Jiye G. Kim

Is Problem Solving Dependent on Language

There has been a long-standing debate in the fields of philosophy and cognitive science surrounding the relationship of language to cognition, but the exact nature of this relationship is still unclear (Sokolov, 1968/1972). In the current study, we explored the role of language in one aspect of cognition, namely problem solving, by administering the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) to stroke patients with varying degrees of language impairment (Experiment 1) and to normal participants under conditions of articulatory suppression (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, there was a significant correlation between performance on the WCST and language measures such as comprehension and naming. Demonstrating the specificity of this result, we also found a significant relationship between language performance and another test of problem solving, the Ravens Colored Progressive Matrices, but no relationship between language and a test of visuospatial functioning. In Experiment 2, normal participants were significantly impaired on the WCST under conditions of articulatory suppression, relative to a baseline condition. Together, these findings suggest that language plays a role in complex problem solving, possibly through covert language processes.

Where Do Objects Become Scenes

Regions tuned to individual visual categories, such as faces and objects, have been discovered in the later stages of the ventral visual pathway in the cortex. But most visual experience is composed of scenes, where multiple objects are interacting. Such interactions are readily described by prepositions or verb forms, for example, a bird perched on a birdhouse. At what stage in the pathway does sensitivity to such interactions arise? Here we report that object pairs shown as interacting, compared with their side-by-side depiction (e.g., a bird besides a birdhouse), elicit greater activity in the lateral occipital complex, the earliest cortical region where shape is distinguished from texture. Novelty of the interactions magnified this gain, an effect that was absent in the side-by-side depictions. Scene-like relations are thus likely achieved simultaneously with the specification of object shape.

Adaptation in the fusiform face area (FFA): Image or person?

Viewing a sequence of faces of two different people results in a greater Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) response in FFA compared to a sequence of identical faces. Changes in identity, however, necessarily involve changes in the image. Is the release from adaptation a result of a change in face identity, per se, or could it be an effect that would arise from any change in the image of a face? Subjects viewed a sequence of two faces that could be of the same or different person, and in the same or different orientation in depth. Critically, the physical similarity of view changes of the same person was scaled, by Gabor-jet differences, to be equivalent to that produced by an identity change. Both person and orientation changes produced equivalent releases from adaptation in FFA (relative to identical faces) suggesting that FFA is sensitive to the physical similarity of faces rather than to the individuals depicted in the images.

Adaptation to objects in the lateral occipital complex (LOC): Shape or semantics?

A change in the basic-level class when viewing a sequence of two objects produces a large release from adaptation in LOC compared to when the images are identical. Is this due to a change in semantics or shape? In an fMRI-adaptation experiment, subjects viewed a sequence of two objects and judged whether the stimuli were identical in shape. Different-shaped stimuli could be from the same or different basic-level classes, where the physical similarities of the pairs in the two conditions were equated by a model of simple cell similarity. BOLD responses in LOC for the two conditions were equivalent, and higher than that of the identical condition, indicating that LOC is sensitive to shape rather than to basic-level semantics.

17000 Years of Depicting the Junction of Two Smooth Shapes

Competent realistic drawings preserve viewpoint-invariant shape characteristics of simple parts, such that a contour in the object that is straight or curved, for example, is depicted that way in the drawing. A more subtle invariant—a V-shaped singularity of the occluding boundary, containing a T-junction and a contour termination—is produced at the junction between articulated smooth surfaces, as with the leg joining the body of a horse. 45% of the drawings made in 2007 by individuals with only minimal art education correctly depicted such junctions, a proportion that is not reliably different from the incidence (42%) of correct depictions in a large sample of cave art made 17 000 years ago. Whether a person did or did not include the invariant in their drawing, all agreed that it made for a better depiction.

Blind or deaf? A matter of aesthetics.

Blind or deaf? Surprisingly, a small but noticeable minority, 17%, opted for blindness. Another 6% were indifferent. For these individuals (23% of the sample), the loss of the aesthetic experience—music—was given relatively greater weight than the loss of the practical-conversation. This was not a symmetric effect in that those who opted for being deaf did not place greater value on the aesthetic aspects of vision compared to those who opted for being blind. What predicts the preference for being blind was not the amount of time spent listening to music but the extent to which one formally studied, created, and played music and experienced intense emotions when engaged by music.

Greater modulation of LO responses to changes in nonaccidental than metric relations between simple shapes.

The NAP and MP relation image changes were matched in physical dissimilarities by pixel energy and the Gabor-jet model (Lades et al, 1993), with MP image changes always equal to or greater than NAP changes. Behavioral studies and single cell recordings in monkey IT cortex have documented greater sensitivity to differences in viewpoint invariant or nonaccidental properties (e.g., straight vs. curved), than metric properties (e.g., degree of curvature) of simple shapes.

Evidence for object file encoding in the posterior Fusiform Gyrus (pFs) and the Intraparietal Sulcus (IPS)

Large change in representation: Introduction: Many theorists have hypothesized that when viewing a multi-object scene, the visual system assigns each object’s bundled features to separate ‘slots’. Such dynamic “binding” to multiple slots is at the heart of the Object Files theory (Kahneman, Treisman, & Gibbs 1992), Visual Short-Term Memory (VSTM) models, FINST theory (Pylyshyn 1989), Recognition-by-Components theory (Biederman 1987) and others. Such a slot-based representation is potentially very powerful because relation information can be explicitly associated with each slot, i.e., ‘this slot contains the top object’s features’, allowing for true understanding of visual structure. In contrast, certain scene manipulations will produce a disproportionately large change in neural representation: A B