Unified Cognitive Science
•Neurobiology•Psychology•Computer Science•Linguistics•Philosophy•Social Sciences•Experience
Take all the Findings and Constraints Seriously
What are schemas?
• Regularities in our perceptual, motor and cognitive systems
• Structure our experiences and interactions with the world.
• May be grounded in a specific cognitive system, but are not situation-specific in their application (can apply to many domains of experience)
Basis of Image schemas
•Perceptual systems
•Motor routines
•Social Cognition
•Image Schema properties depend on
•Neural circuits
•Interactions with the world
Image schemas
•Trajector / Landmark (asymmetric)
•The bike is near the house •? The house is near the bike
•Boundary / Bounded Region
•a bounded region has a closed boundary•Topological Relations
•Separation, Contact, Overlap, Inclusion, Surround•Orientation
•Vertical (up/down), Horizontal (left/right, front/back)
•Absolute (E, S, W, N)
LMTR
bounded region
boundary
Similarity:
•Perceptual and motor systems
•Basic functional interactions with the world
•Environment
Variation:
Cross-linguistic variation in how schemas are used.
Spatial schemas•TR/LM relation
•Boundaries, bounded region
•Topological relations
•Orientational Axes
•Proximal/Distal
Trajector/Landmark Schema•Roles:
Trajector (TR) – object being located
Landmark (LM) – reference object
TR and LM may share a location (at)
TR/LM -- asymmetry
•The cup is on the table
•?The table is under the cup.
•The skateboard is next to the post.
•?The post is next to the skateboard.
Language and Frames of Reference
•There seem to be three prototypical frames of reference in language (Levinson)
•Intrinsic
•Relative
•Absolute
Container Schema Elaborated
•Complexities –more roles/specifications:
•Boundary properties•Strength•Porosity•Portals
Source-Path-Goal
Constraints:
initial = TR at Source
central = TR on Path
final = TR at Goal
Source Path Goal
SPG -- simple example
She drove from the store to the gas station.
TR = she
Source = the store
Goal = the gas station
Source Path Goal
SPG and ContainerShe ran into the room.
SPG. Source ↔ Container.Exterior
SPG.Path ↔ Container.Portal
SPG. Goal ↔ Container.Interior
semantic schema Containerroles:
interiorexteriorportalboundary
Representing image schemas
Interior
Exterior
Boundary
PortalSource
Path
GoalTrajector
These are abstractions over sensorimotor experiences.
semantic schema Source-Path-Goalroles:
sourcepathgoaltrajector
Language and Spatial Schemas• People say that they look up to some people, but
look down on others because those we deem worthy of respect are somehow “above” us, and those we deem unworthy are somehow “beneath” us.
• But why does respect run along a vertical axis (or any spatial axis, for that matter)? Much of our language is rich with such spatial talk.
• Concrete actions such as a push or a lift clearly imply a vertical or horizontal motion, but so too can more abstract concepts.
• Metaphors: Arguments can go “back and forth,” and hopes can get “too high.”
Language Development in Children
•0-3 mo: prefers sounds in native language
•3-6 mo: imitation of vowel sounds only
•6-8 mo: babbling in consonant-vowel segments
•8-10 mo: word comprehension, starts to lose sensitivity to consonants outside native language
•12-13 mo: word production (naming)
•16-20 mo: word combinations, relational words (verbs, adj.)
•24-36 mo: grammaticization, inflectional morphology
•3 years – adulthood: vocab. growth, sentence-level grammar for discourse purposes
Trajector/Landmark Schema
•Roles:
Trajector (TR) – object being located
Landmark (LM) – reference object
TR and LM may share a location (at)
TR/LM -- asymmetry
•The cup is on the table
•?The table is under the cup.
•The skateboard is next to the post.
•?The post is next to the skateboard.
Language and Frames of Reference
•There seem to be three prototypical frames of reference in language (Levinson)
•Intrinsic
•Relative
•Absolute
Basis of Image Schemas
•Perceptual systems
•Motor routines
•Social Cognition
•Image Schema properties depend on
•Neural circuits
•Interactions with the world
Image schemas
•Trajector / Landmark (asymmetric)
•The bike is near the house •? The house is near the bike
•Boundary / Bounded Region
• bounded region has a closed boundary•Topological Relations
•Separation, Contact, Overlap, Inclusion, Surround•Orientation
•Vertical (up/down), Horizontal •Absolute (E, S, W, N)
LMTR
bounded region
boundary
Spatial schemas•TR/LM relation
•Boundaries, bounded region
•Topological relations
•Orientational Axes
•Proximal/Distal
Regier’s Model
•Training input: configuration of TR/LM and the correct spatial relation term
•Learned behavior: input TR/LM, output spatial relation
Learning System
above below left right in out on off
Input:TR
LMabove
Issue #1: Implicit Negatives
• Children usually do not get explicit negatives
• But we won’t know when to stop generalizing if we don’t have negative evidence
• Yet spatial relation terms aren’t entirely mutually exclusive
• The same scene can often be described with two or more spatial relation terms (e.g. above and outside)
• How can we make the learning problem realistic yet learnable?
Dealing with Implicit Negatives
• Explicit positive for above
• Implicit negatives for below, left, right, etc
• in Regier:
E = ½ ∑i,p (( ti,p – oi,p) * βi,p )2,
where i is the node, p is the pattern,
βi,p = 1 if explicit positive,
βi,p < 1 if implicit negative
Learning
Systemdynamic relations(e.g. into)
structured connectionistnetwork (based on visual system)
Issue #2: Shift Invariance
• Backprop cannot handle shift invariance (it cannot generalize from 0011, 0110 to 1100)
• But the cup is on the table whether you see it right in the center or from the corner of your eyes (i.e. in different areas of the retina map)
• What structure can we utilize to make the input shift-invariant?
Language and Thought
• We know thought (our cognitive processes) constrains the way we learn and use language
• Does language also influence thought?
• Benjamin Whorf argues yes
• Psycholinguistics experiments have shown that linguistics categories influence thinking even in non-linguistics task
Language
Thought
cognitive processes
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