keywords: causal induction, symmetry bias, mutual exclusivity bias, n-armed bandit problem, trade-off between exploration and exploitation SummaryThrough numbers of studies on the formation of equivalence relations and causal induction, it is known that human beings tend to consider conditional statements "if p then q" as biconditional statements "if and only if p then q": we call the tendency to perceive "if p then q" as "if q then p" the "symmetry bias". On the other hand, many studies on children's word learning have pointed out that children tend to expect each object has only one label. This is so-called the "mutual exclusivity bias". This bias implies that children infer "if not p then not q" from "if p then q".These biases logically mislead human beings. What is the merit of these illogical induction? In this paper we address this question. First, we clarify the relationship between causal induction and the symmetry bias or and the mutual exclusivity bias. Secondly, we propose a new model of causal induction. Thirdly, we construct an agent which makes illogical decision based on causality, and assess the agent's performance for the task called "n-armed bandit problem" in the field of reinforcement learning. In this problem, it is known that there is a "trade-off between exploration and exploitation". According to our simulation, the agent can resolve the trade-off and achieve quite better performance than an agent without these biases.

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To overcome the dualism between mind and matter and to implement consciousness in science, a physical entity has to be embedded with a measurement process. Although quantum mechanics have been regarded as a candidate for implementing consciousness, nature at its macroscopic level is inconsistent with quantum mechanics. We propose a measurement-oriented inference system comprising Bayesian and inverse Bayesian inferences. While Bayesian inference contracts probability space, the newly defined inverse one relaxes the space. These two inferences allow an agent to make a decision corresponding to an immediate change in their environment. They generate a particular pattern of joint probability for data and hypotheses, comprising multiple diagonal and noisy matrices. This is expressed as a nondistributive orthomodular lattice equivalent to quantum logic. We also show that an orthomodular lattice can reveal information generated by inverse syllogism as well as the solutions to the frame and symbol-grounding problems. Our model is the first to connect macroscopic cognitive processes with the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics with no additional assumptions.

Objective: In this study, we propose a voice index to identify healthy individuals, patients with bipolar disorder, and patients with major depressive disorder using polytomous logistic regression analysis.Methods: Voice features were extracted from voices of healthy individuals and patients with mental disease. Polytomous logistic regression analysis was performed for some voice features.Results: With the prediction model obtained using the analysis, we identified subject groups and were able to classify subjects into three groups with 90.79% accuracy.Conclusion: These results show that the proposed index may be used as a new evaluation index to identify depression.

In recent years, various animal observation instruments have been developed to support long-term measurement and analysis of animal behaviors. This study proposes an automatic observation instrument that specializes for turning behaviors of pill bugs and aims to obtain new knowledge in the field of ethology. Pill bugs strongly tend to turn in the opposite direction of a preceding turn. This alternation of turning is called turn alternation reaction. However, a repetition of turns in the same direction is called turn repetition reaction and has been considered a malfunction of turn alternation. In this research, the authors developed an automatic turntable-type multiple T-maze device and observed the turning behavior of 34 pill bugs for 6 h to investigate whether turn repetition is a malfunction. As a result, most of the pill bug movements were categorized into three groups: sub-diffusion, Brownian motion, and Lévy walk. This result suggests that pill bugs do not continue turn alternation mechanically but elicit turn repetition moderately, which results in various movement patterns. In organisms with relatively simple nervous systems such as pill bugs, stereotypical behaviors such as turn alternation have been considered mechanical reactions and variant behaviors such as turn repetition have been considered malfunctions. However, our results suggest that a moderate generation of turn repetition is involved in the generation of various movement patterns. This study is expected to provide a new perspective on the conventional view of the behaviors of simple organisms.