We investigate the relation between the development of reactive and cognitive capabilities. In particular we investigate whether the development of reactive capabilities prevents or promotes the development of cognitive capabilities in a population of evolving robots that have to solve a time-delay navigation task in a double T-Maze environment. Analysis of the experiments reveals that the evolving robots always select reactive strategies that rely on cognitive offloading, i.e., the possibility of acting so as to encode onto the relation between the agent and the environment the states that can be used later to regulate the agent’s behavior. The discovery of these strategies does not prevent, but rather facilitates, the development of cognitive strategies that also rely on the extraction and use of internal states. Detailed analysis of the results obtained in the different experimental conditions provides evidence that helps clarify why, contrary to expectations, reactive and cognitive strategies tend to have synergetic relationships.

Carvalho JT, Nolfi S (2016) Cognitive Offloading Does Not Prevent but Rather Promotes Cognitive Development. PLoS ONE 11(8): e0160679. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0160679

Source: journals.plos.org

Context: More than 20 years ago Varela initiated a research program to advance in the scientific study of consciousness, neurophenomenology. Problem: Has Varela’s neurophenomenology, the solution to the “hard problem,” been successful? Which issues remain unresolved, and why? Method: This introduction sketches the progress that has been made since then and links it to the contributions to this special issue. Results: Instead of a unified research field, today we find a variety of different interpretations and implementations of neurophenomenology. We argue that neurophenomenology needs to give additional attention to its experiential dimension by addressing first-person methods’ specific challenges and by rethinking the relationship between the frameworks of the first- and third-person approaches.

Valenzuela-Moguillansky C., Vásquez-Rosati A. & Riegler A. (2017) Building a Science of Experience: Neurophenomenology and Related Disciplines. Constructivist Foundations 12(2): 131–138. Available at http://constructivist.info/12/2/131.editorial

Source: www.univie.ac.at

The growing number of large databases of animal tracking provides an opportunity for analyses of movement patterns at the scales of populations and even species. We used analytical approaches, developed to cope with “big data”, that require no ‘a priori’ assumptions about the behaviour of the target agents, to analyse a pooled tracking dataset of 272 elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) in the Southern Ocean, that was comprised of >500,000 location estimates collected over more than a decade. Our analyses showed that the displacements of these seals were described by a truncated power law distribution across several spatial and temporal scales, with a clear signature of directed movement. This pattern was evident when analysing the aggregated tracks despite a wide diversity of individual trajectories. We also identified marine provinces that described the migratory and foraging habitats of these seals. Our analysis provides evidence for the presence of intrinsic drivers of movement, such as memory, that cannot be detected using common models of movement behaviour. These results highlight the potential for “big data” techniques to provide new insights into movement behaviour when applied to large datasets of animal tracking.

Big data analyses reveal patterns and drivers of the movements of southern elephant seals
Jorge P. Rodríguez, Juan Fernández-Gracia, Michele Thums, Mark A. Hindell, Ana M. M. Sequeira, Mark G. Meekan, Daniel P. Costa, Christophe Guinet, Robert G. Harcourt, Clive R. McMahon, Monica Muelbert, Carlos M. Duarte & Víctor M. Eguíluz
Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 112 (2017)
doi:10.1038/s41598-017-00165-0

Source: www.nature.com