Zero Brane

The Magical Number Seven, Plus ot Minus Two

Wed, 29 Mar 2006 06:58:59 GMT

The Magical Number Seven, Plus ot Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information
by George A. Miller

There is a clear and definite limit to the accuracy with which we can identify absolutely the magnitude of a unidimensional stimulus variable. I would propose to call this limit the span of absolute judgment, and I maintain that for unidimensional judgments this span is usually somewhere in the neighborhood of seven. We are not completely at the mercy of this limited span, however, because we have a variety of techniques for getting around it and increasing the accuracy of our judgments. The three most important of these devices are (a) to make relative rather than absolute judgments; or, if that is not possible, (b) to increase the number of dimensions along which the stimuli can differ; or © to arrange the task in such a way that we make a sequence of several absolute judgments in a row.

I suspect that there is also a span of perceptual dimensionality and that this span is somewhere in the neighborhood of ten, but I must add at once that there is no objective evidence to support this suspicion.

...there is a finite span of immediate memory and that for a lot of different kinds of test materials this span is about seven items in length. Absolute judgment is limited by the amount of information. Immediate memory is limited by the number of items. In order to capture this distinction in somewhat picturesque terms, I have fallen into the custom of distinguishing between bits of information and chunks of information. The span of immediate memory seems to be almost independent of the number of bits per chunk, at least over the range that has been examined to date. The contrast of the terms bit and chunk also serves to highlight the fact that we are not very definite about what constitutes a chunk of information.

How to Build Complete Creatures

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 06:29:56 GMT

How to Build Complete Creatures Rather than Isolated Cognitive Simulators
by Rodney Brooks (1991)

A Robot that Walks

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 06:21:10 GMT

A Robot that Walks; Emergent Behavior from a Carefully Evolved Network
by Rodney Brooks (1989)

Robot Emotion: A Functional Perspective

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 06:32:52 GMT

Robot Emotion: A Functional Perspective
by Cynthia Breaseal and Rodney Brooks

You and Your Research

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 07:44:27 GMT

You and Your Research
Richard Hamming

One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to.

What are the most important problems in your field?

Are you working on one of them?

Why not?

When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems.

``Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest.

...it is not sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it. [...] There are three things you have to do in selling. You have to learn to write clearly and well so that people will read it, you must learn to give reasonably formal talks, and you also must learn to give informal talks.

The people who do great work with less ability but who are committed to it, get more done that those who have great skill and dabble in it, who work during the day and go home and do other things and come back and work the next day. They don't have the deep commitment that is apparently necessary for really first-class work. They turn out lots of good work, but we were talking, remember, about first-class work.

...some of the reasons why so many people who have greatness within their grasp don't succeed are: they don't work on important problems, they don't become emotionally involved, they don't try and change what is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don't.

If you read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they thought. If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a lot of creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one.

The present growth of knowledge will choke itself off until we get different tools. I believe that books which try to digest, coordinate, get rid of the duplication, get rid of the less fruitful methods and present the underlying ideas clearly of what we know now, will be the things the future generations will value.

...in the long-haul, books which leave out what's not essential are more important than books which tell you everything because you don't want to know everything.

Somewhere around every seven years make a significant, if not complete, shift in your field.

Motor Theory of Language Origin and Evolution

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 07:53:44 GMT

Motor Theory of Language Origin and Evolution
by Robin Allott

There is considerable experimental evidence, and considerable theoretical coherence, for the view that there is a fundamental relation between the syntax of language and physiological syntax, the syntaxes of action and perception, that the syntax of language is biologically based.

...language currently in use is analogous to skilled motor action

The group of premotor neurons can participate in more than one behaviour and constitute what is described as a polymorphic network. A polymorphic network is one that can be organised into multiple states or configurations called circuits. Each circuit may involve the entire set of neurons within the network or some subset of them; each circuit can be transformed into the others so that the network can adopt any one of its different states. Pattern generation emerges as a property of the network as a whole. The ability of the network to generate patterned activity depends upon the interaction of both the synaptic connectivity and the intrinsic cellular properties of each neuron. The command function is viewed not only as initiating action but also as instructional, serving to organise the network into an appropriate configuration to generate a particular motor pattern, as well as selecting and activating the motor system. The individual expression of the subcircuits in the network is dependent upon both the type of initial stimulus and the internal state of the animal; this points to a new concept of network plasticity.

Language is a form of action

...it appears probable that our ancestors had the potential for discriminating speech sounds we now use before they could produce them; there is evidence that human speech perception employs prelinguistic abilities shared with other animals to distinguish between phonemic groupings

...in mammals, there is some natural categorical system, by no means necessarily an auditory one, which has served as the basis for the construction of human phonemic speech production and speech perception. In the monkey and in the chinchilla, as well as in the infant, the sounds heard are referred back to a system which is organised so as to distinguish between certain categories of sound, essentially to some neuronal assembly which analyses in a uniform way. What could the nature of this analysing device be? The proposal in this paper is that the common element is generalised motor patterns, motor programs. The motor programs for producing phonemic sounds are derived from the primitive motor programs for producing bodily movement generally, diverted to producing movement of the organs of articulation.

Syntax is not inherent in the words employed or ideas to be expressed. It is a generalised pattern imposed upon the specific acts as they occur...

Curiously, this theory could be presented as a return, at a deeper level, to earlier ideas on the essentially motor basis of brain processes, though Watson of course had an over-simplified and incorrect view of the real complexities involved in motor organisation. Two final reflections: "language is the immediate actuality of thought" (Marx and Engels) becomes true if thought is the interweaving of neural processes underlying perception and the formation of motor programs. "Language is action" if beside the speech-elements (phonemes), the speech-element compounds (words) and speech sequences (syntax) one can set a motor-alphabet (of elementary motor programs for bodily action), motor-words (actions formed from motor-elements) and motor-sentences (formed from sequences of motor-words).

Mind -- a Moving Story

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 06:11:13 GMT

Interview with Rodney Cotterill, author of ENCHANTED-LOOMS