Search

The purpose of the study is to model the micro-scale process patterns which can be identified during team conceptual design activities. A state-transition model has been developed and used to empirically investigate the patterns of design operations during two types of team conceptual design activities: ideation and concept review. The presented work builds on the perception of design problems as ill-defined and implies that conceptual design activities involve the simultaneous development of problems and solutions using three distinctive design operations—analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The three design operations have been defined as fine-grain design steps performed by design teams when exploring the content of both the problem and the solution dimensions of the design space. Moreover, design operations have been conceptualised as transitions between states of the explored design space, thus providing a basis for the state-transition model. The model's ability to map and visualise proportions of design operation sequences emerging during ideation and concept review has facilitated the identification of both the activity-specific patterns and patterns that were likely to appear during both types of empirically investigated activities. The two activities exhibited similar patterns, such as alternation of solution synthesis and analysis, sequences of synthesis, analysis and evaluation within solution space, and the potential co-evolution episodes. Nevertheless, divergent traits have been identified for ideation, and convergent traits for concept review, based on the significant differences in proportions of design operations and their sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is common to use counting strategies to produce time intervals accurately. Does counting improve the accuracy (deviation of produced duration from veridical duration) and precision (variability of produced duration) of time productions in the range of seconds to minutes? In a series of experiments, we compared chronometric counting to intuitive timing (no counting) and to attentional control (simultaneously performing mental arithmetic). In a field experiment, participants had to produce time intervals of 60-s duration in a classroom setting. Relative to intuitive timing, counting did not improve the accuracy (absolute error) of time productions but led to overproduction of duration (larger constant error). In four laboratory experiments, we tested the effects of counting on time production of 10-, 30-, 45-, 60-, and 90-s intervals. Consistently, counting did not improve the accuracy of time production. The relative overproduction due to counting was replicated for long intervals (60 and 90 s) but disappeared at shorter intervals. However, across all intervals tested, counting had positive effects on the precision of time production. As expected, mental arithmetic impaired accuracy and precision and led to overproduction of duration, indicating that participants followed instructions. Based on the experimental data, the overproduction of longer intervals due to counting can neither be explained in terms of attentional processes nor by means of a word-length effect when counting multisyllabic numbers or when participants switch their pace of counting from mono- to multisyllables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's rise is increasingly impacting on the global financial and monetary order. To manage its growing centrality in global financial flows and its new relevance for patterns of currency usage, Beijing has been creating a set of new institutional arrangements in three crucial fields: the provision of crisis liquidity, development financing, and a global infrastructure to internationalize its currency. In contrast to the dominant power political interpretation of such developments, this article highlights the strong linkages of Beijing's new initiatives with the changes in China's capitalist development path and stresses their experimental character that serves to manage the economic and political risks of China's accelerating financial internationalization. With a distinct learning attitude regarding its rising geoeconomic prominence and engagement, Beijing's risk-averse strategy involves a very careful linking, layering, and nesting of new arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, affective computing usually focuses on individual's affective dynamics instead of buildups of those of groups from a holistic perspective. Practically, the forms of group decision makers' preferences associated with multi-attribute decision-making problems are too complex to calculate programs' orders by judgment matrix, suffering difficulties in achieving the weights of sub-attributes based on the group judgment preferences. Currently, few researches are concerned with the definitions and generating methods of group affective preferences from the perspective of affective dynamics. In response to these challenges, this paper explicitly presents a stimulated and transferring affective computing model, along with the definition of group affective preferences and the interactive generating methods, which can gradually grasp group's experience in group decision making and help reduce group's subjective fatigue and make decisions more quickly. To exemplify applications of the proposed methods for a kind of multi-attribute decision-making problems, a test function and a chemical process control issue are investigated, giving rise to satisfied results and showing validity of the contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we proposed a hand gesture recognition method using concentric with the coordinate information. Hand, the image of the area who entered through the camera through the binarization task and the change in the color space to extract the skin area was to determine forming a circle with the center of the center of the hand region to obtain the change of the input data. The circle and measure the similarity of the two concentric circles of different sizes. Concentric with coordinate information through image processing than the existing recognizer and the recognition through learning process is possible using a hand gesture recognition gesture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about developing a group user model able to predict unknown features (attributes, preferences, or behaviors) of any interlocutor. Specifically, for systems where there are features that cannot be modeled by a domain expert within the human computer interaction. In such cases, statistical models are applied instead of stereotype user models. The time consumption of these models is high, and when a requisite of bounded response time is added most common solution involves summarizing knowledge. Summarization involves deleting knowledge from the knowledge base and probably losing accuracy in the medium-term. This proposal provides all the advantages of statistical user models and avoids knowledge loss by using an R-Tree structure and various search spaces (universes of users) of diverse granularity for solving inferences with enhanced success rates. Along with the formalization and evaluation of the approach, main advantages will be discussed, and a perspective for its future evolution is provided. In addition, this paper provides a framework to evaluate statistical user models and to enable performance comparison among different statistical user models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to customize multi-touch gestures for different applications, and facilitate multi-touch gesture recognition, an application oriented and shape feature based multi-touch gesture description and recognition method is proposed. In this method, multi-touch gestures are classified into two categories, namely atomic gesture and combined gesture, where combined gesture is a combination of atomic gestures using temporal, spatial and logical relationships. For description, users' motions are mapped into gestures, and then semantic constraints of an application are extracted to build the accessible relationships between gestures and entity states. For recognition, trajectories of a gesture are projected onto an image, and the shape feature of every trajectory and relationships between each other are extracted to match with gesture templates. Experiments show that this method is independent to multi-touch platforms, robust to manipulating differences of users, and it is scalable and reusable for users and applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human face provides useful information during interaction; therefore, any system integrating Vision-Based Human Computer Interaction requires fast and reliable face and facial feature detection. Different approaches have focused on this ability but only open source implementations have been extensively used by researchers. A good example is the Viola-Jones object detection framework that particularly in the context of facial processing has been frequently used. The OpenCV community shares a collection of public domain classifiers for the face detection scenario. However, these classifiers have been trained in different conditions and with different data but rarely tested on the same datasets. In this paper, we try to fill that gap by analyzing the individual performance of all those public classifiers presenting their pros and cons with the aim of defining a baseline for other approaches. Solid comparisons will also help researchers to choose a specific classifier for their particular scenario. The experimental setup also describes some heuristics to increase the facial feature detection rate while reducing the face false detection rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces some novel interaction techniques based on the concepts of composite positioning and composite manoeuvring (described in the paper). In contrast with other previous proposals, these techniques have been designed and evaluated in the context of a user centred process. The results of this evaluation and some relevant findings for the field of human computer interaction are also described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This communication reports on the results of a web accessibility audit of public Web sites in Greece. The audit was conducted in 2008 by the Human Computer Interaction Laboratory of the Institute of Computer Science of FORTH, in its capacity as the Greek National Contact Centre of the European Design for All e-Accessibility Network. In an earlier e-Accessibility study in 2004, that evaluated approximately 250 public and commercial Web sites in Greece, 73% of the sample failed to meet the most basic requirements for web accessibility (). Four years later, in the context of a re-audit, a similar sample was examined for compliance with the same web accessibility standard (WCAG 1.0), as set by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium. The accessibility checks were conducted during the period from March to September 2008. A comparison of the results indicates that although new web development technologies may have been employed, instead of improving the overall status of e-accessibility, this has resulted in a serious deterioration in overall accessibility levels. Such findings—85% of sites failed to comply with Level A—suggest that Greek Web sites are likely to present even more significant access barriers to people with disability than in the past. As Web Accessibility is poorly understood and, until today, new platforms have failed to deliver products that conform to WCAG, the need emerges for a concrete legislative framework to set accessibility specifications for all public Web sites in Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research into math cognition has identified areas of the brain that are involved in number processing (Dehaene, Piazza, Pinel, & Cohen, 2003) and complex problem solving (Anderson, 2007). Much of this research assumes that participants use a single strategy; yet, behavioral research finds that people use a variety of strategies (LeFevre et al., 1996; Siegler, 1987; Siegler & Lemaire, 1997). In the present study, we examined cortical activation as a function of two different calculation strategies for mentally solving multidigit multiplication problems. The school strategy, equivalent to long multiplication, involves working from right to left. The expert strategy, used by "lightning" mental calculators (Staszewski, 1988), proceeds from left to right. The two strategies require essentially the same calculations, but have different working memory demands (the school strategy incurs greater demands). The school strategy produced significantly greater early activity in areas involved in attentional aspects of number processing (posterior superior parietal lobule, PSPL) and mental representation (posterior parietal cortex, PPC), but not in a numerical magnitude area (horizontal intraparietal sulcus, HIPS) or a semantic memory retrieval area (lateral inferior prefrontal cortex, LIPFC). An ACT—R model of the task successfully predicted BOLD responses in PPC and LIPFC, as well as in PSPL and HIPS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A striking way in which humans differ from non-human primates is in their ability to represent numerical quantity using abstract symbols and to use these 'mental tools' to perform skills such as exact calculations. How do functional brain circuits for the symbolic representation of numerical magnitude emerge? Do neural representations of numerical magnitude change as a function of development and the learning of mental arithmetic? Current theories suggest that cultural number symbols acquire their meaning by being mapped onto non-symbolic representations of numerical magnitude. This Review provides an evaluation of this contention and proposes hypotheses to guide investigations into the neural mechanisms that constrain the acquisition of cultural representations of numerical magnitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inverse base rate effect (IBRE; Medin & Edelson, 1988) continues to be a puzzling case of decision making on the basis of conflicting information in human category learning. After being trained via feedback over trials to assign combinations of cues to high- and low-frequency categories, participants tend to respond with the low-frequency category to an otherwise perfectly conflicting pair of test cues, contrary to the category base rates. Our Experiment 1 demonstrated that decision making on the basis of an explicit summary of the cue-outcome and outcome base rate information from the standard learning task does not result in the effect. The remaining experimental conditions evaluated the necessary and sufficient conditions for the effect by systematically exploring experimental deviations between the standard learning task and the pure decision-making task. In partial disagreement with both recent theoretical accounts of the effect (Juslin, Wennerholm, & Winman, 2001; Kruschke, 1996), these experiments indicate that asymmetric outcome representation and profound base rate neglect are individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. Broader theoretical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on category-based induction has primarily focused on reasoning about blank properties, or predicates that are designed to elicit little prior knowledge. Here, we address reasoning about nonblank properties. We introduce a model of conditional probability that assumes that the conclusion prior probability is revised to the extent warranted by the evidence in the premise. The degree of revision is a function of the relevance of the premise category to the conclusion and the informativeness of the premise statement. An algebraic formulation with no free parameters accurately predicted conditional probabilities for single- and two-premise conditionals (Experiments 1 and 3), as well as problems involving negative evidence (Experiment 2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to LeFevre, Sadesky, and Bisanz (1996), averaging solution latencies in order to study individuals' arithmetic strategies can result in misleading conclusions. Therefore, in addition to classical chronometric data, they collected verbal reports and challenged the assumption that adults rely systematically on retrieval of arithmetic facts from memory to solve simple addition problems. However, Kirk and Ashcraft (2001) questioned the validity of such a methodology and concluded that a more appropriate method has to be found. Thus, we developed an operand recognition paradigm that does not rely on verbal reports or on solution latencies. In accordance with LeFevre et al., we show in a first experiment that adults resort to nonretrieval strategies to solve addition problems involving medium numbers. However, in a second experiment, we show that high-skilled individuals can solve the same problems using a retrieval strategy. The benefits of our paradigm to the study of arithmetic strategies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental computation helps children understand how numbers work, how to make decisions about procedures, and how to create different strategies to solve math problems. Although researchers agree on the importance of mental computation skills, they debate how to help students develop these skills. The present study explored the existing literature in order to identify key points that are related to students’ use of different mental calculation strategies in a variety of settings and their conceptual understanding of those strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  Turing’s notion of human computability is exactly right not only for obtaining a negative solution of Hilbert’s Entscheidungsproblem that is conclusive, but also for achieving a precise characterization of formal systems that is needed for the general formulation of the incompleteness theorems. The broad intellectual context reaches back to Leibniz and requires a focus on mechanical procedures; these procedures are to be carried out by human computers without invoking higher cognitive capacities. The question whether there are strictly broader notions of effectiveness has of course been asked for both cognitive and physical processes. I address this question not in any general way, but rather by focusing on aspects of mathematical reasoning that transcend mechanical procedures. Section 1 discusses Gdel’s perspective on mechanical computability as articulated in his [193?], where he drew a dramatic conclusion from the undecidability of certain Diophantine propositions, namely, that mathematicians cannot be replaced by machines. That theme is taken up in the Gibbs Lecture of 1951; Gdel argues there in greater detail that the human mind infinitely surpasses the powers of any finite machine. An analysis of the argument is presented in Section 2 under the heading Beyond calculation. Section 3 is entitled Beyond discipline and gives Turing’s view of intelligent machinery; it is devoted to the seemingly sharp conflict between Gdel’s and Turing’s views on mind. Their deeper disagreement really concerns the nature of machines, and I’ll end with some brief remarks on (supra-) mechanical devices in Section 4. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The possible use of a calendar algorithm was assessed in DBC, an autistic “savant” of normal measured intelligence. Testing of all the dates in a year revealed a random distribution of errors. Re-testing DBC on the same dates one year later shows that his errors were not stable across time. Finally, DBC was able to answer “reversed” questions that cannot be solved by a classical algorithm. These findings favor a non-algorithmic retrieval of calendar information. It is proposed that multidirectional, non-hierarchical retrieval of information, and solving problems in a non-algorithmic way, are involved in savant performances. The possible role of a functional rededication of low-level perceptual systems to the processing of symbolic information in savants is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have already shown that the central executive, as conceptualized in the working memory model of Baddeley and Hitch (1974), is important in simple mental arithmetic. Recently, attempts have been made to define more basic processes that underlie the "central executive." In this vein, monitoring, response selection, updating, mental shifting, and inhibition have been proposed as processes capturing executive control. Previous research has shown that secondary tasks that require a choice decision impair the calculation of simple sums, whereas Input monitoring has not been found to be a sufficient condition to impair the calculation of sums (Deschuyteneer & Vandierendonck, 2005). In the present article, we report data on the role of input monitoring and response selection in solving simple arithmetical products. In four experiments, participants solved one-digit products (e.g., 5 x 7) in a single-task, as well as in a dual-task, condition. Just as for solving simple sums, the results show a strong involvement of response selection in the calculating of simple products, whereas input monitoring does not seem to impair the calculation of such products. These findings give additional evidence that response selection may be one of the processes needed for solving simple mental arithmetic problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study tested the theory that negative affect and one's ability to tolerate distress is associated with failure to quit gambling during an abstinence attempt. Specifically, 16 current pathological gamblers who had at least one sustained period of gambling abstinence lasting a minimum of 3 months (i.e., delayed relapsers) and 16 current pathological gamblers who had never remained abstinent for a period longer than 2 weeks (i.e., immediate relapsers), were assessed for baseline levels of negative affect and stress reactivity, as well as faced with a psychological (mental arithmetic) and physical (breath holding) stressor. Compared to the delayed relapsers, the immediate relapsers displayed higher levels of negative affect and stress reactivity. Immediate relapsers also were less likely to persist on the psychological stressor, suggesting that one's ability to tolerate the initial discomfort of an abstinence attempt may play an important role in gambling treatment outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an Asperger's syndrome savant's insights on mental calendar calculation. He learned the rules of the calendar and then devised a rapid calculating method that works for any century from 1800 on. An alternative method is to memorize all 14 calendars within a 28 year cycle, meaning seven calendars for each leap year and seven which work for three of the 21 years. However, the alternative method does not work for other centuries such as 2000 and 2100 where leap years occur every 400 years.

Studies the brain activity during mental arithmetic calculation in a prodigy. Mechanism for maintaining information related to the task; Capacities for the temporary storage of task-relevant materials; Task-dependent activation of areas that are implicated in episodic memory processes.

Comments on the effectiveness of people as calculators within the concept of the rent-seeking theory. Basis of the quasi-paradoxical nature of the rent-seeking theory; Characteristic of a perfect calculation in a competitive market with free entry.