Beyond the Shape of Things: Infants Can Be Taught to Generalize Nouns by Objects' Functions.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Zuniga-Montanez C
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8641134 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:BackgroundExperience can alter how objects are represented in the visual cortex. But experience can take different forms. It is unknown whether the kind of visual experience systematically alters the nature of visual cortical object representations.Methodology/principal findingsWe take advantage of different training regimens found to produce qualitatively different types of perceptual expertise behaviorally in order to contrast the neural changes that follow different kinds of visual experience with the same objects. Two groups of participants went through training regimens that required either subordinate-level individuation or basic-level categorization of a set of novel, artificial objects, called "Ziggerins". fMRI activity of a region in the right fusiform gyrus increased after individuation training and was correlated with the magnitude of configural processing of the Ziggerins observed behaviorally. In contrast, categorization training caused distributed changes, with increased activity in the medial portion of the ventral occipito-temporal cortex relative to more lateral areas.Conclusions/significanceOur results demonstrate that the kind of experience with a category of objects can systematically influence how those objects are represented in visual cortex. The demands of prior learning experience therefore appear to be one factor determining the organization of activity patterns in visual cortex.
| S-EPMC2794531 | biostudies-literature
Project description:It is well known that the observation of graspable objects recruits the same motor representations involved in their actual manipulation. Recent evidence suggests that the presentation of nouns referring to graspable objects may exert similar effects. So far, however, it is not clear to what extent the modulation of the motor system during object observation overlaps with that related to noun processing. To address this issue, 2 behavioral experiments were carried out using a go-no go paradigm. Healthy participants were presented with photos and nouns of graspable and non-graspable natural objects. Also scrambled images and pseudowords obtained from the original stimuli were used. At a go-signal onset (150 ms after stimulus presentation) participants had to press a key when the stimulus referred to a real object, using their right (Experiment 1) or left (Experiment 2) hand, and refrain from responding when a scrambled image or a pseudoword was presented. Slower responses were found for both photos and nouns of graspable objects as compared to non-graspable objects, independent of the responding hand. These findings suggest that processing seen graspable objects and written nouns referring to graspable objects similarly modulates the motor system.
| S-EPMC4255516 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC10009114 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Visual objects are effortlessly recognized from their outlines, largely irrespective of viewpoint. Previous studies have drawn different conclusions regarding the importance to shape recognition of specific shape features such as convexities and concavities. However, most studies employed familiar objects, or shapes without curves, and did not measure shape recognition across changes in scale and position. We present a novel set of random shapes with well-defined convexities, concavities and inflections (intermediate points), segmented to isolate each feature type. Observers matched the segmented reference shapes to one of two subsequently presented whole-contour shapes (target or distractor) that were re-scaled and re-positioned. For very short segment lengths, performance was significantly higher for convexities than for concavities or intermediate points and for convexities remained constant with increasing segment length. For concavities and intermediate points, performance improved with increasing segment length, reaching convexity performance only for long segments. No significant differences between concavities and intermediates were found. These results show for the first time that closed curvilinear shapes are encoded using the positions of convexities, rather than concavities or intermediate regions. A shape-template model with no free parameters gave an excellent account of the data.
| S-EPMC4657129 | biostudies-other
Project description:It is widely accepted that infants begin learning their native language not by learning words, but by discovering features of the speech signal: consonants, vowels, and combinations of these sounds. Learning to understand words, as opposed to just perceiving their sounds, is said to come later, between 9 and 15 mo of age, when infants develop a capacity for interpreting others' goals and intentions. Here, we demonstrate that this consensus about the developmental sequence of human language learning is flawed: in fact, infants already know the meanings of several common words from the age of 6 mo onward. We presented 6- to 9-mo-old infants with sets of pictures to view while their parent named a picture in each set. Over this entire age range, infants directed their gaze to the named pictures, indicating their understanding of spoken words. Because the words were not trained in the laboratory, the results show that even young infants learn ordinary words through daily experience with language. This surprising accomplishment indicates that, contrary to prevailing beliefs, either infants can already grasp the referential intentions of adults at 6 mo or infants can learn words before this ability emerges. The precocious discovery of word meanings suggests a perspective in which learning vocabulary and learning the sound structure of spoken language go hand in hand as language acquisition begins.
| S-EPMC3295309 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Accurate knowledge about size and shape of the body derived from somatosensation is important to locate one's own body in space. The internal representation of these body metrics (body model) has been assessed by contrasting the distortions of participants' body estimates across two types of tasks (localization task vs. template matching task). Here, we examined to which extent this contrast is linked to the human body. We compared participants' shape estimates of their own hand and non-corporeal objects (rake, post-it pad, CD-box) between a localization task and a template matching task. While most items were perceived accurately in the visual template matching task, they appeared to be distorted in the localization task. All items' distortions were characterized by larger length underestimation compared to width. This pattern of distortion was maintained across orientation for the rake item only, suggesting that the biases measured on the rake were bound to an item-centric reference frame. This was previously assumed to be the case only for the hand. Although similar results can be found between non-corporeal items and the hand, the hand appears significantly more distorted than other items in the localization task. Therefore, we conclude that the magnitude of the distortions measured in the localization task is specific to the hand. Our results are in line with the idea that the localization task for the hand measures contributions of both an implicit body model that is not utilized in landmark localization with objects and other factors that are common to objects and the hand.
| S-EPMC4369293 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Biological visual systems have the remarkable ability to recognize objects despite confounding factors such as object position, size, pose, and lighting. In primates, this ability likely results from neuronal responses at the highest stage of the ventral visual stream [inferior temporal cortex (IT)] that signal object identity while tolerating these factors. However, for even the apparently simplest IT tolerance ("invariance"), tolerance to object position on the retina, little is known about how this feat is achieved. One possibility is that IT position tolerance is innate in that discriminatory power for newly learned objects automatically generalizes across position. Alternatively, visual experience plays a role in developing position tolerance. To test these ideas, we trained adult monkeys in a difficult object discrimination task in which their visual experience with novel objects was restricted to a single retinal position. After training, we recorded the spiking activity of an unbiased population of IT neurons and found that it contained significantly greater selectivity among the newly learned objects at the experienced position compared with a carefully matched, non-experienced position. Interleaved testing with other objects shows that this difference cannot be attributed to a bias in spatial attention or neuronal sampling. We conclude from these results that, at least under some conditions, full transfer of IT neuronal selectivity across retinal position is not automatic. This finding raises the possibility that visual experience plays a role in building neuronal tolerance in the ventral visual stream and the recognition abilities it supports.
| S-EPMC2633652 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Seeing an object is a natural source for learning about the object's configuration. We show that language can also shape our knowledge about visual objects. We investigated sign language that enables deaf individuals to communicate through hand movements with as much expressive power as any other natural language. A few signs represent objects in a specific orientation. Sign-language users (signers) recognized visual objects faster when oriented as in the sign, and this match in orientation elicited specific brain responses in signers, as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs). Further analyses suggested that signers' responsiveness to object orientation derived from changes in the visual object representations induced by the signs. Our results also show that language facilitates discrimination between objects of the same kind (e.g., different cars), an effect never reported before with spoken languages. By focusing on sign language we could better characterize the impact of language (a uniquely human ability) on object visual processing.
| S-EPMC7242439 | biostudies-literature
Project description:An important task of human visual cognition is to make inferences about properties of objects. One such property is an object's causal history: what happened to the object in its past (e.g., "this paper has been folded"). There is relatively little research on whether and how we make such inferences. We took photographs of objects from six different materials ('wax', 'aluminum foil', 'gold foil', 'chicken wire', 'putty', 'cardboard') transformed by one of four shape-altering transformations ('folded', 'bent', 'crumpled', 'twisted'). By varying execution of transformation and viewpoint, we obtained 30 images of each material/transformation combination (720 images). We asked different groups of participants to: (1) name transformations and materials, (2) rate images with respect to the extent they belonged to each transformation or material class, and (3) classify images into the four transformation classes. Our results show that participants can infer transformations from object shape-with accuracy being modulated by object material. This inference of causal history from observed object shape shows that we can distinguish between intrinsic (material) and extrinsic (transformation) properties of the object. The separation of observed shape features by their causal origin ('shape scission') presumably involves both perceptual and cognitive abilities.
| S-EPMC6095529 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The COVID-19 outbreak is putting tremendous strain on the US healthcare system, with a direct impact on medical professionals, hospital systems, and physical resources. While comprehensive public health and regulatory efforts are essential to overcome this crisis, it is important to recognize this moment as an opportunity to provide more intelligent and more efficient care in spite of increasing patient volumes and fewer resources. Specifically, we must limit unnecessary and wasteful medical practices and improve the delivery of those services which enhance the quality of patient care. In doing so, we will increase availability of the critical resources required for the provision of high-quality care to those in greatest need both now and in the future.
| S-EPMC7205372 | biostudies-literature