Earlier work has demonstrated that cognitive resources are expended when processing the speech of an unfamiliar talker. As such, processing the speech of a familiar talker is a more efficient, automated process. Similarly, data have shown that separating a speech signal from noise also uses cognitive resources and listeners with larger working memory capacities are better able to perceive speec...

Infantile physical morphology-marked by its "cuteness"-is thought to be a potent elicitor of caregiving, yet little is known about how cuteness may shape immediate behavior. To examine the function of cuteness and its role in caregiving, the authors tested whether perceiving cuteness can enhance behavioral carefulness, which would facilitate caring for a small, delicate child. In 2 experiments,...

Confocal microscopes have recently allowed biologists and biomedical researchers to obtain time dependent 3D data sets of biological objects, such as cells and tissues. Scientific visualization can provide visual presentations of structural characteristics of these data sets. This paper addresses the role of virtual reality in gaining insight in these presentations. The understanding of structu...

This paper reintroduces and evaluates the schematic sowbug proposed by Edward C. Tolman, psychologist, in 1939. The schematic sowbug is based on Tolman's purposive behaviorism, and it is believed to be the rst prototype in history that actually implemented a behavior-based architecture suitable for robotics. The schematic sowbug navigates the environment based on two types of vectors, orientati...

In this paper we sum up our works on multiscale programs, mainly simulations. We first start with describing what multiscaling is about, how it helps perceiving signal from a background noise in a flow of data for example, for a direct perception by a user or for a further use by another program. We then give three examples of multiscale techniques we used in the past, maintaining a summary, us...

Empathy is thought to play a key role in motivating helping behavior and providing the affective basis for moral development. Neuroimaging studies clearly document that watching someone in pain elicits a negative arousal response in the observer to a stronger degree in children than in young adults. Findings indicate that although children and adults have similar patterns of brain response to p...

This paper describes our preliminary research on "attention-sharing" in infants' language acquisition. Attention-sharing is the activity of paying one's attention to someone else's attentional target. This enables one to observe others' sensory-input (what they are perceiving from the target) and motor-output (what they are doing in response to the target). Being inspired by lack of attention-s...

Those who are physically attractive reap many benefits—from higher average wages to a wider variety of mate choices. Recent studies have investigated what constitutes beauty and how beauty affects explicit social judgments, but little is known about the perceptual or cognitive processing that is affected by aesthetic judgments of faces and why beauty affects our behavior. In this study, the aut...