Age-Related Decline in Pragmatic Reasoning of Older Adults

As speech is often ambiguous, pragmatic reasoning—the process of integrating multiple sources of information including semantics, ostensive cues and contextual information (Bohn & Frank, 2019)—is essential to understanding a speaker’s intentions. Despite current literature suggesting that certain social cognitive processes such as gaze-processing (Slessor et al., 2014) appear to be impaired in late adulthood, it is not well understood if pragmatic reasoning decline with age. Here, we examined young adults’ (aged 19-25; n=41) and older adults’ (aged 60-79; n=41) ability to engage in pragmatic reasoning in a cue integration task. In Experiment 1, participants had to integrate contextual (participants and speaker knew there were two novel objects but the latter could only see one), semantic (“There’s the [novel-label]” or “Where’s the [novel-label]”), and gaze (speaker looked at the mutually-visible object) cues to identify the referent (Nurmsoo & Bloom, 2008). In Experiment 2, participants received contextual and semantic cues less gaze cue. In both experiments, the target referent object for “There” and “Where” trials was the mutually-visible object and the object the speaker could not see respectively. Overall, young adults outperformed older adults, even in the simpler two-cue Experiment 2 (ps<.006). While older adults were significantly above chance in “There” trials for both experiments as well as “Where” trials in Experiment 2 (ps<.05), they had specific difficulty in integrating three cues in “Where” trials, where a more sophisticated interpretation of the multiple cues was required (p=.42). Our findings provide important insights into an age-related decline of pragmatic reasoning in older adults.

Multi-View Optical Image Fusion and Reconstruction for Defogging without a Prior In-Plane

Image fusion and reconstruction from muldti-images taken by distributed or mobile cameras need accurate calibration to avoid image mismatching. This calibration process becomes difficult in fog when no clear nearby reference is available. In this work, the fusion of multi-view images taken in fog by two cameras fixed on a moving platform is realized. The positions and aiming directions of the cameras are determined by taking a close visible object as a reference. One camera with a large field of view (FOV) is applied to acquire images of a short-distance object which is still visible in fog. This reference is then adopted to the calibration of the camera system to determine the positions and pointing directions at each viewpoint. The extrinsic parameter matrices are obtained with these data, which are applied for the image fusion of distant images captured by another camera beyond visibility. The experimental verification was carried out in a fog chamber and the technique is shown to be valid for imaging reconstruction in fog without a prior in-plane. The synthetic image, accumulated and averaged by ten-view images, is shown to perform potential applicability for fog removal. The enhanced structure similarity is discussed and compared in detail with conventional single-view defogging techniques.

FILM AS IDENTIFICATION EXPERIENCE. DESIGN OF OTHER WORLDS IN A SCI-FI MOVIE

In terms of the multicultural modern world, the question of identity is especially actual. Visual arts and cultural practices have very good opportunities for creating spatial-plastic environments that stimulate the viewer's identification processes through the sensory-emotional and cognitive mastering of these images-environments. The object of research is the modeling of plastic media in sci-fi movies of the 1970-80s. Research methods was the disposition adopted in visualistics (verbalization of a visible object), phenomenological reduction of a visual image to a subject-plastic referent, and hermeneutics. As a result of the study, it was determinrd that the subject-plastic (design) environment of the visual image is a sensually perceived model of cultural identity offered by the movie. In the process of comparing oneself to this model, the viewer experiences an identification experience.

NON-CLASSICAL SUBJECT OF VISION. PART II

The article is a continuation of the previous article Non-Classical Subject of Vision. Part I and is devoted to the analysis of the eventivity of a non-classical subject. The analysis of non-classical subjectivity in the article is based on the three-part mechanism of the power of distance, power of gaze and power of memory proposed by W. Benjamin. The concept of the image as a mediator through which the subject regains the lost distance with the world is discussed. The article deals with the concepts of the non-classical subject of visuality by J.-P. Sartre and G. Didi-Huberman as different types of transformation of the power of gaze and the role of memory in non-classical vision. Important elements of the concept of «scanty image» by J.-P. Sartre are analyzed: criticism of the naive understanding of the immanence of consciousness and the world, criticism of images as a weak copy of the object of observation, the development of a specific givenness of a thing in an image through its distant present absence. It is shown that the theory of «scanty image» breaks the unreal objects of visual consciousness and the sensually perceived world into two poles that are not connected with each other. Therefore, in Sartre’s concept, the relationship with the world — both in visual and sensory comprehension of reality, turns out to be problematic. In the theory of G. Didi-Huberman, built on the reorganization of the understanding of the aura in technically reproducible art, a deeper understanding of the image is given. The presence as well as the absence of things of the world do not appear as separate from each other, but turn out to be the dialectical unity of the game of near and far (Fort-Da). The article discusses this dialectical understanding of the relationship between the man and the world, which acts as an incessant rhythm of approaching and removing a visible object. In this eventful space of a vision (D. Joselit) turns a thing into a hybrid object, and the person appears as a flickering subject of vision.

Constructing Cost of Living Indexes

This article examines the first two estimates of the Argentine cost of living index, focusing on their producers, Alejandro Bunge and José Figuerola. The Bunge index, released in 1918, did not hold as a stable social and political artifact because it lacked legitimacy in the eyes of many sectors of society. This was a consequence of Bunge’s personal connections, and of the close relationship between the index and Bunge and between the index and his macroeconomic vision, which differed from that of the economic and political elite. The trajectory of the second estimate, released in 1935 by the National Labor Department, highlights the importance of the working class as a social actor in fostering the adoption of their cost of living index. The legitimacy of the National Labor Department’s index was enhanced by the connections between Figuerola and the International Labour Organization. The contrast between the two histories suggests that for a cost of living index to hold as a stable social and political artifact during the first half of the twentieth century, a connection between the index and industrial relations had to exist. In particular, the index should contribute toward the formation of the working class as a visible object for policy intervention.

Cinema as (In)Visible Object

Through a focus on Runa Islam’s installation Cabinet of Prototypes (2009–2010), but drawing on the work of Tobias Putrih, Janet Cardiff, and George Bures Miller among others, this essay explores the commitment to displaying the objectness of historical cinema and its filmic apparatus in contemporary art. It argues that in setting up tangible, specific ways to look at the medium of cinema, the artistic practice of artists such as Islam effectively offers a theorization of cinema itself for the age of its obsolescence. Art practices, such as Islam’s, that are simultaneously a kind of curation of cinema constitute not only a way of reflecting on the medium’s historicity, but also of experimenting with its possible reemergence as something other than its historical self.

The pragmatics of discovery constrains children’s tendency to map novel labels onto novel objects

When taught a label for an object, and later asked whether that object or a novel object is the referent of a novel label, preschoolers favor the novel object. This article examines whether this so-called disambiguation effect may be undermined by an expectation to communicate about a discovery. This expectation may explain why 4-year-olds do not show the disambiguation effect if a sense modality shift occurs between training and test. In Study 1, 3- and 4-year-olds learned a label for a visible object, then examined two hidden objects manually and predicted which one they would be asked about. Only the older group predicted that they would be asked about the object that matched the visible object. Study 1 also included a test of the standard disambiguation effect, where both the training and test objects were visible. Both 3- and 4-year-olds showed a weaker disambiguation effect in this test when the matching object was unexpected rather than expected. In Study 2, both age groups predicted they would be asked about this object when it was unexpected. In Study 3, both age groups showed a stronger disambiguation effect when allowed to communicate about this object before deciding which object was the referent of a novel label. Metacognitive ability predicted the strength of this disambiguation effect even after controlling for age and inhibitory control. The article discusses various explanations for why only 4-year-olds abided by the pragmatics of discovery in the test of the cross-modal disambiguation effect, but both 3- and 4-year-olds abided by it in the test of the standard disambiguation effect.