Search results for "Self-awareness"

A Field Experiment on Perspective-Taking, Helping, and Self-Awareness

2006

The present field experiment examines the effect of self-awareness on adult perspective-taking and on prosocial behavior. University students at an Italian university were interviewed briefly on their campus, and for half of them self-awareness was induced by asking them to hold a mirror before their faces. In the same context they then had to choose between a postcard written in Italian and 1 written in English, to be sent to England. This led to a measure of perspective-taking, and their actual readiness to mail the postcard was taken as an index of prosocial or helping behavior. Both perspective-taking and helping behavior were boosted considerably by self-awareness.

Developing Self-Awareness in Robots via Inner Speech

2019

The experience of inner speech is a common one. Such a dialogue accompanies the introspection of mental life and fulfills essential roles in human behavior, such as self-restructuring, self-regulation, and re-focusing on attentional resources. Although the underpinning of inner speech is mostly investigated in psychological and philosophical fields, the research in robotics generally does not address such a form of self-aware behavior. Existing models of inner speech inspire computational tools to provide a robot with this form of self-awareness. Here, the widespread psychological models of inner speech are reviewed, and a cognitive architecture for a robot implementing such a capability is…

A Beggar, Self-Awareness And Willingness To Help

2008

The present field experiment examines the relationship between self-awareness, violation of personal space and helping  behavior. A beggar asking for alms on the streets. To induce the first experimental condition, the state of objective self-awareness, the beggar had a mirror at chest height, suspended from a string round his neck. In the control condition, in place of the mirror, the beggar held a similarly dimensioned piece of cardboard in the same position. Both mirror and cardboard bore the message "A FEW PENNIES THANKS." As concerned the second experimental condition, the beggar either stood still waiting for people to come up to him, or walked toward the people as they approached, th…

Self in NARS, an AGI System

2018

This article describes and discusses the self-related mechanisms of a general-purpose intelligent system, NARS. This system is designed to be adaptive and to work with insufficient knowledge and resources. The system’s various cognitive functions are uniformly carried out by a central reasoning-learning process following a “non-axiomatic” logic. This logic captures the regularities of human empirical reasoning, where all beliefs are revisable according to evidence, and the meaning of concepts are grounded in the system’s experience. NARS perceives its internal environment basically in the same way as how it perceives its external environment although the sensors involved are completely diff…

Perceptual Self-Awareness in Seneca, Augustine, and Olivi

2013

This article traces the philosophical idea of self-perception from the times of ancient Stoicism to the thirteenth century by analyzing the views of Seneca, Augustine, and Olivi. The central argument is that they defend the same idea according to which self-preservation and the appropriate use of one’s body requires awareness thereof, despite the obvious contextual differences and the uncertainty of direct historical connections between the authors. They think that this kind of self-awareness does not belong only to human beings, because irrational animals need to perceive their bodies, the functions of their bodily parts, and to perceive themselves as living beings in order to act appropri…

Essays on early modern conceptions of consciousness: Descartes, Cudworth, and Locke

2009

Toward Self-Aware Robots

2018

Despite major progress in Robotics and AI, robots are still basically “zombies” repeatedly achieving actions and tasks without understanding what they are doing. Deep-Learning AI programs classify tremendous amounts of data without grasping the meaning of their inputs or outputs. We still lack a genuine theory of the underlying principles and methods that would enable robots to understand their environment, to be cognizant of what they do, to take appropriate and timely initiatives, to learn from their own experience and to show that they know that they have learned and how. The rationale of this paper is that the understanding of its environment by an agent (the agent itself and its effect…

A cultural comparison of mindfulness and student performance: Evidence from university students in five countries

2021

Societal and cultural norms are important in shaping how individuals live, study, and work. Of particular interest in recent research is the role of mindfulness, defined as the ability to focus on the present moment, and how it can impact cognitive function and productivity. This study examines the relationship between scholastic achievement and mindfulness among university students in China, Finland, Germany, South Africa, and the United States. Comparisons between countries with respect to self-reported measures of mindfulness, test anxiety levels, and phone usage are analyzed. These measures are used to determine whether mindfulness affects student performance in introductory economics c…

Higher-order theories of consciousness : an appraisal and application

2010

Literacka próba budzenia tożsamości narodowej Białorusinów. Uładzimir Karatkievič. Życie i droga twórcza

2016

The article aims to present life and work of an outstanding Belarusian writer – Uladzimir Karatkievich (1930–1984). Although the writer is one of the most prominent creators of the Belarusian literature, he is not widely known in Poland. Moreover, only a few of his works have been translated into Polish. Uladzimir Karatkievich was one of the most talented writers in the history of his nation. First of all, he is known as an author of historical novels. He was also an excellent playwright, a literary critic, a historian, a translator and a talented poet. Due to many historical and political reasons he has become for Belarusian literature like Henryk Sienkiewicz or Ignacy Kraszewski for the P…