to aid researchers in observing the human mind/brain at work. Communication scientists—particularly those interested in studying processes and effects of media—have adopted an information-processing approach to go beyond insight provided by traditional media-effects research and probe mental processes that may underlie the observed influence of mediated messages on individuals. The term “information processing” is biased toward describing more purely cognitive rather than emotional processes. Research in the field of neuropsychology demonstrates the fallacy of viewing cognition and emotion as isolated processes; thus, the term “information processing” is viewed as having limited utility in describing the more complex, integrated cognitive and emotional mental-activity that scientists engaged in this area investigate. The more general term “mental processing” or “mental processes” will be used here to more accurately describe the phenomenon that communication scientists involved in studying what has been historically considered information processing actually investigate. The first three headings of this bibliography have been included to present references that should provide foundational theoretical and methodological knowledge required to study information processing as mental processes engaged by communication activities, primarily media use. References provided in the remaining sections feature examples of recent information-processing research conducted in important areas of media research.

scholarly journals The Limitations of Decision-Making

Information ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 559
Author(s):  
Paul Walton
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Information Processing ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Quality Of Information ◽  
Collaborative Activity ◽  
Good Decision ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Evolution Characteristics ◽  
Required Quality

In a world faced with technological, health and environmental change and uncertainty, decision-making is challenging. In addition, decision-making itself is becoming a collaborative activity between people and artificial intelligence. This paper analyses decision-making as a form of information processing, using the ideas of information evolution. Information evolution studies the effect of selection pressures and change on information processing and the consequent limitations of that processing. The analysis identifies underlying information evolution factors that affect the quality of information used throughout decision-making and, hence, affect the quality of decisions. These factors imply a set of challenges in which the pressures that drive useful trade-offs in a static environment also hinder decision-making of the required quality in times of change. The analysis indicates the information evolution characteristics of a good decision-making approach and establishes the theoretical basis for tools to demonstrate the information evolution limitations of decision-making.

scholarly journals WEIGHTLESS PROCESSING OF QUANTIZED SIGNAL LOAD

T-Comm ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-51
Author(s):  
Vladimir I. Filatov ◽  
◽  
Alexander S. Nekrasov ◽  
Irina A. Rudzit ◽  
Daria A. Kondrashova ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Signal Processing ◽  
Information Processing ◽  
Detection Problem ◽  
Quality Of Information ◽  
Input Information ◽  
Information Signal ◽  
Hardware Complications ◽  
Unit Density ◽  
Required Quality

Optimal methods for processing input information signals often involve operations, implementation of which is extremely difficult and significantly increases the requirements for automated information processing systems. However, the use of various approaches to solving this problem has led to the appearance of synthesized methods for processing a sequence of signals that allow solving the detection problem with the required quality without significant hardware complications. The article considers a method for weightless processing packets of input quantized signals, which allows us to evaluate the potential (limit) quality of information processing and quantify the amount of loss of this quality when excluding certain operations. The considered method is given with a reasonable structure of implemented devices in practice. A special feature of weightless signal processing is analysis of increasing unit density in a fixed interval of close positions, which gives information about the possible presence of an information signal. To identify this factor, two logical criteria are used, such as “m out of m” and “n out of m”, which will be described in this article.

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