Models of discourse and narration elaborated within the classical compositional framework have been characterized as bottom-up models, according to which discourse analysis proceeds incrementally, from phrase and sentence local meaning to discourse global meaning. In this paper we will argue against these models. Assuming as a case study the issue of discourse coherence, we suggest that the ass...

Like faces, body postures are susceptible to an inversion effect in untrained viewers. The inversion effect may be indicative of configural processing, but what kind of configural processing is used for the recognition of body postures must be specified. The information available in the body stimulus was manipulated. The presence and magnitude of inversion effects were compared for body parts, ...

Any model of adapted physical activity must entail memory, cognition, perception, as well as motor system flexibility under changing environment situations, and variable levels of cognition [17]. Viewing motor performance from a functional system perspective allows clinicians to analyze deficits in motor behavior and prescribe the appropriate motor rehabilitation programs to enhance flexible an...

| The classical view of information processing in the cortex is that of a bottom-up process in a feed-forward hierarchy. However there is psychophysical, anatomical and physiological evidence that top-down eeects play a crucial role in the processing of input stimuli. Hardly anything is known about the neural mechanisms underlying these effects. Here we investigate a physiologically inspired mo...

Leading neural models of visual word recognition assume that letter rotation slows down the conversion of the visual input to a stable orthographic representation (e.g., local detectors combination model; Dehaene, Cohen, Sigman, & Vinckier, 2005, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 335-341). If this premise is true, briefly presented rotated primes should be less effective at activating word repre...

Visual perception is not only based on incoming visual signals but also on information about a multimodal reference frame that incorporates vestibulo-proprioceptive input and motor signals. In addition, top-down modulation of visual processing has previously been demonstrated during cognitive operations including selective attention and working memory tasks. In the absence of a stable gravitati...

In contrast to animal studies, relatively little is known about the functional significance of the early evoked gamma band activity in humans. We investigated whether evoked and induced 40 Hz activity differentiate automatic, bottom-up aspects of attention from voluntary, top-down related attentional demands. An auditory novelty-oddball task was applied to 14 healthy subjects. As predicted, mor...

UNLABELLED Today, we are questioning how top-down skills may interfere with performance on auditory processing tests. OBJECTIVE To investigate the existence of a possible association between memory, attention and language skills in auditory processing tests in "normal" development children. METHOD Twenty children (ages 7 to 9 years), without complaints related to verbal and/or written langu...

Introduction Being in a close relationship is essential to well being and health. The cognitive significance of closeness can be described as including the other in the self [1]. Overlapping between other and self can be represented as a change in resource allocation strategy, actor/observer perspective, and vicariously sharing other’s characteristics. Further, empathy is associated with the ab...

Abstract Attending to novelty is a critical element of human behavior and learning. Novel events can serve as task-irrelevant distracters or as potential sources of engagement by interesting or important aspects of one's environment. An optimally functioning brain should have the capacity to respond differentially to novel events depending on the circumstances in which they occur. In the presen...