The role of mental representations in mathematics and computer sciences (for teaching or searching) is often downplayed or even completely ignored. Using an ongoing work on the subject, we argue for a more systematic study and use of mental representations, to get an intuition of mathematical concepts, and also to understand and build proofs. We give several examples.

Previous research suggests that people construct mental time lines to represent and reason about time. However, is the ability to represent space truly necessary for representing events along a mental time line? Our results are the first to demonstrate that deficits in spatial representation (as a function of left hemispatial neglect) also result in deficits in representing events along the men...

One concern of philosophy of mind is how sensorimotor agents such as human infants can develop contentful mental states. This paper discusses Fred Dretske’s theory of mental content in the context of results from our work with mobile robots. We argue that Dretske’s theory, while attractive in many ways, relies on a distinction between kinds of representations that cannot be practically maintain...

Bowlby's concept of mental working models of self, attachment figures, and the social world has been theoretically generative as a bridge between early relational experience and the beliefs and expectations that color later relationships. Contemporary attachment researchers, following his example, are applying new knowledge of children's conceptual development to their study of attachment-relat...

I propose and defend the Allocentric-Egocentric Interface Theory of Consciousness. Mental processes form a hierarchy of mental representations with maximally egocentric (self-centered) representations at the bottom and maximally allocentric (other-centered) representations at the top. Phenomenally conscious states are states that are relatively intermediate in this hierarchy. More specifically,...

The problem of reconstructing signed permutations on n elements from their erroneous patterns distorted by reversal errors is considered in this paper.A reversal is the operation of taking a segment of the signed permutation, reversing it, and flipping the signs of its elements. The reversal metric is defined as the least number of reversals transforming one signed permutation into another. It ...

We complete the Wilf classification of signed patterns of length 5 for both signed permutations and signed involutions. New general equivalences of patterns are given which prove Jaggard’s conjectures concerning involutions in the symmetric group avoiding certain patterns of length 5 and 6. In this way, we also complete the Wilf classification of S5, S6, and S7 for involutions.

One of the most distinctive characteristics of humans is our capacity to learn from what other people tell us. Often new information is provided about an entity that is not present, requiring incorporation of that information into one’s mental representation of the absent object. Here we present evidence regarding the emergence of this vital ability. Nineteenand 22-month-old infants first learn...