What are the underlying processes that enable human beings to recognize a happy face? Clearly, featural and configural cues will help to identify the distinctive smile. In addition, the motivational state of the observer will influence the interpretation of emotional expressions. Therefore, a model accounting for emotion recognition is only complete if bottom-up and top-down aspects are integrated.

Small numbers are spontaneously associated with left space and larger numbers with right space (the SNARC effect), for example when classifying numbers by parity. This effect is often attributed to reading habits but a causal link has so far never been documented. We report that bilingual Russian-Hebrew readers show a SNARC effect after reading Cyrillic script (from left-to-right) that is significantly reduced after reading Hebrew script (from right-to-left). In contrast, they have similar SNARC effects after listening to texts in either (...) language. These results support the view that spatially directional scanning habits contribute to the spatial association of numbers but also emphasize its flexibility. (shrink)

Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book explores the emerging topics and rapid technological developments of robotics and artificial intelligence through the lens of the evolving role of sex robots, and how they should best be designed to serve human needs. An international panel of authors provides the most up-to-date, evidence-based empirical research on the potential sexual applications of artificial intelligence. Early chapters discuss the objections to sexual activity with robots while also providing a counterargument to each objection. Subsequent chapters present (...) the implications of robot sex as well as the security and data privacy issues associated with sexual interactions with artificial intelligence. The book concludes with a chapter highlighting the importance of a scientific, multidisciplinary approach to the study of human - robot sexuality. Topics featured in this book include: The Sexual Interaction Illusion Model. The personal companion system, Harmony, designed by RealbotixTM. An exposition of the challenges of personal data control and protection when dealing with artificial intelligence. The current and future technological possibilities of projecting three-dimensional holograms. Expert discussion notes from an international workshop on the topic. AI Love You will be of interest to academic researchers in psychology, robotics, ethics, medical science, sociology, gender studies as well as clinicians, policy makers, and the business sector. (shrink)

We have evolved to become who we are, at least in part, due to our general drive to create new things and ideas. When seeking to improve our creations, ideas, or situations, we systematically overlook opportunities to perform subtractive changes. For example, when tasked with giving feedback on an academic paper, reviewers will tend to suggest additional explanations and analyses rather than delete existing ones. Here, we show that this addition bias is systematically reflected in English language statistics along several (...) distinct dimensions. First, we show that words associated with an increase in quantity or number (e.g., add, addition, more, most) are more frequent than words associated with a decrease in quantity or number (e.g., subtract, subtraction, less, least). Second, we show that in binomial expressions, addition-related words are mentioned first, that is, add and subtract rather than subtract and add. Third, we show that the distributional semantics of verbs of change, such as to improve and to transform, overlap more with the distributional semantics of add/increase than subtract/decrease, which suggests that change verbs are implicitly biased toward addition. Fourth, addition-related words have more positive connotations than subtraction-related words. Fifth, we demonstrate that state-of-the-art large language models, such as the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT-3), are also biased toward addition. We discuss the implications of our results for research on cognitive biases and decision-making. (shrink)

We assessed the automaticity of spatial-numerical and spatial-musical associations by testing their intentionality and load sensitivity in a dual-task paradigm. In separate sessions, 16 healthy adults performed magnitude and pitch comparisons on sung numbers with variable pitch. Stimuli and response alternatives were identical, but the relevant stimulus attribute (pitch or number) differed between tasks. Concomitant tasks required retention of either color or location information. Results show that spatial associations of both magnitude and pitch are load sensitive and that the spatial (...) association for pitch is more powerful than that for magnitude. These findings argue against the automaticity of spatial mappings in either stimulus dimension. (shrink)

Sex robots are humanoid robots with artificial intelligence, designed to interact sexually with humans. They have received much attention in recent discussions about technology, human relationships and the future of human sexuality. Based on available evidence so far, this outlook aims to give tentative answers to two fundamental questions surrounding the topic of human–robot intimate relationships. First, whether intelligent humanoid robots are technologically ready to be our intimate partners. Second, whether humans are ready to accept the idea of developing intimate (...) relationships with robots, and how far we have engaged and will engage in such activity. We highlight the importance of a scientific transdisciplinary approach to the study of human sexuality in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Questions about the validity of eye fixations in the blocks task as a memory indicator are discussed. Examples from reading research illustrate the influence of extraneous factors.

The reliable covariation between numerosity and spatial extent is considered as a strong constraint for inferring the successor principle in numerical cognition. We suggest that children can derive a general number concept from the (experientially) infinite succession of spatial positions during object manipulation.

This two-volume set provides a comprehensive overview of the multidisciplinary field of Embodied Cognition. With contributions from internationally acknowledged researchers from a variety of fields, Foundations of Embodied Cognition reveals how intelligent behaviour emerges from the interplay between brain, body and environment. Drawing on the most recent theoretical and empirical findings in embodied cognition, Volume 2 _Conceptual and Interactive Embodiment_ is divided into four distinct parts, bringing together a number of influential perspectives and new ideas. Part one introduces the field (...) of embodied language processing, before part two presents recent developments in our understanding of embodied conceptual understanding. The final two parts look at the applied nature of embodied cognition, exploring the embodied nature of social co-ordination as well as the emerging field of artificial embodiment. Building on the idea that knowledge acquisition, retention and retrieval are intimately interconnected with sensory and motor processes, _Foundations of Embodied Cognition_ is a landmark publication in the field. It will be of great interest to researchers and advanced students from across the cognitive sciences, including those specialising in psychology, neuroscience, intelligent systems and robotics, philosophy, linguistics and anthropology. (shrink)

This two-volume set provides a comprehensive overview of the multidisciplinary field of Embodied Cognition. With contributions from internationally acknowledged researchers from a variety of fields, _Foundations of Embodied Cognition_ reveals how intelligent behaviour emerges from the interplay between brain, body and environment. Covering early research and emerging trends in embodied cognition, Volume 1 _Perceptual and Emotional Embodiment_ is divided into four distinct parts, bringing together a number of influential perspectives and new ideas. Part one opens the volume with an overview (...) of theoretical perspectives and the neural basis of embodiment, before part two considers body representation and its links with action. Part three examines how actions constrain perception of the environment, and part four explores how emotions can be shaped and structured by the body and its activity. Building on the idea that knowledge acquisition, retention and retrieval are intimately interconnected with sensory and motor processes, _Foundations of Embodied Cognition_ is a landmark publication in the field. It will be of great interest to researchers and advanced students from across the cognitive sciences, including those specialising in psychology, neuroscience, intelligent systems and robotics, philosophy, linguistics and anthropology. (shrink)

Social robots are increasingly used in different areas of society such as public health, elderly care, education, and commerce. They have also been successfully employed in autism spectrum disorders therapy with children. Humans strive to find in them not only assistants but also friends. Although forms and functionalities of such robots vary, there is a strong tendency to anthropomorphize artificial agents, making them look and behave as human as possible and imputing human attributes to them. The more human a robot (...) looks, the more appealing it will be considered by humans. However, this linear link between likeness and liking only holds to the point where a feeling of strangeness and eeriness emerges. We discuss possible explanations of this so-called uncanny valley phenomenon that emerges in human–robot interaction. We also touch upon important ethical questions surrounding human–robot interaction in different social settings, such as elderly care or autism spectrum disorders therapy. (shrink)

TEST is a novel taxonomy of knowledge representations based on three distinct hierarchically organized representational features: Tropism, Embodiment, and Situatedness. Tropic representational features reflect constraints of the physical world on the agent's ability to form, reactivate, and enrich embodied (i.e., resulting from the agent's bodily constraints) conceptual representations embedded in situated contexts. The proposed hierarchy entails that representations can, in principle, have tropic features without necessarily having situated and/or embodied features. On the other hand, representations that are situated and/or embodied (...) are likely to be simultaneously tropic. Hence, although we propose tropism as the most general term, the hierarchical relationship between embodiment and situatedness is more on a par, such that the dominance of one component over the other relies on the distinction between offline storage versus online generation as well as on representation-specific properties. (shrink)

Mental arithmetic is characterised by a tendency to overestimate addition and to underestimate subtraction results: the operational momentum effect. Here, motivated by contentious explanations of this effect, we developed and tested an arithmetic heuristics and biases model that predicts reverse OM due to cognitive anchoring effects. Participants produced bi-directional lines with lengths corresponding to the results of arithmetic problems. In two experiments, we found regular OM with zero problems but reverse OM with non-zero problems. In a third experiment, we tested (...) the prediction of our model. Our results suggest the presence of at least three competing biases in mental arithmetic: a more-or-less heuristic, a sign-space association and an anchoring bias. We conclude that mental arithmetic exhibits shortcuts for decision-making similar to traditional domains of reasoning and problem-solving. (shrink)

Lee and Schwarz suggest that separation is the grounded procedure underlying cleansing effects in different psychological domains. Here, we interpret L&S's account from a hierarchical view of cognition that considers the influence of physical properties and sensorimotor constraints on mental representations. This approach allows theoretical integration and generalization of L&S's account to the domain of formal quantitative reasoning.

Embodied cognition postulates a bi-directional link between the human body and its cognitive functions. Whether this holds for higher cognitive functions such as problem solving is unknown. We predicted that arm movement manipulations performed by the participants could affect the problem-solving solutions. We tested this prediction in quantitative reasoning tasks that allowed two solutions to each problem. In two studies with healthy adults, we found an effect of problem-congruent movements on problem solutions. Consistent with embodied cognition, sensorimotor information gained via (...) right or left arm movements affects the solution in different types of problem-solving tasks. (shrink)

ion is instrumental for our understanding of how numbers are cognitively represented. We propose that the notion of abstraction becomes testable from within the framework of simulated cognition. We describe mental simulation as embodied, grounded, and situated cognition, and report evidence for number representation at each of these levels of abstraction.

The study has two objectives: to introduce grip force recording as a new technique for studying embodied numerical processing; and to demonstrate how three competing accounts of numerical magnitude representation can be tested by using this new technique: the Mental Number Line, A Theory of Magnitude and Embodied Cognition account. While 26 healthy adults processed visually presented single digits in a go/no-go n-back paradigm, their passive holding forces for two small sensors were recorded in both hands. Spontaneous and unconscious grip (...) force changes related to number magnitude occurred in the left hand already 100–140 ms after stimulus presentation and continued systematically. Our results support a two-step model of number processing where an initial stage is related to the automatic activation of all stimulus properties whereas a later stage consists of deeper conscious processing of the stimulus. This interpretation generalizes previous work with linguistic stimuli and elaborates the timeline of embodied cognition. We hope that the use of grip force recording will advance the field of numerical cognition research. (shrink)

Four Views on Free Will is a robust and careful debate about free will, how it interacts with determinism and indeterminism, and whether we have it or not. Providing the most up-to-date account of four major positions in the free will debate, the second edition of this classic text presents the opposing perspectives of renowned philosophers John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas. -/- Substantially revised throughout, this new volume contains eight in-depth chapters, almost entirely (...) rewritten for the new edition, in which the authors state their different positions on the debate, offer insights into how their views have evolved over the past fifteen years, respond to recent critical literature in the field, and interact and engage with each other in dialogue. In the first four chapters the authors defend their distinctive views about free will: libertarianism, compatibilism, hard incompatibilism, and revisionism. The subsequent four chapters consist of direct replies by each of the authors to the other three. (shrink)

In this essay I shall begin by sketching a "Frankfurt-type example." I shall then lay out a disturbing challenge to the claim I have made above that these examples help us to make significant progress in the debates about the relationship between moral responsibility and causal determinism. I then will provide a reply to this challenge, and the reply will point toward a more refined formulation of the important contribution I believe Frankfurt has made to defending a certain sort of (...) compatibilism. (shrink)

Aworkshop was held August 26–28, 2015, by the Earth- Life Science Institute (ELSI) Origins Network (EON, see Appendix I) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. This meeting gathered a diverse group of around 40 scholars researching the origins of life (OoL) from various perspectives with the intent to find common ground, identify key questions and investigations for progress, and guide EON by suggesting a roadmap of activities. Specific challenges that the attendees were encouraged to address included the following: What key (...) questions, ideas, and investigations should the OoL research community address in the near and long term? How can this community better organize itself and prioritize its efforts? What roles can particular subfields play, and what can ELSI and EON do to facilitate research progress? (See also Appendix II.) The present document is a product of that workshop; a white paper that serves as a record of the discussion that took place and a guide and stimulus to the solution of the most urgent and important issues in the study of the OoL. This paper is not intended to be comprehensive or a balanced representation of the opinions of the entire OoL research community. It is intended to present a number of important position statements that contain many aspirational goals and suggestions as to how progress can be made in understanding the OoL. The key role played in the field by current societies and recurring meetings over the past many decades is fully acknowledged, including the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL) and its official journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, as well as the International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL). (shrink)

This book, which is based on the formulations of general semantics, offers useful information on a wide variety of topics (e.g., managing stress, enhancing creativity, communicating more effectively). It also provides cogent analysis of social issues (e.g., America's current foreign policy, communication in the internet age); offers ideas to help people be more successful at work (e.g., "How to Become a More Successful Leader," "How to Effectively Manage Your Career"); and includes suggestions to help children be more successful in school (...) (e.g.," Reducing School-Age Bullying," "Anger and Violence Prevention"). (shrink)

Many philosophers, physicists, and mathematicians have wondered about the remarkable relationship between mathematics with its abstract, pure, independent structures on one side, and the wilderness of natural phenomena on the other. Famously, Wigner found the "effectiveness" of mathematics in defining and supporting physical theories to be unreasonable, for how incredibly well it worked. Why, in fact, should these mathematical structures be so well-fitting, and even heuristic in the scientific exploration and discovery of nature? This book argues that the effectiveness of (...) mathematics in physics is reasonable. The author builds on useful analogies of prime numbers and elementary particles, elementary structure kinship and the structure of systems of particles, spectra and symmetries, and for example, mathematical limits and physical situations. The two-dimensional Ising model of a permanent magnet and the proofs of the stability of everyday matter exemplify such effectiveness, and the power of rigorous mathematical physics. Newton is our original model, with Galileo earlier suggesting that mathematics is the language of Nature. (shrink)

Social robots serve people as tutors, caretakers, receptionists, companions, and other social agents. People know that the robots are mechanical artifacts, yet they interact with them as if they were actual agents. How is this possible? The proposal here is that people construe social robots not as social agents per se, but as depictions of social agents. They interpret them much as they interpret ventriloquist dummies, hand puppets, virtual assistants, and other interactive depictions of people and animals. Depictions as a (...) class consist of three physical scenes with part-by-part mappings between them: (a) a base scene (the raw physical artifact), (b) the depiction proper (the artifact construed as a depiction), and (c) the scene depicted (the scene people are to imagine). With social robots, evidence shows people form the same three scenes plus mappings: They perceive the raw machinery of a robot, construe it as a depiction of a character, and, using the depiction as a guide, engage in the pretense that they are interacting with the character depicted. With social robots, people also recognize three classes of agents – the characters depicted, the intended recipients of the depictions (those who view or interact with the robots), and the authorities responsible for the robots (the designers, makers, and owners). Construing social robots as depictions, we argue, accounts for many phenomena not covered by alternative models. (shrink)