Samuel Spevack | University of California, Merced (original) (raw)

Papers by Samuel Spevack

Cognitive Science, 2018

To better understand the neural and cognitive functions of bilingual brains, recent research has ... more To better understand the neural and cognitive functions of bilingual brains, recent research has begun to study both the general cognitive abilities of bilinguals and the real-time language processes of bilinguals. Findings suggest that, while bilinguals may enjoy benefits in executive control of cognitive function (compared to monolinguals), they also may suffer certain deficits in lexical retrieval as a result of two lexicons competing against one another. Much of the research examining bilinguals’ real-time language comprehension has used bilinguals who learned their second language after puberty, as it can be difficult in certain areas to find a sizeable population of native bilinguals (who learned both languages as children). In the present study, three language comprehension experiments record the eye movements of late-learner bilinguals, early-learner bilinguals, and monolinguals (as a control condition) during the processing of English and Spanish spoken instructions. Result...

Author(s): Spevack, Samuel Charles | Advisor(s): Spivey, Michael | Abstract: In recent years, res... more Author(s): Spevack, Samuel Charles | Advisor(s): Spivey, Michael | Abstract: In recent years, researchers have begun to identify cross-cultural and within-cultural variation with respect to several domains of human cognition. These include the effects of language background on executive control, differences in the attentional patterns of individuals in the United States and East Asia, and the relationship between personality and the use of language. The underlying mechanisms for how cognitive variation arises is likely due to interactions within a complex system that spans the cognition of individuals and the dissemination of information at a cultural level. This culture-cognition system can be seen as dynamic system of cognitive tools, instruments – biological or technological – through which people interact with and understand the world. Each individual acquires a unique bias for using particular cognitive tools – or a cognitive style. Differences in cognitive style arise for two ...

Summary Statement Help Received Samuel C. Spevack Analysis of a Potential Impact Crater in the Sa... more Summary Statement Help Received Samuel C. Spevack Analysis of a Potential Impact Crater in the Sacramento Basin S0615 Objectives/Goals In 2004, ABA Energy noted a circular feature in their analysis of a 3-D seismic dataset in the Sacramento basin. The analyst's objective was to determine whether this feature is a meteor impact crater by mapping it with seismic and well data and possibly determines the age, type of impact crater and the nature of the impact. Methods/Materials The analyst used a seismic workstation to map four horizons or seismic events. Several hundred two-dimensional seismic profiles were interpreted for each horizon in this process. Depth maps and then isopach maps were than made between the top horizon and all the other horizons. From these the analyst was able to measure the dimensions of the potential impact crater. The analyst also used a cross section of well logs in the potential crater area to help confirm some of these dimensions. Results The maps showe...

Cognitive Science, 2014

How do we get negation without symbols? Samuel Spevack University of California, Merced Michael S... more How do we get negation without symbols? Samuel Spevack University of California, Merced Michael Spivey University of California, Merced Stephanie Huette University of Memphis Abstract: Traditionally, negation has been viewed as a symbolic process. In this two-step account, a negation operator is applied to the affirmative version of a sentence to construct the negated form. However, a recent model (Huette and Anderson 2012) has demonstrated that negation can be processed by a simple recurrent network trained to simulate sensory information when given linguistic input. While the model serves as an existence proof that shows the ability of negation to be processed without symbols, the exact behavior of negation within the network remains relatively unexplored. We extend the analysis of the model and pay particular attention to how information from the negation word ‘not’ integrates with other information in the network to convey particular sensory features. Further, we show how the mo...

Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have recently begun to exhibit human level performance ... more Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have recently begun to exhibit human level performance on some visual perception tasks. Performance remains relatively poor, however, on some vision tasks, such as object detection: specifying the location and object class for all objects in a still image. We hypothesized that this gap in performance may be largely due to the fact that humans exhibit selective attention, while most object detection CNNs have no corresponding mechanism. In examining this question, we investigated some well-known attention mechanisms in the deep learning literature, identifying their weaknesses and leading us to propose a novel attention algorithm called the Densely Connected Attention Model. We then measured human spatial attention, in the form of eye tracking data, during the performance of an analogous object detection task. By comparing the learned representations produced by various CNN architectures with that exhibited by human viewers, we identified som...

Objectives/Goals The analyst completed in 2005 a study of 3d seismic and well data in the Sacrame... more Objectives/Goals The analyst completed in 2005 a study of 3d seismic and well data in the Sacramento basin that revealed a subsurface, circular, ~5500-m-diameter feature, which is buried 1,490-1,600 m below sea level. The main purpose of the current phase of the study is to acquire the direct evidence of shock metamorphism needed to confirm an impact origin. Additional mapping of the seismic data was also done to confirm the rootless nature and timing of the Victoria Island structure. Methods/Materials Samples were taken from the two wells directly within the structure. Thin sections were made of samples with significant quartz grain populations. Using a petrographic microscope, quartz grains were examined for lineation patterns similar to planar deformation features or PDFs. Quartz grains with potential PDFs were further examined under a universal stage microscope to measure the angle of the possible PDF with respect to the minerals c-axis to confirm whether its Miller index was si...

Naming practices offer a window onto linguistic processes of productivity that rely on input from... more Naming practices offer a window onto linguistic processes of productivity that rely on input from interacting streams of information. Previous studies have looked at proper personal names and binomial combinations of proper personal names to show that phonological features such as rhythm, semantic features such as gender, and corpus features such as word frequency play an important role in naming and ordering of names. In comparison to personal names, business names tend to be more diverse in terms of constituent structure, often incorporating binomial constructions that may or may not consist of proper names themselves. In this study, we investigate whether the ordering of binomials in business names reflects the features identified in previous work, with a focus on the following: syllable count, metrical stress, animacy, concreteness, word frequency, and binomial frequency. We report here on an initial analysis of data from the Yelp Dataset Challenge.

International Journal of Mechanical Sciences

Frontiers in Psychology - Cognitive Science, 2021

If our choices make us who we are, then what does that mean when these choices are made in the hu... more If our choices make us who we are, then what does that mean when these choices are made in the human-machine interface? Developing a clear understanding of how human decision making is influenced by automated systems in the environment is critical because, as human-machine interfaces and assistive robotics become even more ubiquitous in everyday life, many daily decisions will be an emergent result of the interactions between the human and the machine-not stemming solely from the human. For example, choices can be influenced by the relative locations and motor costs of the response options, as well as by the timing of the response prompts. In drift diffusion model simulations of response-prompt timing manipulations, we find that it is only relatively equibiased choices that will be successfully influenced by this kind of perturbation. However, with drift diffusion model simulations of motor cost manipulations, we find that even relatively biased choices can still show some influence...

2020 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 2020

We propose a new deep convolutional neural network framework that uses object location knowledge ... more We propose a new deep convolutional neural network framework that uses object location knowledge implicit in network connection weights to guide selective attention in object detection tasks. Our approach is called What-Where Nets (WW-Nets), and it is inspired by the structure of human visual pathways. In the brain, vision incorporates two separate streams, one in the temporal lobe and the other in the parietal lobe, called the ventral stream and the dorsal stream, respectively. The ventral pathway from primary visual cortex is dominated by "what" information, while the dorsal pathway is dominated by "where" information. Inspired by this structure, we have proposed an object detection framework involving the integration of a "What Network" and a "Where Network". The aim of the What Network is to provide selective attention to the relevant parts of the input image. The Where Network uses this information to locate and classify objects of intere...

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science

We review a variety of studies in the neural and cognitive sciences that progressively move from ... more We review a variety of studies in the neural and cognitive sciences that progressively move from the level of neural systems to the level of individual behavior to the level of group behavior. At each step along the way, the evidence suggests that a cognitive process observed at one spatiotemporal scale of analysis is inseparable from the larger subsuming cognitive process observed at the next larger spatiotemporal scale of analysis. Each incre-mental expansion of the spatiotemporal scale of analysis is a small enough step to seem trivial, and unlikely to serve as a categorical distinction between ''the mind'' and the ''rest of the world''. Such expansions illustrate the necessity for attending to cognitive phenomena that span across two or more spatiotemporal scales. Our analysis suggests that a mind can be observed among the physical processes that connect together a brain, a body, and an environment , and even among the physical processes that connect a group of people together.

Language and Linguistics Compass

In previous decades, the language sciences made important advances by dividing language into its ... more In previous decades, the language sciences made important advances by dividing language into its different information formats, such as phonetics, semantics, and syntax. Such division generally implied that language processing is divorced from context. In more recent decades, however, important advances in the language sciences have been made in understanding how linguistic information interacts with context. These contextual influences stem from a broad range of sources. They include linguistic and non-linguistic processes within and between individuals. This brief review touches on experimental results from both behavioral and neural measures, and from both individuals processing prepared linguistic stimuli and dyads sharing unscripted conversation. Overall, the findings generally support a view of language processing that must somehow allow for the different information formats of language to retain their unique labels but also accommodate the fact that they frequently interact and overlap with other, even non-linguistic, formats of information.