fuNctioN cReeP

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Infants follow the gazes of robots who adults treat as people, a study shows, but ignore ones they don't. The study offers clues to how children learn to think of others as people, not things.

"Children learn from us all the time, even when we think they aren't watching," says psychologist Andrew Meltzoff of the University of Washington in Seattle. "One of the things they are watching is who we treat as thinking beings."

In the Neural Networks journal, Meltzoff and colleagues, tested "gaze following", the basic ability to direct your attention to where you see others looking. "Although adults follow a person who re-orients his head towards an object in external space, they do not do so when a swivel chair spins or a teapot rotates about its vertical axis. What defines a perceiver worth following, and how does an infant recognize one?," asked the study.

So, the team tested 64 infants, aged 18 months, in a lab equipped with toys and a robot hidden behind a screen. After letting the infants play, they removed the screen and let the kids see the robot. In some tests, an adult talked to the robot and played a game with it. In others, the adult ignored the robot.

After the adult left the room, the robot beeped and then turned its head to look at a toy to the side of the infant. In cases where the adult had played with the robot, the infant was four times more likely to follow the robot's gaze to the toy. "It is a highly significant statistical result," Meltzoff says.

The result has several implications. One is that companion robots or tutors for kids should be treated like people, essentially, to orient the kids to perceive them as worth regarding. Another is that social robots, now being used as a low-stimulus tool to teach autistic children who have trouble with gaze following, might work better if treated as people in their introductions. Another is the insight into how children learn who is a thinking person, a key question for psychologists trying to figure out how we come to understand the people around us during childhood.

"I'm not saying people need to buy a companion robot, nothing of the sort," Meltzoffsays. "But we think it is a very interesting result."
(more)

Written at 4:18 AM by rene - PermaLink

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fuNctioN cReeP: is what occurs when an item, process, or procedure designed for a specific purpose ends up serving another purpose for which it was never planned to perform.

Big Brother: an entity that is able to watch over all our actions in a unknown restrictive, controlling way with covert technology or other clandestine activities. It is commonly used to refer to a fear of the day when we will have zero privacy, due to government surveillance and personal accurate knowledge. The term was born from George Orwell's book "1984" where a government controls its citizens through continual surveillance.

The 4th Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Panopticon: first used by Jeremy Bentham as an architectual model in designing a prison. The concept follows that you could save money by building a circular prison with a singular tower in the middle for the guard. By keeping the guard in the dark and all the prisoners in the light, those being guarded could not tell when they were being watched.

Surveillance: In the middle ages, Surveillance was a man on a horse who was called a "scout." Now surveillance includes satellite imagery and aerial photography, sometimes from unmanned aircraft, and computer network hacking. Some more common, everyday surveillance techniques include eavesdropping, dumpster diving, video monitoring, and RFID.

Biometrics: automated methods of recognizing a person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic. Among the features measured are; face, fingerprints, hand geometry, handwriting, iris, retinal, vein, and voice. Biometric technologies are becoming the foundation of an extensive array of highly secure identification and personal verification solutions.

Iris Scanning is a method of biometric identification; pattern recognition is used to determine the identity of the subject. Iris scans create high-resolution images of the irides of the eye; IR illumination is used to reduce specular reflection from the cornea. The iris itself is a "good subject" for biometric identification, because it is an internal organ that is well protected, it is mostly flat and it has a fine texture that is unique even for identical twins.

RFID stands for Radio Frequency IDentification, a technology that uses tiny computer chips smaller than a grain of sand to track items at a distance. RFID "spy chips" have been hidden in the packaging of Gillette razor products and in other products you might buy at a local Wal-Mart, Target, or Tesco - and they are already being used to spy on people.

The VeriChip passive RFID device is the core of key VeriChip applications. About the size of a grain of rice, each VeriChip contains a unique verification number, which can be used to access a Subscriber-supplied database providing specific information. Once implanted just under the skin, via a quick, painless outpatient procedure (much like getting a shot), the VeriChip can be scanned when necessary with a proprietary VeriChip scanner. A small amount of radio frequency energy passes from the scanner energizing the dormant VeriChip, which then emits a radio frequency signal transmitting the individuals unique verification (VeriChipID) number.