Changing Design Cognition

<p>Building Information Modeling methodology is the current interest for many didactic programs around the world. May be the Master program can be an opportunity to understand the whole BIM concept in the AEC industry. In the Master BIM in Pisa, Italy we are teaching an approach that is not only “tech”. In the Building Information Modeling methodology, the digital representation receives a new strategic task in the world of construction: reducing the gap between the “res aedificanda” and its simulation via object-oriented graphics. Developing research on this way means to offer new powerful opportunities to re-think the link between “the fact” and “its representation”. There is a strong link between graphics approach and cognitive paradigms in design architecture. If the Building Information Modeling could be an answer for the actual needs of the world of AEC, digital design in BIM becomes the way to think the whole project “as one”. In the BIM graphics environment, the digital drawing changes the sign in ontology. To sum up, we are moving beyond vision to "experience" the design before it is built: we design the constructive ontology according to our experience of the “fabrica”. Modeling the interaction means represent the process through the time.</p>

Book review: Dynamics of Learning in Neanderthals and Modern Humans. Vol. 1, Cultural Perspectives, edited by Takeru Akazawa, Yoshihiro Nishiaki, and Kenichi Aoki. Vol. 2, Cognitive and Physical Perspectives, edited by Takeru Akazawa, Naomichi Ogihara, Hiroki C. Tanabe, and Hideaki Terashima. Springer, 2014.

We review Dynamics of Learning in Neanderthals and Modern Humans, a two-volume proceedings of an international conference held in Tokyo in 2012 on the replacement of Neandertals by modern humans. The series represents an ambitious inquiry into the cultural, psychological, neuroscientific, and physical differences between the two species that may have contributed to the Neandertal demise, and we found it admirable in its multi-disciplinary scope and depth. One of the key hypotheses is that differences in learning abilities might explain the replacement of Neandertals by modern humans. Many of the papers in the first volume examine learning strategies and behaviors in human groups, both prehistoric and extant hunter–gatherer societies, though not within similar cognitive paradigms. Other papers review aspects of cultural evolution, including evolutionary rates of cultural change, niche construction, and innovation. The second volume continues with studies of cognition and psychology, including papers on individual, imitative, and instructive learning, problem-solving, and cognitive flexibility, as well as genetic studies, issues associated with reconstructing fossil crania, and brain morphology.

Predicting effects of methylphenidate and sulpiride on brain and cognition: A pharmaco-fMRI, PET study. Design and descriptives.

The large variation observed in the effects of dopaminergic drugs poses a major problem for neuropsychiatry, where therapeutic drugs may be ineffective or detrimental in a proportion of patients, but also for the healthy population. We have conducted a pharmaco-fMRI/PET study in 100 healthy participants to investigate the neural and neurochemical mechanisms of this variability. We studied the cognitive effects of methylphenidate (20mg) and sulpiride (400mg) across various cognitive domains, such as reward learning and motivation, working memory and effort motivation. To establish the baseline dopamine-dependency of the drug effects, all participants underwent an [18F]DOPA positron emission tomography scan on a separate off-drug session to quantify their baseline striatal dopamine synthesis capacity. In addition, multiple putative proxy measures of striatal dopamine activity were acquired, including spontaneous eye blink rate, trait impulsivity, subjective reward sensitivity and working memory capacity. The drug effects on each of the cognitive paradigms and their potential dependency on dopamine synthesis capacity and putative proxy measures are reported in separate papers. In the present paper, we report the design of the full study, as well as drug effects on subjective mood and autonomic arousal. This report aims to serve as a reference for future pharmacological fMRI/PET studies as well as for the specific papers resulting from detailed analyses of the included cognitive paradigms. The study will enable the development of a proxy-model of baseline dopamine, intended to provide a pragmatic handle on predicting the effects of dopaminergic drugs on brain and cognition that maximally generalizes to new participants.

Predicting confidence across observers and cognitive domains

Our perceptual system appears hardwired to exploit regularities of input features across space and time in seemingly stable environments. This can lead to serial dependence effects whereby recent perceptual representations bias current perception. Serial dependence has also been demonstrated for more abstract representations such as perceptual confidence. Here we ask whether temporal patterns in the generation of confidence judgments across trials generalize across observers and different cognitive domains. Data from the Confidence Database across perceptual, memory, and cognitive paradigms was re-analyzed. Machine learning classifiers were used to predict the confidence on the current trial based on the history of confidence judgments on the previous trials. Cross-observer and cross-domain decoding results showed that a model trained to predict confidence in the perceptual domain generalized across observers to predict confidence across the different cognitive domains. Intriguingly, these serial dependence effects also generalized across correct and incorrect trials, indicating that serial dependence in confidence generation is uncoupled to metacognition (i.e. how we evaluate the precision of our own behavior). We discuss the ramifications of these findings for the ongoing debate on domain-generality vs. specificity of metacognition.

The influence of the respiratory cycle on reaction times in sensory-cognitive paradigms

Behavioural and electrophysiological studies point to widespread influence of the state of respiration on brain activity and cognitive performance. Still, the prevalence and relevance of such respiratory-behavioural relations in typical sensory-cognitive tasks remain unclear. We here used a battery of six tasks probing sensory detection, discrimination and short-term memory to address the questions of whether and by how much behaviour covaries with the respiratory cycle. Our results show that participants tended to align their respiratory cycle to the experimental paradigm. Furthermore, their reaction times, but not so much their response accuracy, consistently and significantly covaried with the respiratory cycle, and this effect was strongest when analyzed contingent on the respiratory state at participants' responses. The respective effect sizes where comparable to those seen in many typical neurocognitive experimental manipulations. These results support a prominent relation between respiration and sensory-cognitive function and suggest that sensation is intricately linked to rhythmic bodily or interoceptive functions.

Cognitive-functional principles and Chinese linear order

In Modern Standard Chinese, word order patterns and constructions are motivated by factors and restrictions connected to different levels of linguistic organization, including not only semantics and syntax, but also pragmatics, information-structure, and the conceptual domain. The functional and the cognitive paradigms have offered distinct but complementary perspectives capable of accounting for word order patterns and regularities related to either the topic-prominent nature of Chinese or the iconic dimension of its grammar. This article shows how cognitive and functional aspects are in fact tightly intertwined and display significant and not yet fully explored parallelisms. Specifically, it looks into the notions of ‘frame’, ‘scope’, and ‘part’, features shared by both functional accounts of topic-comment structures and conceptually motivated word order principles. It proposes a qualitative corpus analysis of such notions and shows that first, Chinese topics are better defined in terms of frames; second, a number of word order regularities can be accounted for with a single cognitive-functional schema, which I refer to as frame-part, or frame-participant, which is connected to the image schema of containment. This article hopes to contribute to bridging the gap between functional studies on information structure in Chinese and perspectives offered by the cognitive approach to linguistic structures, and to offer effective tools for Chinese as a second language acquisition.

Melanopsin retinal ganglion cell-driven contribution to visual and cognitive brain responses in LHON

Melanopsin retinal ganglion cells (mRGCs) are intrinsically photosensitive photoreceptors contributing to visual and non-image-forming functions of the eye. Isolating mRGC roles in humans is challenging, therefore mRGCs functions remains to be fully characterized.We explored mRGCs contribution to light-driven visual and cognitive brain responses in Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON), given mRGC relative sparing in LHON. Twelve patients and twelve matched healthy controls (HC) participated in an fMRI protocol including visual and visual-cognitive paradigms under blue (480nm) and red light (620nm).Higher occipital activation was found in response to sustained blue vs. red stimulation in LHON vs. HC. Similarly, brain responses to the executive task were larger under blue vs. red light in LHON over lateral prefrontal cortex.These findings are in line with LHON mRGCs relative sparing and support mRGCs contribution to non-visual and visual functions in humans, with potential implication for visual rehabilitation in optic neuropathy patients.

Paradigm Space of Modern Higher Education in Ukraine

The article analyzes the paradigm space of higher education in Ukraine. It is proved that the modern education paradigm has a synthetic character, is based on the polyparadigmality principles and is a synthesis of personally oriented ideas, semantic and cognitive paradigms of education. Their nature and characteristics are considered. The units of analysis selected certain components of the paradigm, namely: mission, goals, objectives, guiding values, content of education, basic didactic tools, teacher-student relationships, criteria, functions. It is proved that the situation of confrontation and contradiction of personally oriented, semantic and cognitive paradigms of education is unacceptable, since each of them has its positives and limitations. It was found that cognitive education provides significant potential for intellectual development of the individual, it is its apparent positive. Proved that the cognitive limitations of education lies in its normative and purely social utility, which not related to the unique personality implementation, which is a passive “object” of teacher pedagogical influence; informative cognitive priority led to its content and disciplinary overload, is a serious problem of modern education in higher education institutions. Proved that priority is individually oriented paradigm associated with the formation of free, individual initiative as the “subject” of his life and this education paradigm is reflexive oriented because its values are leading self-awareness, self-development and personal fulfilment future specialist. However, objective knowledge is sometimes overlooked, and this is a certain difficulty of personally oriented education. It is found out that the benefits of the education semantic paradigm are related to the value-semantic attitude formation towards future professional activity, with updating of personal semantic experience; with semantic choice, with development of future specialist semantic potential. The reflexive nature of the personally oriented, semantic and cognitive paradigms of education is substantiated, and it is proved that the modern paradigm of higher education space will constitute a polyparadigmatic synthesis of their ideas accumulated in the education reflexive paradigm. The polyparadigmality essence is revealed as a research methodology, which is a conceptual synthesis of several existing educational paradigms.

ANIMAL TURN AS A META-TURN?

Human sciences as a reflection of social transformations fluctuate with dynamic changes of current cognitive paradigms. Following the textual and visual turn and the turn towards things (objects), there are intensified tendencies to think in terms of an “animal turn”, which becomes close not only to activists and pro-animal activists but also to scientifically engaged humanists. I believe, however, that the animal turn should be treated as a meta-turn: a process that requires a change in the relationship between the reflecting subject and the object of reflection, and not only as a specific kind of representation of the surrounding world. In the proposed text, I attempt to analyze the causes of the turn towards animals. I also address the theme of cognitive resistance in view of the recognition of animal studies as a fully-fledged theoretical and research area of contemporary humanities.