Cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in semantic emergence through projection of internal representations

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K12121
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 61030:Intelligent informatics-related
• Research Institution: Future University-Hakodate
• Principal Investigator: Terai Asuka 公立はこだて未来大学, システム情報科学部, 教授 (70422540)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 楠見 孝 京都大学, 教育学研究科, 教授 (70195444) ; 地村 弘二 慶應義塾大学, 理工学部(矢上), 准教授 (80431766) ; 近添 淳一 生理学研究所, 脳機能計測・支援センター, 准教授(兼任) (40456108)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: 創造的思考 / 比喩生成 / 内的表彰 / 計算機実験 / MRI実験

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Pareidolia is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on meaningless patterns, landscapes, or objects. It is can be regarded as a phenomenon in which humans create “new meanings” when they recognize the external world. In order to elucidate the cognitive and neural mechanisms of the emergence of new meanings through the formation and projection of internal representations by stimuli from the outside world, the mechanisms of metaphor generation for abstract images were examined mainly using MRI experiment, computational experiment using convolutional neural network model. Furthermore, it was examined whether the same cognitive mechanisms that have been pointed out in metaphor comprehension are also required in metaphor generation based on a corpus-based metaphor generation model. Furthermore, the applicability of the metaphor generation mechanism was examined to other linguistic expressions processing.

Free Research Field

認知科学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

画像説明課題を用いたMRI実験の結果として，抽象画像に対する字義的説明生成と比喩的説明生成における脳活動の比較を通じ，比喩生成と意味認識の関連を示唆した．また，抽象画像に対する比喩生成に関する物体認識モデルを用いた計算機実験では，抽象画像に対する比喩生成における形状特徴の影響について検討した．さらに，コーパスに基づく比喩生成モデルに基づき，比喩理解において重要な役割を果たすことが知られている概念特徴の顕現性に関し，課題に依存するが比喩生成においても一定程度の影響を持つことが示された．