The ability to anticipate team members' actions enables joint action towards a common goal. Task knowledge and mental simulation allow for anticipating other agents' actions and for making inferences about their underlying mental representations. In human–AI teams, providing AI agents with anticipatory mechanisms can facilitate collaboration and successful execution of joint action. This paper presents a computational cognitive model demonstrating mental simulation of operators' mental models of a situation and anticipation of their behavior. The work proposes two successive steps: (1) (...) A hierarchical cluster algorithm is applied to recognize patterns of behavior among pilots. These behavioral clusters are used to derive commonalities in situation models from empirical data (N = 13 pilots). (2) An ACT-R (adaptive control of thought - rational) cognitive model is implemented to mentally simulate different possible outcomes of action decisions and timing of a pilot. model tracing of ACT-R allows following up on operators' individual actions. Two models are implemented using the symbolic representations of ACT-R: one simulating normative behavior and the other by simulating individual differences and using subsymbolic learning. Model performance is analyzed by a comparison of both models. Results indicate the improved performance of the individual differences over the normative model and are discussed regarding implications for cognitive assistance capable of anticipating operator behavior. (shrink)

When people are performing a task, it is hard to know whether they are about to make a mistake. Klaproth, Halbrügge, Krol, Vernaleken, Zander, and Russwinkel address this by recording EEG signals while people are performing a flight control task, and show that by examining the EEG signal they can determine when people failed to notice particular stimuli, which could lead to better assistive tools.

Genetic moderation of experience of reward in response to environmental stimuli is relevant for the study of many psychiatric disorders. Experience of reward, however, is difficult to capture, as it involves small fluctuations in affect in response to small events in the flow of daily life. This study examined a momentary assessment reward phenotype in relation to the catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) Val158Met polymorphism. A total of 351 participants from a twin study participated in an Experience Sampling Method procedure to collect (...) daily life experiences concerning events, event appraisals, and affect. Reward experience was operationalized, as the effect of event appraisal on positive affect (PA). Associations between COMT Val 158Met genotype and event appraisal on the one hand and PA on the other were examined using multilevel random regression analysis. Ability to experience reward increased with the number of ‘Met’ alleles of the subject, and this differential effect of genotype was greater for events that were experienced as more pleasant. The effect size of genotypic moderation was quite large: subjects with the Val/Val genotype generated almost similar amounts of PA from a ‘very pleasant event’ as Met/Met subjects did from a ‘bit pleasant event’. Genetic variation with functional impact on cortical dopamine tone has a strong influence on reward experience in the flow of daily life. Genetic moderation of ecological measures of reward experience is hypothesized to be of major relevance to the development of various behavioral disorders, including depression and addiction. Neuropsychopharmacology (2008) 33, 3030–3036; doi:10.1038/sj.npp.1301520; published online 8 August 2007.. (shrink)

As time-shifting technologies and digital convergence are facilitating and encouraging increasingly individualized and personalized television viewing practices, the social role and function of traditional linear television might be changing as well. Through empirical audience research, using TV diaries and interviews, this article investigates the social dimensions of engaged viewers’ reception of TV drama and explores how audiences themselves experience contemporary television as a social medium. The qualitative analysis reveals three social dimensions in viewers’ engagement with TV drama and indicates that (...) television is generally still perceived as a social medium. Time-shifting technologies do not only fracture audiences, they also create new opportunities for social connections with peer viewers. (shrink)

Educational Theory, Volume 72, Issue 1, Page 65-83, February 2022.

This paper reports a Contingent Valuation application to estimate the non-market costs and benefits of hydro scheme developments in an Icelandic wilderness area. A deliberative group -based approach, called Market Stall, is compared to a control group consisting of conventional in-person interviews, in order to investigate flaws of Contingent Valuation, such as poor validity and protest responses. Perceived property rights suggested the use of willingness-to-accept in compensation for wilderness loss and willingness-to-pay for hydro scheme benefits. The study is novel as (...) it applies participant behaviour observation to gain insights into the shortcomings of conventional data collection modes. Main drawbacks with in-person interviews were found to be low motivation, standardised information and time pressure which hindered individuals from carefully considering their preferences. Market Stall performed better in the study: welfare estimates were more easily explained by socio-economic variables, the non-response rate was lower, and respondents were more engaged. Our research findings also suggest that participant behaviour can be used to supplement conventional validity tests. (shrink)

Wir reden gelegentlich von Kompromissen, die wir mit uns selbst schließen. Aber ist diese Rede angemessen oder gar berechtigt? Schließlich lassen sich wesentliche Merkmale von Kompromissen mit anderen nicht auf das Selbstverhältnis einer Person übertragen. Dennoch kann sich die Rede unter gewissen Umständen als sinnvoll erweisen. Der Artikel gibt Kriterien dafür an und stellt sich vor allem die Frage, ob und in welcher Hinsicht solche selbstbezüglichen Kompromisse eine Gefahr für die Integrität der Person darstellen.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 1, Page 55-66, February 2022.

Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft sind zentrale Begriffe der Sozialphilosophie und der politischen Philosophie. Die Untersuchung der Begriffe Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft sowie ihres Verhältnisses zueinander erfolgt in der vorliegenden Arbeit im Rahmen der philosophischen Frage nach Möglichkeit, Konstitution und Kritik des Sozialen. In ihrer Studie wendet sich Nele Schneidereit gegen die tradierte Opposition von Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft beschreiben zwei zu unterscheidende Aspekte eines in sich vermittelten Zusammenhangs. Diese zunächst negativ-traditionskritische These wird ergänzt durch die positiv-systematische These, dass Gemeinschaft (...) und Gesellschaft als Grundbegriffe einer kritischen Sozialphilosophie zu begreifen sind, deren Kern der Begriff einer politischen Gemeinschaft ist. Dabei entfaltet die Autorin ihre Argumentation vor allem entlang der Schriften von Ferdinand Tönnies und Helmuth Plessner. (shrink)

ABSTRACTVideogames often confront players with frustratingly difficult challenges, fearsome enemies, and tragic stories. As such, they can evoke feelings of failure, sadness, anger, and fear. Although these feelings are usually regarded as undesirable, many players seem to enjoy videogames which cause them. In this paper, I argue that player misery often originates from a fictional or lusory attitude which brackets game events from real-life, making the player’s emotions solely relevant within the game context. As they are part of the game (...) themselves, these negative emotions can be enjoyed and easily relativized, since players can acknowledge that their cause is ‘only a game’. However, there are feelings of misery associated with the playing of videogames which are not caused by either the game’s fiction or challenge. In the last part of this paper, I describe a qualitatively different kind of player misery: one that is caused by elements that are not perceived as part of the game by the player, and is no... (shrink)

What do players of videogames mean when they say they want to shoot zombies? Surely they know that the zombies are not real, and that they cannot really shoot them, but only control a fictional character who does so. Some philosophers of fiction argue that we need the concept of imaginative desires to explain situations in which people feel desires towards fictional characters or desires that motivate pretend actions. Others claim that we can explain these situations without complicating human psychology (...) with a novel mental state. Within their debates, however, these scholars exclusively focus on non-interactive fictions and children’s games of make-believe. In this paper, I argue that our experience of immersive, interactive fictions like videogames gives us cause to reappraise the concept of imaginative desires. Moreover, I describe how i-desires are a useful conceptual tool within videogame development and can shed new light on apparently immoral in-game actions. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the comic potential that originates in the way players of digital games take on the dual position of being at once a played self that is internal to the gameworld and a playing self that perceives this world from the outside. I first describe the comic attitude as it is defined within philosophy: as an attitude of distanced and dispassionate reflection towards an incongruity. I then show how the dual position of players during gameplay not only is (...) characterized by incongruities, such as contradictions between the apparent seriousness and the ultimate triviality of in-game actions, but also allows players to dispassionately reflect on these incongruities. I thus argue that digital gameplay entails the inherent possibility of turning players into both a comic object and a laughing subject. (shrink)

In this chapter, I investigate the imaginary boundary between the actual world and fictional gameworlds by focusing on videogame situations in which this fourth wall is foregrounded or broken. For this purpose, I first define the videogame experience as a self-involving, interactive fiction experience, based on Kendall Walton’s account of fiction (1990). I then describe how, in the current academic discourse on games, it is often claimed that the concept of fourth wall breaks cannot be applied to videogames due to (...) their inherent interactivity. Within game studies, the consensus seems to be that the boundaries between the real and the fictional world are always already blurred in videogame experiences. This chapter instead shows how using interactive, digital technologies to represent fictional worlds does not necessarily complicate the conceptualization of the fourth wall, but rather reveals new ways in which it can be broken. More precisely, this chapter discusses how appreciators of videogames can not only actively participate in fourth wall breaks, but are also uniquely able to initiate these breaks themselves. -/- . (shrink)

Similar to visual perception, auditory perception also has a clearly described “pop-out” effect, where an element with some extra feature is easier to detect among elements without an extra feature. This phenomenon is better known as auditory perceptual asymmetry. We investigated such asymmetry between shorter or longer duration, and level or falling of pitch of linguistic stimuli that carry a meaning in one language (Estonian), but not in another (Russian). For the mismatch negativity (MMN) experiment, we created four different types (...) of stimuli by modifying the duration of the first vowel [ɑ] (170, 290 ms) and pitch contour (level vs. falling pitch) of the stimuli words (‘SATA,’ ‘SAKI’). The stimuli were synthesized from Estonian words (‘SATA,’ ‘SAKI’) and follow the Estonian language three-way quantity system, which incorporates tonal features (falling pitch contour) together with temporal patterns. This made the meaning of the word dependent on the combination of both features and allows us to compare the relative contribution of duration and pitch contour in discrimination of language stimuli in the brain via MMN generation. The participants of the experiment were 12 Russian native speakers with little or no experience in Estonian and living in Estonia short-term, and 12 Estonian native speakers (age 18–27 years). We found that participants’ perception of the linguistic stimuli differed not only according to the physical features but also according to their native language, confirming that the meaning of the word interferes with the early automatic processing of phonological features. The GAMM and ANOVA analysis of the reversed design results showed that the deviant with longer duration among shorter standards elicited a MMN response with greater amplitude than the short deviant among long standards, while changes in pitch contour (falling vs. level pitch) produced neither strong MMN nor asymmetry. Thus, we demonstrate the effect of language background on asymmetric perception of linguistic stimuli that aligns with those of previous studies (Jaramillo et al., 2000), and contributes to the growing body of knowledge supporting auditory perceptual asymmetry. (shrink)

Handeln, Personsein, Menschenwürde und zahlreiche Fragen der Angewandten Ethik – das ist das weite Spektrum dieser Festschrift und auch des Denkens von Ralf Stoecker, dem sie gewidmet ist. Ganz in seinem Geiste laden die Beiträge des Bandes dazu ein, zusammen zu denken und zusammenzudenken, was – möglicherweise – zusammengehört.

As artefacts, the worlds of digital games are designed and developed to fulfil certain expressive, functional, and experiential objectives. During play, players infer these purposes and aspirations from various aspects of their engagement with the gameworld. Influenced by their sociocultural backgrounds, sensitivities, gameplay preferences, and familiarity with game conventions, players construct a subjective interpretation of the intentions with which they believe the digital game in question was created. By analogy with the narratological notion of the implied author, we call the (...) figure to which players ascribe these intentions ‘the implied designer’. In this article, we introduce the notion of the implied designer and present an initial account of how appreciators ascribe meaning to interactive, fictional gameworlds and act within them based on what they perceive to be the designer’s intentions. (shrink)

How can we be moved by the fate of Anna Karenina? By asking this question, Colin Radford introduced the paradox of fiction, or the problem that we are often emotionally moved by characters and events which we know don’t really exist (1975). A puzzling element of these emotions that always resurfaced within discussions on the paradox is the fact that, although these emotions feel real to the people who have them, their difference from ›real‹ emotions is that they cannot motivate (...) us to perform any actions. The idea that actions towards fictional particulars are impossible still underlies recent work within the philosophy of fiction (cf. Matravers 2014, 26 sqq.; Friend 2017, 220; Stock 2017, 168). In the past decennia, however, the medium of interactive fiction has challenged this idea. Videogames, especially augmented and virtual reality games, offer us agency in their fictional worlds: players of computer games can interact with fictional objects, save characters that are invented, and kill monsters that are clearly non-existent within worlds that are mere representations on a screen. In a parallel to Radford’s original question, we might ask: how can we be moved to shoot zombies, when we know they aren’t real? The purpose of this article is to examine the new paradox of interactive fiction, which questions how we can be moved to act on objects we know to be fictional, its possible solutions, and its connection to the traditional paradox of fictional emotions. (shrink)

More generally, within videogame studies, glitches are often described as an interesting part of the player experience, for example as possibilities to gain unfair advantages in games (Bainbridge & Bainbridge 2007; Newman 2008; Meades 2015), expressive tools to create humorous effects (Jaroslav Švelch 2014), jarring confrontations with forms of non-human agency (Janik 2017; Gualeni 2019), or as ways to create glitch-art (Menkman 2011). But when it comes to the specifically fictional experience of videogames, there seems to be a consensus that (...) glitches have no role to play except for breaking the players’ feeling of immersion and the reality effect of the game’s fictional environment (cf. Holmes 2010: 261; Kubiński 2014: 135; Janik 2017: 75). -/- Here, we focus on the underexplored fictional relevance of videogame glitches. For this purpose, we will make use philosophical theories on fiction, as well as standard suggestions about how best to deal with unintended errors within fiction. Focusing on glitches like that of Red Dead Redemption's so-called manimals, we argue that glitches, more than any kinds of mistakes in traditional, non-interactive fictions, can actually have a significant influence on the fictional worlds of the work in which they appear. In particular, we will show that some glitches generate new fictional content without this content being intended by a videogame’s creators, and will offer practical ways for dealing with the inconsistencies that inevitably accompany such glitch-generated fictions. (shrink)

Handeln, Personsein, Menschenwürde und zahlreiche Fragen der Angewandten Ethik – das ist das weite Spektrum dieser Festschrift und auch des Denkens von Ralf Stoecker, dem sie gewidmet ist. Ganz in seinem Geiste laden die Beiträge des Bandes dazu ein, zusammen zu denken und zusammenzudenken, was – möglicherweise – zusammengehört.

Emotions Caused by Untrue Propositions: A Broader View of the Paradox of Fiction Ever since Colin Radford wrote his article ‘How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?’ in 1975, philosophers have tried to solve the so-called paradox of fiction, or the question how we can be moved by objects of which we know they don’t really exist. What is striking about discussions on the paradox of fiction is that they often present fictional works as collections of (...) untrue statements and focus on the content of these works, without regard for their form or mode of presentation. In this paper, I argue for a re-examination of the paradox of fiction, in which the work of fiction is treated as a complex of form and content. In this regard, I propose to expand Peter Lamarque’s thought theory, which he explicitly formulated to solve the paradox of fiction, with his later developed concept of opacity, which states that the content of the imaginings we form when reading fiction are fundamentally connected to the specific descriptions within the fictional work. (shrink)

To realize a successful and collaborative interaction between human and robots remains a big challenge. Emotional reactions of the user provide crucial information for a successful interaction. These reactions carry key factors to prevent errors and fatal bidirectional misunderstanding. In cases where human–machine interaction does not proceed as expected, negative emotions, like frustration, can arise. Therefore, it is important to identify frustration in a human–machine interaction and to investigate its impact on other influencing factors such as dominance, sense of control (...) and task performance. This paper presents a study that investigates a close cooperative work situation between human and robot, and explore the influence frustration has on the interaction. The task for the participants was to hand over colored balls to two different robot systems (an anthropomorphic robot and a robotic arm). The robot systems had to throw the balls into appropriate baskets. The coordination between human and robot was controlled by various gestures and words by means of trial and error. Participants were divided into two groups, a frustration- (FRUST) and a no frustration- (NOFRUST) group. Frustration was induced by the behavior of the robotic systems which made errors during the ball handover. Subjective and objective methods were used. The sample size of participants wasN= 30 and the study was conducted in a between-subject design. Results show clear differences in perceived frustration in the two condition groups and different behavioral interactions were shown by the participants. Furthermore, frustration has a negative influence on interaction factors such as dominance and sense of control. The study provides important information concerning the influence of frustration on human–robot interaction (HRI) for the requirements of a successful, natural, and social HRI. The results (qualitative and quantitative) are discussed in favor of how a successful und effortless interaction between human and robot can be realized and what relevant factors, like appearance of the robot and influence of frustration on sense of control, have to be regarded. (shrink)

This paper analyzes from a pragmatic postphenomenological point of view the performative practice of CREW, a multi-disciplinary team of artists and researchers. It is our argument that this company, in its use of new immersive technologies in the context of a live stage, gives rise to a dialectics between an embodied and a disembodied perspective towards the perceived world. We will focus on W (Double U), a collaborative interactive performance, where immersive technology is used for live exchange of vision. By (...) means of a head mounted omni-directional camera and display the fields of vision of two participants are swapped, which enables the participants to perceive the world through another person’s point of view. This intermedial experience brings a classic dichotomic perception of space to falter: material reality as a ‘live’ condition can no longer be opposed to a virtual mediated reality. In the shifting moment between the embodied and the perceived world, on the fracture between what one sees and what one feels, the distinction between live and mediated is blurred, moreover, can no longer be made. The perception of the body is pushed to the extreme, causing a most confusing corporal awareness, a condition that intensifies the experience and causes an altered sense of presence. In a dynamic cognitive negotiation, one tends, however, to unify the divergent ontologies of the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ to a meaningful experience. In this respect, we refer to recent neurological experiments such as the ‘rubber hand illusion’ in order to clarify the spectator’s tendency to fuse both ontologies and to embody a coherent image-world. (shrink)

The sense of wonder and admiration experienced by individuals who witness a striking sight, whether natural or man-made, has long been regarded as playing a role in the acquisition of knowledge. Both Aristotle and plato regarded wonder and admiration (θαύμα), sparked by something seen, as the origin of philosophical thinking. In the Middle Ages, theological writers considered the way in which admiration and, specifically, the state of rapture it engendered, helped the Christian experience devotion to God. What happened when a (...) beholder was filled with admiration upon encountering a magnificent building was addressed in discussions of magnificent patronage from at least the thirteenth century. The present Note investigates how Alberti’s reflections on magnificence and admiration informed his theory of aesthetic design in De re aedificatoria, completed in the 1450s. It proposes that Alberti redefined what makes a building admirable or ‘magnificent’ and also understood ‘beholding in admiration’ to be an active mode of looking. Therefore, his views on magnificent architecture were subtly different from those of Pope Nicolas V, in particular. By considering Alberti’s theory of aesthetic design as a reflection on magnificence and admiration, additional light is also shed on his confidence in the protective power of beauty and his design recommendations for the temple. (shrink)