Perceptual–motor constraints on decision making: The case of the manual search behavior for hidden objects in toddlers

The use of robots for augmentative manipulation during play activities among children with motor impairment: a scoping review

PURPOSE

To describe the extent, type, and quality of studies involving robots for augmentative manipulation during play by children with severe motor impairments (CwSMI), and to explore how they influenced children's cognitive skills and engagement.

METHODS

Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed & EBSCO were systematically searched for articles published until March 2021, that reported cognitive skills and/or engagement outcomes from interventions involving the use of robots in play activities, where participants included CwSMI, and full-text was available. Data extracted comprised characteristics of participants, study design, purpose of the study, outcomes assessed, collection methods, and intervention carried out (robot-environment interaction and robot used).

RESULTS

Eight mobile robots and five robotic arms were reported in the 17 included and reviewed articles. Most of them informed a positive impact on CwSMI's cognitive skills and/or engagement. However, the studies scored poorly on a five-criteria quality assessment, and only one single-case design proved strong evidence of treatment. None of the analysed interventions was an evidence-based practice.

CONCLUSION

The use of manipulative robots during play activities may have a positive impact on the CwSMI's cognitive skills and engagement in activities. However, further studies with higher internal and external validity are needed to support stronger evidence.Implications for rehabilitationThe use of robots for augmentative manipulation during play activities may have a positive influence on the cognitive functions and the engagement in activities of children with severe motor impairments.Through manipulative robots, this population could be able to show the abilities that are hidden due to their motor impairments, and subsequently, receive educational and physical training more aligned with their real capacities and potential.

Rationality and cognitive bias in captive gorillas' and orang-utans' economic decision-making

Human economic decision-making sometimes appears to be irrational. Partly, this is due to cognitive biases that can lead to suboptimal economic choices and context-dependent risk-preferences. A pertinent question is whether such biases are part of our evolutionary heritage or whether they are culturally acquired. To address this, we tested gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and orang-utans (Pongo abelii) with two risk-assessment experiments that differed in how risk was presented. For both experiments, we found that subjects increased their preferences for the risky options as their expected gains increased, showing basic understanding of reward contingencies and rational decision-making. However, we also found consistent differences in risk proneness between the two experiments, as subjects were risk-neutral in one experiment and risk-prone in the other. We concluded that gorillas and orang-utans are economically rational but that their decisions can interact with pre-existing cognitive biases which modulates their risk-preference in context-dependent ways, explaining the variability of their risk-preference in previous literature.

What the study of spinal cord injured patients can tell us about the significance of the body in cognition

Although in the last three decades philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists have produced numerous studies on human cognition, the debate concerning its nature is still heated and current views on the subject are somewhat antithetical. On the one hand, there are those who adhere to a view implying 'disembodiment' which suggests that cognition is based entirely on symbolic processes. On the other hand, a family of theories referred to as the Embodied Cognition Theories (ECT) postulate that creating and maintaining cognition is linked with varying degrees of inherence to somatosensory and motor representations. Spinal cord injury induces a massive body-brain disconnection with the loss of sensory and motor bodily functions below the lesion level but without directly affecting the brain. Thus, SCI may represent an optimal model for testing the role of the body in cognition. In this review, we describe post-lesional cognitive modifications in relation to body, space and action representations and various instances of ECT. We discuss the interaction between body-grounded and symbolic processes in adulthood with relevant modifications after body-brain disconnection.

Decision-making under risk of gain in young children and mangabey monkeys

In contrast to human adults, risk proneness in the gain domain is usually observed in both young children and non-human primates. It is currently unclear what mechanism might be underlying such economic preferences. We investigated decision-making under risk of gain in toddlers and monkeys. The choices of 2.5-year-old children and red-capped mangabeys (Cercocebus torquatus torquatus) were examined in a gambling task for food reward in which participants have to choose between two options, a secure option and a risky option. In contrast to monkeys, toddlers showed a strong preference for the risky option over the safe option. In order to test the hypothesis that risky choices in participants reflect inhibitory control difficulties, toddlers and mangabeys were presented in Experiment 2 with a situation analogous to that used in Experiment 1 except for the fact that the opaque cover under which was placed the secure option was replaced by a transparent cover. In this second experiment, toddlers continued to show a preference for the risky option over the safe option. In contrast, mangabeys showed a preference for the safe option over the risky option in Trial 1 but they shifted their economic preferences in Trial 2. We argue that decision-making strategies under risk of gain in both toddlers and mangabeys (a) do not reflect poor behavioral control and (b) are not reducible to perception-action couplings.

A Lifespan Perspective on Embodied Cognition

Since its infancy embodied cognition research has fundamentally changed our understanding of how action, perception, and cognition relate to and interact with each other. Ideas from different schools of thought have led to controversial theories and a unifying framework is still being debated. In this perspective paper, we argue that in order to improve our understanding of embodied cognition and to take significant steps toward a comprehensive framework, a lifespan approach is mandatory. Given that most established theories have been developed and tested in the adult population, which is characterized by relatively robust and stable sensorimotor and cognitive abilities, we deem it questionable whether embodied cognition effects found in this population are representative for different life stages such as childhood or the elderly. In contrast to adulthood, childhood is accompanied by a rapid increase of sensorimotor and cognitive skills, and the old age by a decline of such capacities. Hence, sensorimotor and cognitive capacities, as well as their interactions, are more fragile at both extremes of the lifespan, thereby offering a unique window into the emergence of embodied cognition effects and age-related differences therein. A lifespan approach promises to make a major contribution toward a unifying and comprehensive theory of embodied cognition that is valid across the lifespan and ‘gets better with age.’

The role of motor memory in action selection and procedural learning: insights from children with typical and atypical development

Motor memory is the process by which humans can adopt both persistent and flexible motor behaviours. Persistence and flexibility can be assessed through the examination of the cooperation/competition between new and old motor routines in the motor memory repertoire. Two paradigms seem to be particularly relevant to examine this competition/cooperation. First, a manual search task for hidden objects, namely the C-not-B task, which allows examining how a motor routine may influence the selection of action in toddlers. The second paradigm is procedural learning, and more precisely the consolidation stage, which allows assessing how a previously learnt motor routine becomes resistant to subsequent programming or learning of a new – competitive – motor routine. The present article defends the idea that results of both paradigms give precious information to understand the evolution of motor routines in healthy children. Moreover, these findings echo some clinical observations in developmental neuropsychology, particularly in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder. Such studies suggest that the level of equilibrium between persistence and flexibility of motor routines is an index of the maturity of the motor system.

Embodiment in Children’s Choice

In the traditional framework of cognitive psychology, the brain—viewed as a device for manipulating arbitrary symbols—remains the organ of decision making. However, the dimension of embodiment should not be ignored in investigations of decision-making processes in tasks involving a motor response. Experimental research in developmental psychology has shown that perceptual-motor constraints affect the explicit choices infants and toddlers make in some tasks. In these situations, the ability to make action choices that were previously thought to be highly abstract now appears to be attributable to an embodied-cognition approach. These developments concerning embodiment in children’s choice, and their implication for our understanding of human voluntary action, form the subject of this article.

Working memory and inhibitory control in visually guided manual search in toddlers

Toddlers undergo a transition at about 2.5-3 years-of-age that dramatically improves their ability to search for hidden objects. The development of these skills seems to depend on the development of executive functions. We used a correlational design to investigate which components of executive function might be involved in this improved search. Three tests of working memory did not correlate with search performance, but a test of inhibitory/cognitive control was associated with performance increases. Improvement seemed to be the result of control of visual attention and responding in the face of misleading visual events and not the result of improvements in working memory.