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491Image-dependent interaction of imagery and visionAmerican Journal of Psychology 343-366. 2003.The influence of imagery on perception depends on the content of the mental image. Sixty-three students responded to the location of the 2 hands of a clock while visualizing the correct or an incorrect clock. Reaction time was shorter with valid cueing. Could this have resulted from visual acquisition strategies such as planning visual saccades or shifting covert attention? No. in this study, a crucial control condition made participants look at rather than visualize the cue. Acquisition strateg…Read more
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31PDP Learnability and Innate Knowledge of LanguageIn S. Davis (ed.), Connectionism: Theorye and Practice, Oxford University Press. 1992.It is sometimes argued that if PDP networks can be trained to make correct judgements of grammaticality we have an existence proof that there is enough information in the stimulus to permit learning grammar by inductive means alone. This seems inconsistent superficially with Gold's theorem and at a deeper level with the fact that networks are designed on the basis of assumptions about the domain of the function to be learned. To clarify the issue I consider what we should learn from Gold's the…Read more
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686When doing the wrong thing is rightProceedings of the 34th Annual Cognitive Science Society. 2012.We designed an experiment to explore the learning effectiveness of three different ways of practicing dance movements. To our surprise we found that partial modeling, called marking in the dance world, is a better method than practicing the complete phrase, called practicing full-out; and both marking and full-out are better methods than practicing by repeated mental simulation. We suggest that marking is a form of practicing a dance phrase aspect-by-aspect. Our results also suggest that prior w…Read more
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107Implicit and Explicit RepresentationIn L. Nadel (ed.), Implicit and Explicit Representation, Nature Publishing Group. 2003.The degree to which information is encoded explicitly in a representation is related to the computational cost of recovering or using the information. Knowledge that is implicit in a system need not be represented at all, even implicitly, if the cost of recovering it is prohibitive.
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1Complementary Strategies - Why We Use Our Hands When We ThinkProceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (T): 161-175. 1995.A complementary strategy can be defined as any organizing activity which recruits external elements to reduce cognitive loads. Typical organizing activities include pointing, arranging the position and orientation of nearby objects, writing things down, manipulating counters, rulers or other artifacts that can encode the state of a process or simplify perception. To illustrate the idea of a complementary strategy, a simple experiment was performed in which subjects were asked to determine the do…Read more
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265Worldlets, 3D Thumbnails for 3D BrowsingProceedings of the Computer Human Interaction Society ACM Press. 1998.Dramatic advances in 3D Web technologies have recently led to widespread development of virtual world Web browsers and 3D content. A natural question is whether 3D thumbnails can be used to find one’s way about such 3D content the way that text and 2D thumbnail images are used to navigate 2D Web content. We have conducted an empirical experiment that shows interactive 3D thumbnails, which we call worldlets, improve travelers’ landmark knowledge and expedite wayfinding in virtual environments.
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291Quantifying the Relative Roles of Shadows, Steropsis, and Aocal Accomodation in 3D VisualizationThe 3rd IASTED International Conference on Visualization, Imaging, and Image Processing. 2003.The goal of three-dimensional visualization is to present information in such a way that the viewer suspends disbelief and uses the screen imagery the same way as he or she would use an identical, real 3D scene. To do this effectively, programmers employ a variety of 3D depth cues. Our own anecdotal experience says that shadows and stereopsis are two of the best for visualization. The nice thing is that both of these are possible to do in interactive programs. They sacrifice a certain amount of …Read more
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36Epistemic action increases with skillIn Garrison W. Cottrell (ed.), Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 16--391. 1996.
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1676Metacognition, Distributed Cognition and Visual DesignCognition, Education and Communication Technology 147--180. 2004.Metacognition is associated with planning, monitoring, evaluating and repairing performance Designers of elearning systems can improve the quality of their environments by explicitly structuring the visual and interactive display of learning contexts to facilitate metacognition. Typically page layout, navigational appearance, visual and interactivity design are not viewed as major factors in metacognition. This is because metacognition tends to be interpreted as a process in the head, rather tha…Read more
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803Changing the Rules: Architecture and the New MillenniumConvergence 7 (2): 113-125. 2001.Architecture is about to enter its first magical phase: a time when buildings actively co-operate with their inhabitants; when objects know what they are, where they are, what is near them; when social and physical space lose their type coupling; when wall and partitions change with mood and task. As engineers and scientists explore how to digitse the world around us, the classical constraints of design, ruled so long by the physics of space, time, and materials, are starting to crumble. Documen…Read more
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2233On distinguishing epistemic from pragmatic actionCognitive Science 18 (4): 513-49. 1994.We present data and argument to show that in Tetris - a real-time interactive video game - certain cognitive and perceptual problems are more quickly, easily, and reliably solved by performing actions in the world rather than by performing computational actions in the head alone. We have found that some translations and rotations are best understood as using the world to improve cognition. These actions are not used to implement a plan, or to implement a reaction; they are used to change the wor…Read more
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3297Embodied Cognition and the Magical Future of Interaction DesignACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 20 (1): 30. 2013.The theory of embodied cognition can provide HCI practitioners and theorists with new ideas about interac-tion and new principles for better designs. I support this claim with four ideas about cognition: (1) interacting with tools changes the way we think and perceive – tools, when manipulated, are soon absorbed into the body schema, and this absorption leads to fundamental changes in the way we perceive and conceive of our environments; (2) we think with our bodies not just with our brains; (3)…Read more
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Complementary Strategies: Why we use our hands when we thinkAvant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 3 (T): 161-175. 2012.A complementary strategy can be defined as any organizing activity which recruits external elements to reduce cognitive loads. Typical organizing activities include pointing, arranging the position and orientation of nearby objects, writing things down, manipulating counters, rulers or other artifacts that can encode the state of a process or simplify perception. To illustrate the idea of a complementary strategy, a simple experiment was performed in which subjects were asked to determine the do…Read more
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274Architectures of Intelligent SystemsExploring Brain Functions 293-321. 1992.Theories of intelligence can be of use to neuroscientists if they: 1. Provide illuminating suggestions about the functional architecture of neural systems; 2. Suggest specific models of processing that neural circuits might implement. The objective of our session was to stand back and consider the prospects for this interdisciplinary exchange.
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296Toward An Ontology of Geo-Reasoning to Aid Response to Weapons of Mass DestructionAmerican Medical Assoc Conference 400-404. 2005.A startling amount of intelligent activity can be controlled without reasoning or thought. By tuning the perceptual system to task relevant properties a creature can cope with relatively sophisticated environments without concepts. There is a limit, however, to how far a creature without concepts can go. Rod Brooks, like many ecologically oriented scientists, argues that the vast majority of intelligent behaviour is concept-free. To evaluate this position I consider what special benefits accrue …Read more
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975PDP Learnability and Innate Knowledge of LanguageConnectionism 3 297-322. 1992.It is sometimes argued that if PDP networks can be trained to make correct judgements of grammaticality we have an existence proof that there is enough information in the stimulus to permit learning grammar by inductive means alone. This seems inconsistent superficially with Gold's theorem and at a deeper level with the fact that networks are designed on the basis of assumptions about the domain of the function to be learned. To clarify the issue I consider what we should learn from Gold's theor…Read more
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Thinking with the BodyAvant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 3 (T): 176-194. 2012.To explore the question of physical thinking – using the body as an instrument of cognition – we collected extensive video and interview data on the creative process of a noted choreographer and his company as they made a new dance. A striking case of physical thinking is found in the phenomenon of marking. Marking refers to dancing a phrase in a less than complete manner. Dancers mark to save energy. But they also mark to explore the tempo of a phrase, or its movement sequence, or the intention…Read more
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520Interactive Skill in ScrabbleProceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. 1999.An experiment was performed to test the hypothesis that people sometimes take physical actions to make themselves more effective problem solvers. The task was to generate all possible words that could be formed from seven Scrabble letters. In one condition, participants could use their hands to manipulate the letters, and in another condition, they could not. Results show that more words were generated with physical manipulation than without. However, an interaction was obtained between the phys…Read more
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117Problem Solving and Situated CognitionIn Philip Robbins & M. Aydede (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, Cambridge University Press. pp. 264--306. 2009.In the course of daily life we solve problems often enough that there is a special term to characterize the activity and the right to expect a scientific theory to explain its dynamics. The classical view in psychology is that to solve a problem a subject must frame it by creating an internal representation of the problem‘s structure, usually called a problem space. This space is an internally generable representation that is mathematically identical to a graph structure with nodes and links. Th…Read more
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263Adaptable Rooms, Virtual Collaboration and Cognitive WorkflowCooperative Buildings - Integrating Information, Organization, and Architecture. 1998.This paper introduces the concept of Adaptive Rooms, which are virtual environments able to dynamically adapt to users’ needs, including ‘physical’ and cognitive workflow requirements, number of users, differing cognitive abilities and skills. Adaptive rooms are collections of virtual objects, many of them self-transforming objects, housed in an architecturally active room with information spaces and tools. An ontology of objects used in adap- tive rooms is presented. Virtual entities are classi…Read more
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71Knowledge, Implicit vs ExplicitIn T. Bayne, A. Cleeremans & P. Wilken (eds.), The Oxford Companion to Consciousness, Cambridge University Press. pp. 397--402. 2009.In the scientific study of mind a distinction is drawn between explicit knowledge–knowledge that can be elicited from a subject by suitable inquiry or prompting, can be brought to consciousness, and externally expressed in words–and implicit knowledge–knowledge that cannot be elicited, cannot be made directly conscious, and cannot be articulated. Michael Polanyi (1967) argued that we usually ‘know more than we can say’. The part we can articulate is explicitly known; the part we cannot is implic…Read more
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Changing the Rules: Architecture in the New MillenniumJournal of Research Into New Media Technologies 7 (2): 113-125. 2001.Architecture is about to enter its first magical phase: a time when buildings actively co-operate with their inhabitants; when objects know what they are, where they are, what is near them; when social and physical space lose their type coupling; when wall and partitions change with mood and task. As engineers and scientists explore how to digitse the world around us, the classical constraints of design, ruled so long by the physics of space, time, and materials, are starting to crumble. Documen…Read more
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558Worldlets, 3D Thumbnails for Wayfinding in Virtual EnvironmentsUIST 97 ACM Press 21-30. 1997.Virtual environment landmarks are essential in wayfinding: they anchor routes through a region and provide memorable destinations to return to later. Current virtual environment browsers provide user interface menus that characterize available travel destinations via landmark textual descriptions or thumbnail images. Such characterizations lack the depth cues and context needed to reliably recognize 3D landmarks. This paper introduces a new user interface affordance that captures a 3D representa…Read more
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459Reaction and Reflection in TetrisFirst Annual International Conference on AI Planning Systems. 1992.To discover how to couple reflection with reaction we have been studying how people play the computer game Tetris. Our basic intuition is that the job of the reasoned is to monitor the environment and the agent’s behavior over time to discover trends or deviations from the agent’s normative policy and tune the priorities of the Attentional system accordingly.
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457Maps in the Head and Maps in the HandProceedings of the 34th Annual Cognitive Science Society. 2012.Using the perspective of situated cognition we studied how people interact with a physical map to help them navigate through an unfamiliar environment. The study used a mixture of cognitive ethnography and traditional experimental methods. We found that the difference between high and low performing navigators showed up in the speed they completed their task and also in the way they use maps. High performers plan routes using a survey method whereas low performers use a route strategy. We sugges…Read more
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41The importance of chance and interactivity in creativityPragmatics and Cognition 22 (1): 5-26. 2014.Individual creativity is standardly treated as an ‘internalist’ process occurring solely in the head. An alternative, more interactionist view is presented here, where working with objects, media and other external things is seen as a fundamental component of creative thought. The value of chance interaction and chance cueing — practices widely used in the creative arts — is explored briefly in an account of the creative method of choreographer Wayne McGregor and then more narrowly in an experim…Read more
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732Implicit and Explicit RepresentationEncyclopedia of Cognitive Science 2. 2003.The degree to which information is encoded explicitly in a representation is related to the computational cost of recovering or using the information. Knowledge that is implicit in a system need not be represented at all, even implicitly, if the cost of recurring it is prohibitive.
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1106Interaction, External Representation and Sense MakingProceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society 1103-1108. 2009.Why do people create extra representations to help them make sense of situations, diagrams, illustrations, instructions and problems? The obvious explanation – external representations save internal memory and computation – is only part of the story. I discuss eight ways external representations enhance cognitive power: they provide a structure that can serve as a shareable object of thought; they create persistent referents; they change the cost structure of the inferential landscape; they faci…Read more
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University of California, San DiegoProfessor
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Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPost-doctoral fellow
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Computing and Information |
Cognitive Sciences, Misc |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Computing and Information |