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Full-Text Articles in Cognitive Science

Large Language Models As Machines Of Beauty: Cognitive Averaging, Latent Space Geometry, And The Entropic Foundations Of Aesthetic Preference, Daniel Plate, James Hutson Dec 2025

Large Language Models As Machines Of Beauty: Cognitive Averaging, Latent Space Geometry, And The Entropic Foundations Of Aesthetic Preference, Daniel Plate, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

This study advances the position that large language models (LLMs) and human perceptual systems are governed by a shared computational drive toward prototypicality, entropy reduction, and aesthetic coherence. Drawing on developmental evidence that infants exhibit early preferences for facial symmetry and averageness, the analysis situates aesthetic preference within broader research on processing fluency and predictive coding, emphasizing that biological perception rewards stimuli that reduce uncertainty and support efficient information compression. This foundation is used to examine how LLMs, through cross-entropy optimization, perplexity minimization, and latent space clustering, converge on high-density representational regions that operate as statistical prototypes of linguistic and …


Using The Hands To Learn About The Brain: Testing Action-Based Instruction In Brain Anatomy, Fey Parrill Jun 2023

Using The Hands To Learn About The Brain: Testing Action-Based Instruction In Brain Anatomy, Fey Parrill

Faculty Scholarship

Brain anatomy is typically taught using static images. We asked participants to use their own hands to represent the brain and perform gestures during learning. We measured learning via a pretest/postest design. We compared five video trainings in which participants heard similar audio and repeated terminology aloud. Conditions were: (1) Image: Participants saw images of a physical model of the brain. (2) Physical model: Participants saw hands pointing to the physical model. (3) Physical model + action: Participants performed actions on the physical model. (4) Hand model: Participants saw images of hands being used to represent the brain. (5) Hand …


Observers Use Gesture To Disambiguate Contrastive Expressions Of Preference, Fey Parrill, Grace Moran, Hannah Boylan, Ishita Gupta, Aisha Zamir Mar 2022

Observers Use Gesture To Disambiguate Contrastive Expressions Of Preference, Fey Parrill, Grace Moran, Hannah Boylan, Ishita Gupta, Aisha Zamir

Faculty Scholarship

We present two studies exploring how participants respond when a speaker contrasts two ideas, then expresses an ambiguous preference towards one of them. Study 1 showed that, when reading a speaker’s preference as text, participants tended to choose whatever was said last as matching the speaker’s preference, reflecting the recent-mention bias of anaphora resolution. In Study 2, we asked whether this pattern changed for audio versions of our stimuli. We found that it did not. We then asked whether observers used gesture to disambiguate the speaker’s preference. Participants watched videos in which two statements were spoken. Co-speech gestures were produced …


مدخل في نظرية المزج بقلم مارك تورنر، الأزهر الزناد: Elements Of Blending, Mark Bernard Turner Jan 2013

مدخل في نظرية المزج بقلم مارك تورنر، الأزهر الزناد: Elements Of Blending, Mark Bernard Turner

Faculty Scholarship

This is a translation into Arabic by Lazhar Zanned of Elements of Blending by Mark Turner, which presents the basics of the theory of conceptual integration.


Figure, Mark Bernard Turner Jan 1998

Figure, Mark Bernard Turner

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter reviews the origins of construction grammar, beginning with classical antiquity; analyzes the nature of figure in thought and multimodal communication; and provides an anchor for studies of figure in the basic mental operation of conceptual blending.


Blending As A Central Process Of Grammar, Mark Bernard Turner Jan 1996

Blending As A Central Process Of Grammar, Mark Bernard Turner

Faculty Scholarship

Constructions are long-term memory associations of form and meaning. How are they formed and learned, how do they change, and how do they combine into new utterances (constructs, communicative performances) in working memory? This chapter analyzes the role and process of conceptual integration (blending) in the creation and use of constructions.


Death Is The Mother Of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism, Mark Bernard Turner Jan 1987

Death Is The Mother Of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism, Mark Bernard Turner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.