Everyday perception-action interaction often requires selection of a single goal from multiple po... more Everyday perception-action interaction often requires selection of a single goal from multiple possibilities. According to a recent framework of attentional control, object selection is guided not only by the well-established factors of perceptual salience and current goals but also by selection history. Yet, underlying mechanisms linking selection history and visually-guided actions are poorly understood. To examine such interplay and disentangle the impact of target and distractor history on action selection, we employed a priming-of-popout (PoP) paradigm combined with continuous tracking of reaching movements and computational modeling. Participants reached an odd-colored target among homogeneous distractors while we systematically manipulated the sequence of target and distractor colors from one trial to the next. We observed that current reach movements were significantly influenced by the interaction between attraction by the prior target feature and repulsion by the prior distractor feature. With principal component regression, we found that inhibition led by prior distractors influenced reach target selection earlier than facilitation led by the prior target. In parallel, our newly developed computational model validated that current reach target selection can be explained best by the mechanism postulating the preceded impact of previous distractors followed by a previous target. Such converging empirical and computational evidence suggests that the prior selection history triggers a dynamic interplay between target facilitation and distractor inhibition to guide goal-directed action successfully. This, in turn, highlights the necessity of an explicitly integrated approach to determine how visual attentional selection links with adaptive actions in a complex environment.
2019 28th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2019
In the coming years tour guide robots will be widely used in museums and exhibitions. Therefore, ... more In the coming years tour guide robots will be widely used in museums and exhibitions. Therefore, it is important to identify how these new museum guides can optimally interact with visitors. In this paper, we introduce the idea of two collaborative tour guide robots. We have been inspired by evidence from cognitive studies stating that people remember more when they receive information from two different human speakers. Our collaborative tour guides were benchmarked against single robot guides. Our study initially proved, through real-world experiments, previous proposals stating that the personality of the robot affects the human learning process; our results demonstrate that people remember significantly more information when they are guided by a cheerful robot than when their guide is a serious one. Moreover, another important outcome of our study is that our visitors tend to like more our collaborative robots, than any referenced single robot, as demonstrated by the higher scores in the aesthetic-related questions. Hence our results suggest that a cheerful robot is more suitable for learning purposes while two robots are more suitable for entertainment purposes.
A meaningful social life relies on understanding others’ minds and behaviours. The ability to rea... more A meaningful social life relies on understanding others’ minds and behaviours. The ability to reason about an individual’s mental states such as beliefs and desires, and to understand and predict how these mental states shape an individual’s behaviour is called theory of mind (ToM). In order to examine an individual’s ToM ability, false belief tasks have been used widely in the literature.This research is a novel attempt to clarify the basic cognitive processes shared across the different varieties of false belief tasks. For this purpose, an agent-based model has been implemented to evaluate how agents’ achievement of goals in a social context is dependent on the ability to understand others’ beliefs.In our study, we offer a methodological framework for many belief-reasoning tasks called Belief Representation Systematic Approach (BRSA). BRSA is a simple and robust approach that breaks down false belief tasks into four fundamental cognitive phases, including Perception, Memory, Reaso...
Humans have considerably modified their environment by making and building a number of tools, tec... more Humans have considerably modified their environment by making and building a number of tools, technologies, and constructions. This unique ability compared to other animals is the focus of researchers in different fields of psychology. However, there is confusion about the definitions proposed, generating difficulties in making connections between those different fields. This article presents the first unified framework (i.e., intoolligence) aiming to overcome these issues by focusing on the cognitive processes involved in the different forms taken by human tool use and technology, rather than on the overt behavior. To lay the foundation for intoolligence, we first address a series of epistemological misconceptions, which are the root cause for the current confusion. Particularly, we discuss the limitations of the widespread idea that tool use relies on specific cognitive skills, centered on the manipulative aspect of tool use. We develop, based on this analysis, details concerning ...
Everyday perception-action interaction often requires selection of a single goal from multiple po... more Everyday perception-action interaction often requires selection of a single goal from multiple possibilities. According to a recent framework of attentional control, object selection is guided not only by the well-established factors of perceptual salience and current goals but also by selection history. Yet, underlying mechanisms linking selection history and visually-guided actions are poorly understood. To examine such interplay and disentangle the impact of target and distractor history on action selection, we employed a priming-of-popout (PoP) paradigm combined with continuous tracking of reaching movements and computational modeling. Participants reached an odd-colored target among homogeneous distractors while we systematically manipulated the sequence of target and distractor colors from one trial to the next. We observed that current reach movements were significantly influenced by the interaction between attraction by the prior target feature and repulsion by the prior distractor feature. With principal component regression, we found that inhibition led by prior distractors influenced reach target selection earlier than facilitation led by the prior target. In parallel, our newly developed computational model validated that current reach target selection can be explained best by the mechanism postulating the preceded impact of previous distractors followed by a previous target. Such converging empirical and computational evidence suggests that the prior selection history triggers a dynamic interplay between target facilitation and distractor inhibition to guide goal-directed action successfully. This, in turn, highlights the necessity of an explicitly integrated approach to determine how visual attentional selection links with adaptive actions in a complex environment.
2019 28th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2019
In the coming years tour guide robots will be widely used in museums and exhibitions. Therefore, ... more In the coming years tour guide robots will be widely used in museums and exhibitions. Therefore, it is important to identify how these new museum guides can optimally interact with visitors. In this paper, we introduce the idea of two collaborative tour guide robots. We have been inspired by evidence from cognitive studies stating that people remember more when they receive information from two different human speakers. Our collaborative tour guides were benchmarked against single robot guides. Our study initially proved, through real-world experiments, previous proposals stating that the personality of the robot affects the human learning process; our results demonstrate that people remember significantly more information when they are guided by a cheerful robot than when their guide is a serious one. Moreover, another important outcome of our study is that our visitors tend to like more our collaborative robots, than any referenced single robot, as demonstrated by the higher scores in the aesthetic-related questions. Hence our results suggest that a cheerful robot is more suitable for learning purposes while two robots are more suitable for entertainment purposes.
A meaningful social life relies on understanding others’ minds and behaviours. The ability to rea... more A meaningful social life relies on understanding others’ minds and behaviours. The ability to reason about an individual’s mental states such as beliefs and desires, and to understand and predict how these mental states shape an individual’s behaviour is called theory of mind (ToM). In order to examine an individual’s ToM ability, false belief tasks have been used widely in the literature.This research is a novel attempt to clarify the basic cognitive processes shared across the different varieties of false belief tasks. For this purpose, an agent-based model has been implemented to evaluate how agents’ achievement of goals in a social context is dependent on the ability to understand others’ beliefs.In our study, we offer a methodological framework for many belief-reasoning tasks called Belief Representation Systematic Approach (BRSA). BRSA is a simple and robust approach that breaks down false belief tasks into four fundamental cognitive phases, including Perception, Memory, Reaso...
Humans have considerably modified their environment by making and building a number of tools, tec... more Humans have considerably modified their environment by making and building a number of tools, technologies, and constructions. This unique ability compared to other animals is the focus of researchers in different fields of psychology. However, there is confusion about the definitions proposed, generating difficulties in making connections between those different fields. This article presents the first unified framework (i.e., intoolligence) aiming to overcome these issues by focusing on the cognitive processes involved in the different forms taken by human tool use and technology, rather than on the overt behavior. To lay the foundation for intoolligence, we first address a series of epistemological misconceptions, which are the root cause for the current confusion. Particularly, we discuss the limitations of the widespread idea that tool use relies on specific cognitive skills, centered on the manipulative aspect of tool use. We develop, based on this analysis, details concerning ...
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