THE WORK OF ROGER SHEPARD: 7 special BBS Calls for Commentators
Stevan Harnad
harnad at coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk
Wed Sep 13 06:59:16 EDT 2000
Below are the abstracts of 7 forthcoming target articles to
co-appear in a BBS Special Issue on: THE WORK OF ROGER SHEPARD
Commentators may comment on one, several, or all 7 target articles.
(1) Shepard: Perceptual-Cognitive Universals as Reflections of the
World (reprinted from Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1994, 1, 2-28)
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.shepard.html
(2) Barlow: The Exploitation of Regularities in the Environment by
the Brain
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.barlow.html
(3) Hecht: Regularities of the Physical World and the Absence of
their Internalization
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.hecht.html
(4) Kubovy: Internalization: A metaphor we can live without
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.kubovy.pdf
(5) Schwartz: Evolutionary Internalized Regularities
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.schwartz.html
(6) Tenenbaum & Griffiths: Generalization, Similarity, and Bayesian
Inference
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.tenenbaum.html
(7) Todorovic: Is kinematic geometry an internalized regularity?
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.todorovic.html
These 7 articles have been accepted for joint publication in a special
issue on the work of ROGER SHEPARD in Behavioral and Brain Sciences
(BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer
Commentary on important and controversial current research in the
biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.
To be considered as a commentator for this article, to recommend other
appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS
Associate, please reply by EMAIL by September 8th to the address
below:
bbs at soton.ac.uk
Commentators must either be current BBS Associates or they must be
nominated by a current BBS Associate (of which there are currently
10,000). Non-Associates should send a CV and/or the name of a current
BBS Associate familiar with their work.
To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, in your reply
please indicate the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your
areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
Electronic drafts of the full texts of all 7 articles are available for
inspection from the Web.
Commentators may comment on one, several, or all 7 target articles.
Commentary length is 1000 words for a commentary on one target article,
to a maximum of 4000 words for a commentary on all 7 (an extra 500
words are allowed for each additional target article).
Please indicate which article(s) you propose to comment upon.
____________________________________________________________
1. SHEPARD, ROGER (2001) PERCEPTUAL-COGNITIVE UNIVERSALS AS
REFLECTIONS OF THE WORLD
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2): XXX-XXX.
URL: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.shepard.html
Roger N. Shepard
Stanford University
Stanford, California
roger at psych.stanford.edu
ABSTRACT: The universality, invariance, and elegance of principles
governing the universe may be reflected in principles of the minds
that have evolved in that universe--provided that the mental
principles are formulated with respect to the abstract spaces
appropriate for the representation of biologically significant
objects and their properties. (1) Positions and motions of objects
conserve their shapes in the geometrically fullest and simplest way
when represented as points and connecting geodesic paths in the
six-dimensional manifold jointly determined by the Euclidean group
of three-dimensional space and the symmetry group of each object.
(2) Colors of objects attain constancy when represented as points in
a three-dimensional vector space in which each variation in natural
illumination is cancelled by application of its inverse from the
three-dimensional linear group of terrestrial transformations of the
invariant solar source. (3) Kinds of objects support optimal
generalization and categorization when represented, in an
evolutionarily shaped space of possible objects, as connected
regions with associated weights determined by Bayesian revision of
maximum-entropy priors.
____________________________________________________________
2. BARLOW, HORACE (2001) THE EXPLOITATION OF REGULARITIES IN THE
ENVIRONMENT BY THE BRAIN
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2): XXX-XXX.
URL: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.barlow.html
Horace Barlow
Physiological Laboratory
Cambridge CB2 3EG
England
hbb10 at cam.ac.uk
KEYWORDS: Chasles' rule, evolution, geometry, perception, redundancy,
statistics, twisting.
ABSTRACT: Statistical regularities of the environment are important
for learning, memory, intelligence, inductive inference, and in fact
for any area of cognitive science where an information-processing
brain promotes survival by exploiting them. This has been recognised
by many of those interested in cognitive function, starting with
Helmholtz, Mach and Pearson, and continuing through Craik, Tolman,
Attneave, and Brunswik. In the current era many of us have begun to
show how neural mechanisms exploit the regular statistical properties
of natural images. Shepard proposed that the apparent trajectory of
an object when seen successively at two positions results from
internalising the rules of kinematic geometry, and although kinematic
geometry is not statistical in nature, this is clearly a related
idea. Here it is argued that Shepard's term, "internalisation", is
insufficient because it is also necessary to derive an advantage from
the process. Having mechanisms selectively sensitive to the
spatio-temporal patterns of excitation commonly experienced when
viewing moving objects would facilitate the detection, interpolation,
and extrapolation of such motions, and might explain the twisting
motions that are experienced. Although Shepard's explanation in
terms of Chasles' rule seems doubtful, his theory and experiments
illustrate that local twisting motions are needed for the analysis of
moving objects and provoke thoughts about how they might be
detected.
____________________________________________________________
3. HECHT, HEIKO (2001) REGULARITIES OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD AND THE
ABSENCE OF THEIR INTERNALIZATION
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2): XXX-XXX.
URL: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.hecht.html
Heiko Hecht
Man-Vehicle Lab
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mass Ave., Bldg. 37-219, Cambridge, MA 02139
hecht at mit.edu
KEYWORDS: Internalization, Evolution, Event Perception
ABSTRACT: The notion of internalization put forth by Roger Shepard
continues to be appealing and challenging. He suggests that we have
internalized, during our evolutionary development, environmental
regularities or constraints. Internalization solves one of the
hardest problems of perceptual psychology: the underspecification
problem. That is the problem of how well-defined perceptual
experience is generated from the often ambiguous and incomplete
sensory stimulation. Yet, the notion of internalization creates new
problems that may outweigh the solution of the underspecification
problem. To show this, I first examine the concept of
internalization and find it necessary to break it down into several
distinct interpretations. These range from well-resolved dynamic
regularities to ill-resolved statistical regularities. As a function
of the interpretation the researcher selects, an empirical test of
the internalization hypothesis may be straight forward or it may
become virtually impossible. I then attempt to cover the range of
interpretations by drawing on examples from different domains of
visual event perception. Unfortunately, the experimental tests
regarding most candidate regularities, such as gravitational
acceleration, fail to support the concept of internalization. This
suggests that narrow interpretations of the concept should be given
up in favor of more abstract interpretations. However, the latter
are are not easily amenable to empirical testing. There is
nonetheless a way to test by contrasting internalization with the
opposite concept: externalization of body dynamics. I summarize
evidence for such a projection of body constraints onto external
objects. Based on the combined evidence of well-resolved and
ill-resolved regularities, the value of the notion of
internalization has to be reassessed.
____________________________________________________________
4. KUBOVY, MICHAEL (2001) INTERNALIZATION: A METAPHOR WE CAN LIVE WITHOUT
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2): XXX-XXX.
URL: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.kubovy.pdf
Michael Kubovy
The University of Virginia
KEYWORDS: computational approach, cognitive constructivism,
constraints, ecological approach, environmental regularities,
evolution, homomorphism, illusory motion, internality, internalization,
inverse projec-tion problem, kinematic geometry, mental rotation,
metaphors of mind, perception of motion, perceptual universals.
ABSTRACT: Shepard has supposed that the mind is stocked with innate
knowledge of the world and that this knowledge figures prominently
in the way we see the world. According to him, this in-ternal
knowledge is the legacy of a process of internalization; a process
of natural selection over the evolutionary history of the species.
Shepard has developed his proposal most fully in his analysis of the
relation between kinematic geometry and the shape of the motion path
in apparent motion displays. We argue that Shepard has made a case
for applying the principles of kinematic geometry to the perception
of motion, but that he has not made the case for in-jecting these
principles into the mind of the percipient. We offer a more modest
interpretation of his important findings: that kinematic geometry
may be a model of apparent motion. Inas-much as our recommended
interpretation does not lodge geometry in the mind of the percipient
the motivation for positing internalization, a process that moves
kinematic geometry into the mind, is obviated. In our conclusion we
suggest that cognitive psychologists, in their embrace of internal
mental universals and internalization may have been seduced by the
siren call of metaphor.
____________________________________________________________
5. SCHWARTZ, ROBERT (2001) EVOLUTIONARY INTERNALIZED REGULARITIES
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2): XXX-XXX.
URL: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.schwartz.html
Robert Schwartz
Department of Philosophy
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI 53201 U.S.A.
schwartz at uwm.edu
KEYWORDS: apparent motion, circadian rhythms, constraints,
ecoclogical validity, evolution, internalized regularities,
kinematic principle.
ABSTRACT: Roger Shepard's proposals and supporting experiments
concerning evolutionary internalized regularities have been very
influential in the study of vision and in other areas of psychology
and cognitive science. This paper examines issues concerning the
need, nature, explanatory role, and justification for postulating
such internalized constraints. In particular, I seek further
clarification from Shepard on how best to understand his claim that
principles of kinematic geometry underlie phenomena of motion
perception. My primary focus is on the ecological validity of
Shepard's kinematic constraint in the context of ordinary motion
perception. First, I explore the analogy Shepard draws between
internalized circadian rhythms and the supposed internalization of
kinematic geometry. Next, questions are raised about how to
interpret and justify applying results from his own and others
experimental studies of apparent motion to more everyday cases of
motion perception in richer environments. Finally, some
difficulties with Shepard's account of the evolutionary development
of his kinematic constraint are considered.
____________________________________________________________
6. TENENBAUM, JOSHUA B. & GRIFFITHS, THOMAS L. (2001) GENERALIZATION,
SIMILARITY, AND BAYESIAN INFERENCE
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2): XXX-XXX.
URL: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.tenenbaum.html
Joshua B. Tenenbaum & Thomas L. Griffiths
Department of Psychology
Jordan Hall, Building 420
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2130
jbt at psych.stanford.edu
KEYWORDS: Additive clustering, Bayesian inference, categorization,
concept learning, contrast model, features, generalization,
psychological space, similarity.
ABSTRACT: Shepard has argued that a universal law should govern
generalization across different domains of perception and cognition,
as well as across organisms from different species or even different
planets. Starting with some basic assumptions about natural kinds,
he derived an exponential decay function as the form of the
universal generalization gradient, which accords strikingly well
with a wide range of empirical data. However, his original
formulation applied only to the ideal case of generalization from a
single encountered stimulus to a single novel stimulus, and for
stimuli that can be represented as points in a continuous metric
psychological space. Here we recast Shepard's theory in a more
general Bayesian framework and show how this naturally extends his
approach to the more realistic situation of generalizing from
multiple consequential stimuli with arbitrary representational
structure. Our framework also subsumes a version of Tversky's
set-theoretic models of similarity, which is conventionally thought
of as the primary alternative to Shepard's continuous metric space
model of similarity and generalization. This unification allows us
not only to draw deep parallels between the set-theoretic and
spatial approaches, but also to significantly advance the
explanatory power of set-theoretic models.
____________________________________________________________
7. TODOROVIC, DEJAN (2001) IS KINEMATIC GEOMETRY AN INTERNALIZED REGULARITY?
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2): XXX-XXX.
URL: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.todorovic.html
Dejan Todorovic
Department of Psychology,
University of Belgrade,
Serbia,
Yugoslavia
dejan at arvotek.net
dtodorov at dekart.f.bg.ac.yu
KEYWORDS: internalization of regularities, kinematic geometry, simplicity
ABSTRACT: A general framework for the explanation of perceptual
phenomena as internalizations of external regularities was developed
by R.N. Shepard. A particular example of this framework is his
account of perceived curvilinear apparent motions. This paper
contains a brief summary of the relevant psychophysical data, some
basic kinematical considerations and examples, and several
criticisms of Shepard's account. The criticisms concern the
feasibility of internalization of critical motion types, the roles
of simplicity and uniqueness, the contrast between classical physics
and kinematic geometry, the import of perceived path curvilinearity,
and the relation of perceptual and scientific knowledge.
____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
these articles, electronic drafts are retrievable from the World Wide
Web from the US or UK BBS Archive. Please do not prepare a commentary
yet. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant
expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of which
article(s).
We will then let you know whether it was posible to include your name
on the final formal list of invitees.
The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/
____________________________________________________________
*** FIVE SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENTS ***
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(1) There have been some very important developments in the
area of Web archiving of scientific papers very recently.
Please see:
Science: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/science.html
Nature: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/nature.html
Am. Sci.: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/amlet.html
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(2) All authors in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences are
strongly encouraged to archive all their papers (on their
Home-Servers as well as) on CogPrints:
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/
It is extremely simple to do so and will make all of our papers
available to all of us everywhere at no cost to anyone. See:
http://vole.lanl.gov/ups/ups.htm
http://xxx.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/show_monthly_submissions
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(3) BBS has a new policy of accepting submissions electronically.
Authors can specify whether they would like their submissions
archived publicly during refereeing in the BBS under-refereeing
Archive, or in a referees-only, non-public archive.
Upon acceptance, preprints of final drafts are moved to the
public BBS Archive:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/
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(4) BBS has expanded its annual page quota and is now appearing
bimonthly, so the service of Open Peer Commentary can now be be
offered to more target articles. The BBS refereeing procedure is
also going to be considerably faster with the new electronic
submission and processing procedures. Authors are invited to submit
papers to:
Email: bbs at cogsci.soton.ac.uk
Web: http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk
http://bbs.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/
INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/instructions.for.authors.html
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(5) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review
In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) journal had only
been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because
of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota
will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we
treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and
biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you
would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review.
(Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the
basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you
indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you
nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of
potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential
impact!).
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