• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.281-292
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of gesture and facial expression on persona effects. Fifty-six college students were recruited for this study, and non-verbal communication skills were applied to a pedagogical agent with gesture (conversational vs. deictic) and facial expression. The conversational gesture may have relationship with social interaction hypothesis of pedagogical agent while the deictic gesture may have relationship with attentional guidance hypothesis. The facial expression can be assumed to facilitate the social interaction between the pedagogical agent and learners. Interestingly, the conversational gesture group showed a tendency of outperforming the deictic gesture group. It may imply that the social interaction theory has a strong impact on cognitive support as well as social interaction for learners. There was a significant interaction effect on the engagement when both of facial expression and conversational gesture were applied. This result has two implications. First, facial expression can facilitate the persona effect for engagement.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.249-258
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• 2017

To examine the effect of biflorin, a component of Syzygium aromaticum, on memory deficit, we introduced a scopolamine-induced cognitive deficit mouse model. A single administration of biflorin increased latency time in the passive avoidance task, ameliorated alternation behavior in the Y-maze, and increased exploration time in the Morris water maze task, indicating the improvement of cognitive behaviors against cholinergic dysfunction. The biflorin-induced reverse of latency in the scopolamine-treated group was attenuated by MK-801, an NMDA receptor antagonist. Biflorin also enhanced cognitive function in a naïve mouse model. To understand the mechanism of biflorin for memory amelioration, we performed Western blot. Biflorin increased the activation of protein kinase C-${\zeta}$ and its downstream signaling molecules in the hippocampus. These results suggest that biflorin ameliorates drug-induced memory impairment by modulation of protein kinase C-${\zeta}$ signaling in mice, implying that biflorin could function as a possible therapeutic agent for the treatment of cognitive problems.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.135-157
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• 2014

The present study investigated whether 6- and 12-month-old infants could infer an agent's social preference on the basis of intentions. In Experiment 1, 12-month-old infants were first familiarized with two kinds of event: the helping and the hindering events. In the helping event, an agent (either a square or triangle) tried to help a circle climb up the hill and the movie stopped right before the circle reached the top of the hill. Thus, the outcome of the helping behavior was made to be ambiguous. Similarly, in the hindering movie, another agent tried to hinder the circle from reaching the top of the hill and the movie stopped right before the circle slipped down to the base of the hill making the final outcome of the hindering behavior unclear. During the test trial, infants were either presented with an event in which the circle approached the helper (approach-helper condition) or an event in which the circle approached the hinderer (approach-hinderer condition). The results indicated that both 6- and 12-month-olds looked longer at the approach-helper event than at the approach-hinderer event. Thus, by 6 months of age, infants are sensitive to agents' intentions when reasoning about agents' social preference. The current findings add to the emerging evidence on social evaluation and moral reasoning during infancy.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.351-368
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• 2005

The manual construction of the knowledge-base takes much time and effort, and it is hard to adjust intelligence systems to dynamic and flexible environment. Thus mental development in those systems has been investigated in recent years. Autonomous mental development is a new paradigm for developing autonomous machines, which are adaptive and flexible to the environment. Learning conversation, a kind of mental development, is an important aspect of conversational agents. In this paper, we propose a learning conversation method for conversational agents which uses several promising techniques; speech-act templates and genetic programming. Knowledge acquisition of conversational agents is implemented by finite state machines and templates, and dynamic sentence generation is implemented by genetic programming Several illustrations and usability tests how the usefulness of the proposed method.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.10B no.7
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• pp.795-802
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• 2003

To live autonomously, intelligent agents such as robots or virtual characters need ability that recognizes given environment, and learns and chooses adaptive actions. So, we propose an action selection/learning mechanism in intelligent agents. The proposed mechanism employs a hybrid system which integrates a behavior-based method using the reinforcement learning and a cognitive-based method using the symbolic learning. The characteristics of our mechanism are as follows. First, because it learns adaptive actions about environment using reinforcement learning, our agents have flexibility about environmental changes. Second, because it learns environmental factors for the agent's goals using inductive machine learning and association rules, the agent learns and selects appropriate actions faster in given surrounding and more efficiently in extended surroundings. Third, in implementing the intelligent agents, we considers only the recognized states which are found by a state detector rather than by all states. Because this method consider only necessary states, we can reduce the space of memory. And because it represents and processes new states dynamically, we can cope with the change of environment spontaneously.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.47-56
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to test the effect of pedagogical agent realism and expertise on persona effect. There were two perspectives of the pedagogical agents' social interaction. Self-identification hypothesis argues that complexity of agent image is better to increase social interaction. Subjective identification insists that simplified image is more helpful to facilitate social interaction. However, from the cognitive load theory perspective, learners' expertise can be a major factor to determine persona effect. Sixty-eight college students (male=19 and female=49) participated. The independent variables were the degree of realism of pedagogical agent (detailed vs. simplified image) and the expertise (high prior knowledge group vs. low prior knowledge group). The dependant variables were comprehension test and the agent persona instrument (API). There was no significant difference in comprehension test score; however, there were significant interaction effect on the most constructs of API: 1) facilitating of learning, 2) credible, and 3) human-like. The follow-up analysis of simple main effect revealed that high expertise group showed significantly higher perception of the three construct with high realism of pedagogical agent. The results of study show that learners' expertise plays a key role of perception of persona effect.

• Korean Journal of Pharmacognosy
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.97-103
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• 2013

Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder and characterized by positive symptom (i.e., delusions, hallucinations), negative symptom (i.e., lack of emotion, social withdrawal), and cognitive impairment. Previously, we reported that the ethanolic extract of Prunella vulgaris var. lilacina attenuated the MK-801-induced schizophrenia-like behaviors such as prepulse inhibition (PPI) deficits and cognitive impairment in mice. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether danshensu isolated from P. vulgaris var. lilacina attenuates MK-801-induced sensorimotor gating dysfunction (PPI deficits), hyperlocomotion, and memory impairment in mice. Acute administration of danshensu (1, 3, or 10 mg/kg) significantly ameliorated the MK-801-induced PPI deficits in the acoustic startle response test. We also observed that the impaired recognition memory induced by MK-801 was attenuated by danshensu (1 mg/kg) in the novel object recognition test. However, danshensu failed to reverse the MK-801-induced hyperlocomotion in the open-field test. Collectively, the present results indicate danshensu would be an active agent for treating neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia.

• Journal of Oral Medicine and Pain
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.84-87
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• 2021

Morsicatio buccarum is a condition caused by chronic cheek biting. It means frictional hyperkeratosis by repetitive cheek biting, which may be associated with obsessive compulsion. Clinically it presents as rough, shaggy, whitish, often peeling surface. We report a 9-year-old female patient who complained oral ulceration on both buccal mucosa. The initial diagnosis was oral candidiasis because of whitish plaques which were peeled off. Topical antifungal agent was ineffective and the symptom did not disappear. By incisional biopsy, she was diagnosed with morsicatio buccarum. A soft oral appliance was placed in the patient's oral cavity. Although morsicatio buccarum improved significantly when the appliance was used, the oral lesion had a tendency to recur, when the patient stopped using the appliance. In case of recurrence, cognitive behavioral therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder is needed for the fundamental treatment.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.825-832
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• 2021

A simulation-based approach is proposed to study the protective actions taken by residents during nuclear emergencies using cognitive findings. Human perception-based behaviors are not heavily incorporated in the evacuation study for nuclear emergencies despite their known importance. This study proposes a generic framework of perception-based behavior simulation, in accordance with the ecological concept of affordance theory and a formal representation of affordance-based finite state automata. Based on the generic framework, a simulation model is developed to allow an evacuee to perceive available actions and execute one of them according to Newton's laws of motion. The case of a shadow evacuation under nuclear emergency is utilized to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework. The illustrated planning algorithm enables residents to compute not only prior knowledge of the environmental map, but also the perception of dynamic surroundings, using widely observed heuristics. The simulation results show that the temporal and spatial dynamics of the evacuation behaviors can be analyzed based on individual perception of circumstances, while utilizing the findings in cognitive science under unavoidable data restriction of nuclear emergencies. The perception-based analysis of the proposed framework is expected to enhance nuclear safety technology by complementing macroscopic analyses for advanced protective measures.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.457-483
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• 2007

Database Semantics (DBS) attempts to provide a comprehensive and integrated approach to human communication which seeks theory-implementation transparency. Two key components of DBS are Word bank as a data structure and left-Associative Grammar (LAG) as an algorithm. This study aims to provide a pilot implementation of Korean in DBS. First, it is shown how the three separate modules of grammar in DBS, namely, Hear, Think, and Speak, combine to form an integrated system that simulates a cognitive agent by making use of a simple Korean sentence as an example. Second, we provide a detailed analysis of the structure in Korean that is a characteristic of Korean involving numerals, classifiers, and nouns, thereby illustrating how DBS can be applied to Korean. We also discuss an issue raised in the literature concerning a problem that arises when we try to apply the LAG algorithm to the analysis of head-final language like Korean, and then discuss some possible solution to the problem.