his study aims to determine whether the application of brain-friendly learning through whole brain teaching gives a positive effect on the creative character of students, to know the response of the students against the application of brain-friendly learning through whole brain teaching, and to find out if the student response against the application of brain-friendly learning through whole brain teaching correlates positively with the creative character of students in (...) learning mathematics. The research method used that is quantitative. The instruments used, namely the now student response related application of brain-friendly learning through whole brain teaching, and sheets of observation about the creativity of students in learning mathematics after implementing this method. The correlation analysis with the results of the study showed that the value of the larger significance of the alpha values (5%) which means accepting and rejecting H0 Ha which means student response against the application of brain-friendly learning through whole brain teaching not correlated positively with the creative character of students in learning mathematics. The average student response score against this method is found on very good i.e. amounted to 85%. As for the observations of the creative character of the students, after this method is applied, the average score of 68% is found quite creative. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the application of learning brain-friendly through the whole brain teaching a positive effect on the character of creative students, to study the response of the students, and to determine whether the students' response to the application of learning brain-friendly through the whole brain teaching positively correlated with the character of creative students in mathematics. The research method used is quantitative. The instruments used are (...) student questionnaire responses related to the application of brain-friendly learning through the whole brain teaching and observation sheet on student creativity in the learning of mathematics after the implementation of this method. Results of research with correlation analysis show that the greater significance of the alpha value (5%), which means accepting and rejecting H0 Ha which means students' response to the application of brain-friendly learning through the whole brain teaching is not positively correlated with the creative character of students in the learning of mathematics. The average score of the students' response to this methodology very well categorized in the amount of 85%. The results of the observation of the creative character of the students after the implementation of this method, the average score of 68% were categorized quite creative. (shrink)

A familiar question in the literature on emotional responses to fiction, originally put forward by Colin Radford, is how such responses can be rational. How can we make sense of pitying Anna Karenina when we know there is no such person? In this paper I argue that contrary to the usual interpretation, the question of rationality has nothing to do with the Paradox of Fiction. Instead, the real problem is why there is a divergence in our normative assessments of emotions (...) in different contexts. I argue that explaining this divergence requires a more nuanced account of the rationality of emotion than has previously been proposed. One advantage of my proposal over alternatives is that it helps to explain one way we can learn emotionally from fiction and imagination. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists have argued that fiction can ethically educate us: fiction supposedly can make us better people. This view has been contested. It is, however, rarely argued that fiction can morally “corrupt” us. In this article, we focus on the alleged power of fiction to decrease one's prejudices and biases. We argue that if fiction has the power to change prejudices and biases for the better, then it can also have the opposite effect. We further argue that fictions are (...) more likely to be a bad influence than a good one. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Family, Friends, and Cancer:The Overwhelming Effects of Brain Cancer on a Child’s LifeLynne ScheumannOur son was diagnosed with a medulloblastoma at the old age of 13. The “lucky” part for him was his brain was almost fully developed at this age as opposed to most “medullo” patients. While this was a benefit to him it was also one of the hardest things for him.He went into surgery (...) a highly intelligent, active, and left handed boy and came out unable to move his left side, could barely speak, and very much aware of what he just lost. We, as a family, were totally unprepared for how globally this would [End Page 23] affect the rest of his life. As we spent time in the hospital I would look at the children with other types of cancer and see them walking and talking and doing their schoolwork and God forgive me I would be jealous. The fact that the cancer was in his brain, the part of his body that makes him who he is changed everything forever.He lost all of his friends because 13–year–old boys communicate best through physical activity and that was not an option for him. He still has the same personality and sense of humor, but he will not be the architect or engineer he once dreamed of being. Math, that was once so easy for him was now like a foreign language, never to be mastered again. He was able to graduate from High School and takes classes at our local Junior College in Computer Assisted Drafting, but he can only manage one or two classes a semester due to the fatigue he still suffers from.What I most worry about and wish I had been forewarned about is his long–term quality of life. Physically he has come such a long way from how he was after the resection. It was a very slow process in which the first year of rehab was slowed by the fact that one of the chemo agents causes peripheral neuropathy. He developed contractures in his ankles and needed serial casting and ankle–foot orthotics (AFO) not just on the left leg, but now the right. He was able to switch his handedness fairly easily and his left hand will always be of limited usefulness because of ataxia. I would get angry at him that he gave up on his left side so quickly until it was finally explained to me years later that the ataxia would never get better.As far as his walking ability goes he has come a long way. At first he was unable to walk and once he started rehab he went back to learning to crawl and progressed to a walker. The first time I saw him walk with the walker brought tears to my eyes. It was so much more of an event for me than when he took his first steps as a toddler. This was so much more hard fought. He never complained, just always did what was asked of him. It had to have been such hard work and also somewhat embarrassing, as he needed help to literally do everything for months. He progressed to a cane and about two years ago decided not to use that or his AFO’s. He now wears high top boots that substitute for the AFO’s but don’t make him appear disabled. Recently he decided there are times when he would be safer if he had his cane and purchased one that looks more like a hiking stick than a cane. I think he has come to terms with the fact that physically he is as good as he is going to get and works hard to maintain what he did regain. He has a trainer and goes to the gym on a regular basis with no prompting from us. I do not know if he realizes that as he ages things will be harder for him than the average person. I think in some way he is aware of that because he did decided to use the cane if safety is an issue.His... (shrink)

While aestheticians have devoted substantial attention to the possibility of acquiring knowledge from fiction, little of this attention has been directed at the acquisition of factual information. The neglect traces, I believe, to the assumption that the task of aesthetics is to explain the special cognitive value of fiction. While the value of many works of nonfiction may be measured, in part, by their ability to transmit information, most works of fiction do not have this aim, and so many conclude (...) that the transmission of information is irrelevant to their value. I am skeptical of these claims. I doubt that there is any value, cognitive or otherwise, special to all and only works of fiction. Thus I see no reason to neglect the capacity to convey factual information—specifically, propositional knowledge about real individuals and events—when assessing the value of particular works. In this paper I consider the value of learning about history from a particular work of fiction, Gore Vidal’s Lincoln: A Novel. Drawing on recent work in cognitive psychology, I argue that narrative devices used by Vidal can enhance our ability to learn and retain factual information, despite also increasing the possibility that we will form false beliefs, and that acquiring propositional knowledge from fiction, far from being a process we can take for granted, constitutes a difficult achievement. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare how it is that inconsistencies are handled in mathematics to how they are handled in chemistry. In mathematics, they are very precisely formulated and identified, unlike in chemistry. So the chemists can learn from the precision and the very well-worked out strategies developed by logicians and deployed by mathematicians to cope with inconsistency. Some lessons can also be learned by the mathematicians from the chemists. Mathematicians tend to be intolerant towards inconsistencies. There are some philosophers (...) of chemistry who attribute to chemists, collectively, a more tolerant attitude towards inconsistency, and so, mathematicians can learn from the chemists’ attitude to inform their choice of strategies. (shrink)

Through listening to the voices of students, educators and community members can begin to reconstruct the culture of urban schools that are often full of stories about student deficits, genetic explanations about achievement, and cultural mismatch theories that may be traced to historical and sociological ideologies. The purpose of this heuristic qualitative investigation was to explore the ways in which student voice can contribute to reculturing high schools in urban settings. Data sources for this study included videotaped interviews and observations (...) in two Midwestern urban high schools to explore the stories of 28 culturally and linguistically diverse students in grades 10 through 12. Findings suggested that the teens in these urban high schools want caring teachers who listen attentively, provide engaging learning opportunities, and who demonstrate high expectations for achievement. They did not want teachers who, in essence, perpetuate hegemonic discourses via pedagogical practices, and school environments that resemble prisons. At the same time, students wanted more structure to ?avoid chaos? and asked teachers to give attention to the paradigm of the personal within the school curriculum. We extend the meaning of the study to include student voice as a critical stance for reconstructing the cultural context of urban schools, which entails listening to students to identify complex and sensitive topics for dialogue and inquiry. (shrink)

The phrase ‘mathematical foundation’ has shifted in meaning since the end of the nineteenth century. It used to mean a consistent general theory in mathematics, based on basic principles and ideas to which the rest of mathematics could be reduced. There was supposed to be only one foundational theory and it was to carry the philosophical weight of giving the ultimate ontology and truth of mathematics. Under this conception of ‘foundation’ pluralism in foundations of mathematics is a contradiction.More recently, the (...) phrase has come to mean a perspective from which we can see, or in which we can interpret, much of mathematics; it has lost the realist-type metaphysical, essentialist importance. The latter has been replaced with an emphasis on epistemology. The more recent use of the phrase shows a lack of concern for absolute ontology, truth, uniqueness and sometimes even consistency. It is only under the more modern conception of ‘foundation’ that pluralism in mathematical foundations is conceptually possible.Several problems beset the pluralist in mathematical foundations. The problems include, at least: paradox, rampant relativism, loss of meaning, insurmountable complexity and a rising suspicion that we can say anything meaningful about truth and objectivity in mathematics. Many of these are related to each other, and many can be overcome, explained, accounted for and dissolved by concentrating on crosschecking, fixtures and rigour of proof. Moreover, apart from being a defensible position, there are a lot of advantages to pluralism in foundations. These include: a sensitivity to the practice of mathematics, a more faithful account of the objectivity of mathematics and a deeper understanding of mathematics.The claim I defend in the paper is that we stand to learn more, not less, by adopting a pluralist attitude. I defend the claim by looking at the examples of set theory and homotopy type theory, as alternative viewpoints from which we can learn about mathematics. As the claim is defended, it will become apparent that ‘pluralism in mathematical foundations’ is neither an oxymoron, nor a contradiction, at least not in any threatening sense. On the contrary, it is the tension between different foundations that spurs new developments in mathematics. The tension might be called ‘a fruitful meta-contradiction’.I take my prompts from Kauffman’s idea of eigenform, Hersh’s idea of thinking of mathematical theories as models and from my own philosophical position: pluralism in mathematics. I also take some hints from the literature on philosophy of chemistry, especially the pluralism of Chang and Schummer. (shrink)

The idea that fictions may educate us is an old one, as is the view that they distort the truth and mislead us. While there is a long tradition of passionate assertion in this debate, systematic arguments are a recent development, and the idea of empirically testing is particularly novel. Our aim in this chapter is to provide clarity about what is at stake in this debate, what the options are, and how empirical work does or might bear on its (...) resolution. We distinguish between merely influencing people’s opinions and providing genuine learning, where the latter requires that the source of the change in opinion should be reliable. Other important ideas here are the extent to which authors of fiction may be considered to provide testimony, or something like it, and the possibility of recognizing an unstated purpose in the project of the fictional work. We ask whether fictions can furnish us not merely with ideas but with reasons for believing them, perhaps by constituting thought experiments. We consider whether the focus should be on understanding rather than on knowledge, and whether fictions can inform us about the qualities of another’s experiences. We briefly describe some experimental work of recent decades and suggest that the evidence for learning from fiction is currently meagre. (shrink)

This paper traces the dramatic proliferation of leadership roles in English primary and secondar schools, due mainly to central government education policy of the past two decades. This has transformed schools from relatively simple to highly complex organizations and has impacted on the working conditions of, and demands on, teachers, together with many aspects of schooling. These changes are illustrated with typical examples of schools' leadership structures and their functioning. Interview data provide teachers' views on, and reactions to, the changes (...) in school leadership. The paper also reviews the ways in which teacher education institutions have responded in terms of providing initial and in-service education and training to equip the profession for this new and developing challenge. It examines the reception of such programmes by teachers and the reported impact on schools' management and the role of leadership within it. (shrink)

I much appreciate the honour of being invited to deliver the first Manson lecture, which, its founder has laid down, is to be devoted to the consideration of some subject of common interest to philosophy and medicine. I cannot think of anything which better fulfils that condition than the neurological approach to the problem of perception. The neurologist holds the bridge between body and mind. Every day he meets with examples of disordered perception and he learns from observing the effects (...) of lesions produced by disease, or by the physiologist's experiments, something of how the neural basis of perception is organized. It is possible to study perception as though this was largely irrelevant. How far that view is right will be for you to judge when I have finished. (shrink)

Discussions about brain data and privacy, particularly those advocating for human rights frameworks, at times, have embodied problematic undercurrents of, if not overt appeals to, neuro-exceptional...

A newly revised edition of the International Best-Seller, Making the Brain/Body Connection hit the book stores in June. This book has people raving about its user friendly approach and its solid research based information. Explore and experience how your brain, body and senses interrelate. Sharon Promislow's approach makes the brain research almost fun. Learn about your body's defence mechanism for stress and how you can adapt them to defuse stress instead of allowing it to accumulate into (...) a full blown stress attack. In her lively and entertaining book, Sharon blends cutting edge stress and brain research with practical exercises and techniques that have you moving beyond your current limitations and into a life you only imagined you could have. Her Quick Six stress buster techniques can be used on the street, in the board room, wherever you are when stress hits.Follow along with this step-by-step guide as she leads you through a model for change that unlocks hidden "stress circuits." Clear away mental, emotional and physical blocks to success with simple movements from the 10 Step Change Process, that make change fun. Illustrated with humorus new cartoon characters by Cathrine Levan. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Road to Understanding and Acceptance of the Late Effects of Pediatric Brain Tumors and TreatmentJeanne CarlsonWe had little warning or time to adjust to our daughter’s diagnosis. A call from her third grade teacher reporting that Sarah seemed to be having vision problems rapidly led to eye exams, an MRI, and the discovery of a Germinoma brain tumor in the suprastellar region of Sarah’s brain. (...) We were terrified but began treatment feeling optimistic about the outlook for Sarah’s recovery. Luckily, Sarah’s treatment was relatively non–invasive and quick, chemotherapy and radiation, five months start to finish. We were thrilled to have Sarah’s treatment behind us.As any parent of a child with a life–threatening illness knows, family life is seriously disrupted by the countless doctor, lab, and hospital visits, the worry, and the financial strain that are suddenly added to the demands of everyday life. We did our best to balance our focus on both of our children as Sarah is a twin and we didn’t want her brother Will to suffer as a result of his sister’s illness. It wasn’t easy but we found a way to schedule Will’s usual play dates, baseball practice, and family time. We were all happy and relieved when Sarah’s treatment was completed, yet we would later learn that we had been incredibly naïve in two ways; we thought that our brain tumor journey was over after Sarah’s treatment was completed and we thought that we’d brought Will through the process without effect. We had a lot to learn.At the time of diagnosis we knew that Sarah’s memory and ability to express emotion had already been impacted by the tumor but we didn’t yet know what that would mean to her quality of life. We were virtually unaware however that at age nine the chemotherapy and radiation treatments that Sarah received would result in profound late effects. Following treatment Sarah successfully completed 3rd grade and even received excellent STAR test scores (California state standardized tests). In 4th grade however, Sarah’s performance began to diverge from that of her peers and she found herself struggling in school and unable to make friends. We began looking for ways to help our daughter.What followed was a five year long journey through testing, evaluations, individualized education plans (IEPs), and therapies, which, in the end, left our family needing to accept the fact that although Sarah remains intelligent and artistically talented, she suffers from a constellation of late effects that will always affect her ability to function in the world. As a result of Sarah’s tumor and treatment she struggles with Auditory Processing Disorder, word finding problems, poor executive function, inability to recognize how she feels, significant difficulty making decisions, inability to read social cues, poor memory, slow processing, an emotional age of about nine, and lots of anxiety. She is also panhypopituitary, meaning that she has no remaining pituitary function and must take replacement medications by pill and injection, has hypothalamic obesity (HO), which is primarily controlled by more medication, and Raynaud’s Disease. The HO is an ongoing challenge because if Sarah does gain weight she can’t lose it again and exercise is not an easy solution because, like many pediatric brain tumor survivors, Sarah is easily fatigued. Finally, although Sarah’s vision improved after treatment her vision loss is significant enough to prevent her from driving. We pieced together this understanding of Sarah’s challenges and disabilities slowly so it wasn’t until the end of our children’s middle school years that we finally accepted the magnitude of the damage caused by the tumor and treatment. Thereafter we changed our focus from what Sarah might achieve in life to how to support [End Page 21] her in the activities at which she still excels and how to keep her active, interested in life, and feeling good about herself.It would have been a huge gift if we had been provided with information about the possible late effects that can result from treating the brain of a 9–year–old... (shrink)

[This is an edited and improved version of "You Are Not Your Brain: Against 'Teaching to the Brain'" previously published in *Review of Higher Education and Self-Learning* 5(15), Summer 2012.] Since educators are always looking for ways to improve their practice, and since empirical science is now accepted in our worldview as the final arbiter of truth, it is no surprise they have been lured toward cognitive neuroscience in hopes that discovering how the brain learns will (...) provide a nutshell explanation for student learning in general. I argue that identifying the person with the brain is scientism (not science), that the brain is not the person, and that it is the person who learns. In fact the brain only responds to the learning of embodied experience within the extra-neural network of intersubjective communications. Learning is a dynamic, cultural activity, not a neural program. Brain-based learning is unnecessary for educators and may be dangerous in that a culturally narrow ontology is taken for granted, thus restricting our creativity and imagination, and narrowing the human community. (shrink)

This paper discusses the current fashion for brain-based learning, in which value-laden claims about learning are grounded in neurophysiology. It argues that brain science cannot have the ‘authority’ about learning that some seek to give it. It goes on to discuss whether the claim that brain science is relevant to learning involves a category mistake. The heart of the paper tries to show how the contribution of brain science to our grasp of (...) the nature of learning is limited in principle. Finally the paper explores the potential of brain science to illuminate specific learning disabilities. (shrink)

Observational learning is ubiquitous. We very often observe and pick up information about how others behave and subsequently replicate similar behaviours in one way or another. Focusing on observational learning, I investigate human imitation, the mechanisms that underpin it as well as the processes that complement it, in order to assess its contribution to learning and education. Furthermore, I construe emotion as a scaffold for observational learning and bring together evidence about its influence on selective attention. (...) Finally, I flesh out possible ways in which the insights about the role of imitation in learning could help design a more effective and equally rewarding learning environment. Specifically, I suggest that perhaps the simplest and most effective way to foster learning via promoting imitation is through letting learners of various ages co-exist. The benefits of learning in a mixed-age group are assessed. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an effective treatment for the debilitating motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders. However, clinicians and commentators have noted that DBS recipients have not necessarily experienced the improvements in quality of life that would be expected, due in large part to what have been described as the ‘psychosocial’ impacts of DBS. The premise of this paper is that, in order to realise the full potential of DBS and similar interventions, clinical services need (...) to be arranged in such a way that these psychosocial dimensions are recognised and managed. Our starting point is that the psychosocial effects of DBS ‘in the field’ present us with analytically-useful disruptions: they disturb and foreground deeply held assumptions relating to the individual, health and its treatment, and which in a crude form manifest as the myth of technological solutionism within health care. Drawing on scholarship in medical sociology and science and technology studies (STS), we argue that DBS brings to the fore the relational dimensions of personhood, and demonstrates the emotional and social turmoil that can result if the relational dimensions of personhood are ignored by clinical services. In light of this, we argue that DBS should be implemented within a regime of care. Drawing on ethnographic research of a paediatric DBS clinical service, we provide an example of a regime of care, and conclude by reflecting on what other DBS services might learn from this paediatric service. (shrink)

Transfer learning can improve the robustness of deep learning in the case of small samples. However, when the semantic difference between the source domain data and the target domain data is large, transfer learning easily introduces redundant features and leads to negative transfer. According the mechanism of the human brain focusing on effective features while ignoring redundant features in recognition tasks, a brain-like classification method based on adaptive feature matching dual-source domain heterogeneous transfer learning (...) is proposed for the preoperative aided diagnosis of lung granuloma and lung adenocarcinoma for patients with solitary pulmonary solid nodule in the case of small samples. The method includes two parts: (1) feature extraction and (2) feature classification. In the feature extraction part, first, By simulating the feature selection mechanism of the human brain in the process of drawing inferences about other cases from one instance, an adaptive selected-based dual-source domain feature matching network is proposed to determine the matching weight of each pair of feature maps and each pair of convolution layers between the two source networks and the target network, respectively. These two weights can, respectively, adaptive select the features in the source network that are conducive to the learning of the target task, and the destination of feature transfer to improve the robustness of the target network. Meanwhile, a target network based on diverse branch block is proposed, which made the target network have different receptive fields and complex paths to further improve the feature expression ability of the target network. Second, the convolution kernel of the target network is used as the feature extractor to extract features. In the feature classification part, an ensemble classifier based on sparse Bayesian extreme learning machine is proposed that can automatically decide how to combine the output of base classifiers to improve the classification performance. Finally, the experimental results (the AUCs were 0.9542 and 0.9356, respectively) on the data of two center data show that this method can provide a better diagnostic reference for doctors. (shrink)

Two main goals of the emerging field of neurocognitive poetics are the use of more natural and ecologically valid stimuli, tasks and contexts and providing methods and models allowing to quantify distinctive features of verbal materials used in such tasks and contexts and their effects on readers responses. A natural key element of poetic language, metaphor, still is understudied insofar as relatively little empirical research looked at literary or poetic metaphors. An exception is Katz et al.’s corpus of 204 literary (...) metaphors by authors such as Shakespeare or Dylan Thomas, for which various rating data are available. We reanalyzed their corpus using a combination of quantitative narrative analysis, latent semantic analysis, and machine learning in order to identify relevant features of the metaphors that influenced the ratings. The combined application of computational tools sheds light on surface and affective-semantic features that co-determine the reception of poetic metaphors and successfully predicted the period of origin, authorship and goodness ratings of the metaphors. The present results can be used for generating quantitative hypotheses or selecting and matching verbal stimuli in empirical studies of literature and neurocognitive poetics. (shrink)

This book has strategies and tips that every online professor wants students to know before they sign up for an online class. Bowman has provided a reference tool for students to develop self-directed learning skills that will help them become secure and knowledgeable about technology, studying, communicating online, and getting work done on time.

Traumatic brain injury is a major cause of death and disability in Western society, and often results in functional and neuropsychological abnormalities. Memory impairment is one of the most significant cognitive implications after TBI. In the current study we investigated procedural memory acquisition by observational training in TBI patients. It was previously found that while practicing a new motor skill, patients engage in all three phases of skill learning–fast acquisition, between-session consolidation, and long-term retention, though their pattern of (...) learning is atypical compared to healthy participants. A different set of studies showed that training by observing a motor task, generally prompted effective acquisition and consolidation of procedural knowledge in healthy participants. The aim of our study was to evaluate the potential benefit of action observation in TBI patients. Examine the possibility of general improvement in performance between the first and second stage of the study. Investigate the link between patients’ ability to benefit from observational learning and common measures of injury.Materials and methodsPatients hospitalized after moderate to severe TBI, were trained by observation for the finger opposition sequence motor task. They were then tested for the observation-trained sequence and a similar control sequence, at two different time-points.Results revealed a significant difference in performance between the trained and untrained sequences, in favor of the trained sequence. An increase in performance for both sequences A and B toward the second session. The advantage for sequence A was stable and preserved also in the second session. Participants with lower moderate Functional Independence Measure scores gained more from observational-procedural learning, compared with patients with higher functional abilities.ConclusionOverall, these findings support the notion that TBI patients may achieve procedural memory consolidation and retention through observational learning. Moreover, different functional traits may predict the outcomes of observational training in different patients. These findings may have significant practical implications in the future, regarding skill acquisition methods in TBI patients. (shrink)

Using a classical conditioning technique, this study investigated whether nonconscious associative learning could be indexed by event-related brain activity . There were three phases. In a preconditioning baseline phase, pleasant and unpleasant facial schematics were presented in awareness . A conditioning phase followed, in which stimuli were presented outside awareness , with an unpleasant face linked to an aversive shock and a pleasant face not linked to a shock. The third, postconditioning phase, involved stimulus presentations in awareness . (...) Evidence for acquisition of a conditional response was sought by comparing suprathreshold pre- and postconditioning phases, as well as in the subthreshold conditioning phase itself. For the pre-postconditioning phase analyses, significant ERP component differences differentiating CS+ and CS− were observed for N1, P2, and especially P3. For the conditioning phase, significant differences were observed in the 100–400 ms. post-stimulus region reflecting a CS+ processing negativity. Brain activity does indeed index the acquisition of a conditional response to subthreshold stimuli. Associative learning can occur outside awareness. (shrink)

The social brain hypothesis implies that humans and other primates evolved “modules“ for representing social knowledge. Alternatively, no such cognitive specializations are needed because social knowledge is already present in the world — we can simply monitor the dynamics of social interactions. Given the latter idea, what mechanism could account for coalition formation? We propose that statistical learning can provide a mechanism for fast and implicit learning of social signals. Using human participants, we compared learning of (...) social signals with arbitrary signals. We found that learning of social signals was no better than learning of arbitrary signals. While coupling faces and voices led to parallel learning, the same was true for arbitrary shapes and sounds. However, coupling versus uncoupling social signals with arbitrary signals revealed that faces and voices are treated with perceptual priority. Overall, our data suggest that statistical learning is a viable domain-general mechanism for learning social group structure. Keywords: social brain; embodied cognition; distributed cognition; situated cognition; multisensory; audiovisual speech; crossmodal; multimodal. (shrink)

The social brain hypothesis implies that humans and other primates evolved “modules” for representing social knowledge. Alternatively, no such cognitive specializations are needed because social knowledge is already present in the world — we can simply monitor the dynamics of social interactions. Given the latter idea, what mechanism could account for coalition formation? We propose that statistical learning can provide a mechanism for fast and implicit learning of social signals. Using human participants, we compared learning of (...) social signals with arbitrary signals. We found that learning of social signals was no better than learning of arbitrary signals. While coupling faces and voices led to parallel learning, the same was true for arbitrary shapes and sounds. However, coupling versus uncoupling social signals with arbitrary signals revealed that faces and voices are treated with perceptual priority. Overall, our data suggest that statistical learning is a viable domain-general mechanism for learning social group structure. Keywords: social brain; embodied cognition; distributed cognition; situated cognition; multisensory; audiovisual speech; crossmodal; multimodal. (shrink)

Using a classical conditioning technique, this study investigated whether nonconscious associative learning could be indexed by event-related brain activity . There were three phases. In a preconditioning baseline phase, pleasant and unpleasant facial schematics were presented in awareness . A conditioning phase followed, in which stimuli were presented outside awareness , with an unpleasant face linked to an aversive shock and a pleasant face not linked to a shock. The third, postconditioning phase, involved stimulus presentations in awareness . (...) Evidence for acquisition of a conditional response was sought by comparing suprathreshold pre- and postconditioning phases, as well as in the subthreshold conditioning phase itself. For the pre-postconditioning phase analyses, significant ERP component differences differentiating CS+ and CS− were observed for N1, P2, and especially P3. For the conditioning phase, significant differences were observed in the 100–400 ms. post-stimulus region reflecting a CS+ processing negativity. Brain activity does indeed index the acquisition of a conditional response to subthreshold stimuli. Associative learning can occur outside awareness. (shrink)

Observational learning is ubiquitous. We very often observe and pick up information about how others behave and subsequently replicate similar behaviours in one way or another. Focusing on observational learning, I investigate human imitation, the mechanisms that underpin it as well as the processes that complement it, in order to assess its contribution to learning and education. Furthermore, I construe emotion as a scaffold for observational learning and bring together evidence about its influence on selective attention. (...) Finally, I flesh out possible ways in which the insights about the role of imitation in learning could help design a more effective and equally rewarding learning environment. Specifically, I suggest that perhaps the simplest and most effective way to foster learning via promoting imitation is through letting learners of various ages co-exist. The benefits of learning in a mixed-age group are assessed. (shrink)

The processes whereby our brains continue to learn about a changing world in a stable fashion throughout life are proposed to lead to conscious experiences. These processes include the learning of top-down expectations, the matching of these expectations against bottom-up data, the focusing of attention upon the expected clusters of information, and the development of resonant states between bottom-up and top-down processes as they reach an attentive consensus between what is expected and what is there in the outside world. (...) It is suggested that all conscious states in the brain are resonant states and that these resonant states trigger learning of sensory and cognitive representations. The models which summarize these concepts are therefore called Adaptive Resonance Theory, or ART, models. Psychophysical and neurobiological data in support of ART are presented from early vision, visual object recognition, auditory streaming, variable-rate speech perception, somatosensory perception, and cognitive-emotional interactions, among others. It is noted that ART mechanisms seem to be operative at all levels of the visual system, and it is proposed how these mechanisms are realized by known laminar circuits of visual cortex. It is predicted that the same circuit realization of ART mechanisms will be found in the laminar circuits of all sensory and cognitive neocortex. Concepts and data are summarized concerning how some visual percepts may be visibly, or modally, perceived, whereas amodal percepts may be consciously recognized even though they are perceptually invisible. It is also suggested that sensory and cognitive processing in the What processing stream of the brain obey top-down matching and learning laws that are often complementary to those used for spatial and motor processing in the brain's Where processing stream. This enables our sensory and cognitive representations to maintain their stability as we learn more about the world, while allowing spatial and motor representations to forget learned maps and gains that are no longer appropriate as our bodies develop and grow from infanthood to adulthood. Procedural memories are proposed to be unconscious because the inhibitory matching process that supports these spatial and motor processes cannot lead to resonance. (shrink)