Topic 7

Question 1

A not B Task

Answer 1

• Experimenter hides a toy from a baby in one of two holes. They repeat this a few times, then “hide” it in the second hole. The baby will still look for the toy in the first hole even though they saw it go in the second.
• If the child’s position is changed before the trials with the second hole, they will reach for the second hole
• Suggests that this is a motor mistake (moving how we’re used to moving) rather than a knowledge mistake
• Children make the mistake more often if attention is drawn to their arms
• Combine “act” and “think” in sense-think-act

Question 2

Topology of the race

Answer 2

-A race’s last mile overlaps its first, but the pamphlet depicts the hills in the last bit much steeper, even though they’re the same hills

Question 3

Perception of the steepness of hill - Top/Bottom

Answer 3

• People at the top of a hill overestimate how steep it is, people at the bottom are closer to the actual slope
• If we think of sense-think-act, this doesn’t make sense, because the actions should come at the end, rather than influence the “think” step

Question 4

Steepness - Before vs. After a run

Answer 4

-People estimate slopes to be steeper after a run than before

Question 5

McGurk Effect

Answer 5

• Face says “ga,” audio says “ba,” most people hear “da,” which is ostensibly in the middle
• We use visual perceptions to influence audio ones

Question 6

McGurk’s Face

Answer 6

• Same as McGurk effect, but instead of watching someone’s face a robot manipulates your face
• Same result, which indicates that motors are part of decision making and perception

Question 7

Reading Activates Motor Representations

Answer 7

• Mirror neurons, but for reading
• “Active” language causes more brain activity than abstract language
• Rather than purely symbolic representations, information can be stored as your physical relationship with that thing

Question 8

Robot moving around a cluttered office

Answer 8

• Robot’s navigation based on studies of a rat brain

- Landmarks are denoted by the movements performed near them

Question 9

Subsumption architecture - Behaviour-based AI

Answer 9

• Several robots share the same approach
• Use the evolutionary approach - solve one problem, then the next, then the next, etc.
• Don’t store info about the world that can be easily observed
• Use simplest possible cognitive systems

Question 10

Cog Video

Answer 10

• Robot “Cog” built to learn from the ground-up how to do things
• Most robots can be completely thrown off if their environment is changed; clearly this is not how it happens in nature
• Cog should eventually learn to be human-like

Question 11

Decomposing - simultaneous layering vs sequential stages

Answer 11

• Traditional model is sense-think-act
• With behaviour-based decomposition, we have multiple sense-think-act systems running simultaneously
• No “central” process

Question 12

Allen - example of layering, minimal interaction

Answer 12

• Simple robot with multiple iterations
• Level 0: Avoids approaching people and running into objects
• Level 1: Adds a wandering system
• Level 2: Adds following hallways
• Each level adds onto the previous one without changing anything about the previous one

Question 13

Herbert - soda can robot

Answer 13

• Several systems in a robot designed to take soda cans

- None of the systems “know” about each other, they only work on information available to them

Question 14

Dorsal/Ventral Streams

Answer 14

-“Where” vs “What” streams for object detection

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Question 15

Letter Posting Example

Answer 15

• Patient with damage to ventral stream cannot align different lines in a circle
• If given a different task (put a letter in a slot) which is the same problem redone as a motor problem, they succeed
• People with damage to dorsal stream have the opposite problem
• This suggests our cognitive processes are not centralized, ie. one task can be done in multiple ways by different parts

Question 16

Haptic vs. Visual judgements of steepness

Answer 16

-People overestimate slopes visually, but are more accurate when judging haptically

Question 17

Main Idea

Answer 17

• The meaning of things is in-part based on actions, so we need to understand actions to understand thoughts
• Go from a very abstract model of cognition to a very practical, bottom-up model of how we act and then learn from those actions