The significance of the recent introduction to cognitive neuroscience of multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) is that, unlike univariate approaches which are limited to identifying magnitudes of activity in localized parts of the brain, it affords the detection and characterization of patterns of activity distributed within and across multiple brain regions. This technique supports stronger inf...

We investigate the problem of using function approximation in reinforcement learning (RL) where the agent’s control policy is represented as a classifier mapping states to actions. The innovation of this paper lies with introducing a measure of state’s decision-making importance. We then use an efficient approximation to this measure as misclassification costs in learning the agent’s policy. As...

Walker (1996) presents a cache model of the operation of attention in the processing of discourse as an alternative to the focus space stack that was proposed previously by Grosz and Sidner (Grosz 1977a; Grosz and Sidner 1986). In this squib, we present a critical analysis of the cache model and of Walker's supporting evidence from anaphora in discourses with interruptions and from informationa...

We present a method to stop the evaluation of a decision making process when the result of the full evaluation is obvious. This trait is highly desirable for online marginbased machine learning algorithms where a classifier traditionally evaluates all the features for every example. We observe that some examples are easier to classify than others, a phenomenon which is characterized by the even...

A series of 4 experiments were conducted to investigate ideational productivity. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 were carried out under controlled conditions and involved a test of ideational productivity based on producing different interpretations of a diagram. In the first experiment, the pattern of ideational productivity of adult volunteer participants was studied over 30 min of thinking time. Exp...

Identifying human gaze or eye-movement ultimately serves the purpose of identifying an individual's focus of attention. The knowledge of a person's object of interest helps us e ectively communicate with other humans by allowing us to identify our conversants' interests, state of mind, and/or intentions. In this paper we propose to track focus of attention of several participants in a meeting. ...

In this paper, we argue that natural language interfaces with discourse capabilities have an important role to play in decision support systems, because such interfaces are responsive to focus of attention in the mind of a human decision maker. The decision support systems that we will discuss employ graphical user interfaces. They are characterized by strict ordering requirements for commands,...

The Focus of Attention (FOA) Problem is, given a set of targets and a set of sensors in the plane, to track the targets with ‘maximum possible accuracy’. The accuracy is measured in terms of the angle subtended by the sensor pairs at the assigned targets. In this paper, we consider a scenario in which we are given n targets on a line l and 2n sensors on a line m such that l || m and the objecti...

In this report we present an approach to low bitrate video teleconferencing by focusing attention on important information. We show that by selectively degrading the quality of less important regions, more important regions can be sent without loss of quality but with greatly reduced bandwidth requirements. Low bitrate transmission for real-time video delivery over a dynamic network is achieved...

Detriments to performance under pressure are common in many settings, from public speaking skilled sports or music performances. In the last few decades, scientists have suggested that quality and accuracy of movements can depend on what performer attends while executing action, with an external focus attention directed at effects movement environment resulting better than internal focus, where...