Evidence accumulation models provide a dominant account of human decision-making, and have been particularly successful at explaining behavioral and neural data in laboratory paradigms using abstract, stationary stimuli. It has been proposed, but with limited in-depth investigation so far, that similar decision-making mechanisms are involved in tasks of a more embodied nature, such as movement and locomotion, by directly accumulating externally measurable sensory quantities of which the precise, typically continuously time-varying, magnitudes are important for successful behavior. Here, we leverage collision threat detection as a task which is ecologically relevant in this sense, but which can also be rigorously observed and modelled in a laboratory setting. Conventionally, it is assumed that humans are limited in this task by a perceptual threshold on the optical expansion rate–the visual looming–of the obstacle. Using concurrent recordings of EEG and behavioral responses, we disprove this conventional assumption, and instead provide strong evidence that humans detect collision threats by accumulating the continuously time-varying visual looming signal. Generalizing existing accumulator model assumptions from stationary to time-varying sensory evidence, we show that our model accounts for previously unexplained empirical observations and full distributions of detection response. We replicate a pre-response centroparietal positivity (CPP) in scalp potentials, which has previously been found to correlate with accumulated decision evidence. In contrast with these existing findings, we show that our model is capable of predicting the onset of the CPP signature rather than its buildup, suggesting that neural evidence accumulation is implemented differently, possibly in distinct brain regions, in collision detection compared to previously studied paradigms.

It is a fact that architectural design education has become the focus of an extremely complicated set of issues and conscientious debates. Therefore, to extend and challenge educational understanding in architecture it becomes crucial to exchange pedagogical practices. In this article, a specific theoretical approach and teaching methodology, which supports the necessity of contextual study in the architectural design studio, is presented. The article presents an overview of the design studio process by illustrating the case study “Library and Public Communication and Information Center Design in the Manufacturing Zone of Central Eskis,ehir” in Turkey.

Mekânın iletişimsel dili kentin anlatısını oluşturan işaret ve sembollerle doludur. Arkasında pek çok anlamı barındıran ve bize mesajlar ileten bu mekânsal çevre bizim deneyimlerimiz, davranışlarımız, bilişsel algımız ve hafızamızla birlikte sosyal ve kültürel bir anlatıya dönüşür. Kentin anlatısı, mimari mekânın yalnızca işlevsel, sosyal ve kültürel ilişkileri ile değil aynı zamanda ideolojik mesajlarla şekillenir. İktidar; mimarlık ve kenti ideolojileri doğrultusunda kullanırken biçim, malzeme, konum, mekânsal hiyerarşi, anıtsallık gibi somut tasarım araçlarına müdahale etmektedir. Ancak buna ek olarak siyasi otorite, mekânın tanımlanması ve adlandırılmasında kullandığı terminoloji ile (bazen fiziksel müdahaleye bile gerek kalmadan) mekânı ve mekânsal pratikleri “dilde” dolayısıyla bellekte yeniden biçimlendirmektedir. Bu çalışma kentin anlatısının mekânsal imgelemlerle (yeniden) anlamlandırılması üstüne deneysel bir araştırmadır. Bu kapsamda; yer isimlendirme örnekleri anma/hatırlatma nitelikli kullanılan ön isimlerin (belirten) çağrışımları ve mekân türünü/tipolojisini tanımlayan terimlerin anlam yükleri üzerinden iki durum ile ele alınmış ve Türkiye’de siyasi bir pratik olarak yer isimlendirmelerinin güncel örnekleri incelenmiştir.

Detection of impending collision is fundamental to many human activities, and is widely assumed to be limited by a ‘looming threshold’. Evidence accumulation models explain decision-making in abstract paradigms, but have not been shown to remain valid for continuously time-varying, ecologically relevant stimuli. Here, we record behavioural and EEG responses in a collision detection task, disprove the conventional looming threshold assumption, and instead provide stringent evidence for a looming accumulation model. Generalising existing model assumptions from stationary to time-varying evidence, we show that our model accounts for previously unexplained observations and full distributions of detection. We replicate a centroparietal pre-decision positivity in scalp potentials, and show that our model explains its onset rather than its buildup, suggesting that neural evidence accumulation is implemented differently, possibly in distinct brain regions, in collision detection compared to previous paradigms. Our findings illustrate the value of connecting basic and applied research on human behaviour.

This article is based on the critical approaches developed in Atelier 1, an architectural design studio in the Gazi University Faculty of Architecture, Department of Architecture in Ankara, Turkey. The main theme of Atelier 1 Projects in the 2014–15 academic year was the ‘City as a Critical Ground’, in which the city, ground and criticism were discussed within the interdisciplinary theoretical field of architecture. Atelier 1, involving second, third and fourth year undergraduate students, reinterpreted and redesigned the urban ground of Ankara with a critical approach to reveal its unique identities and implicit values. Ground, accepted as the main critical material in the design process, was criticised not only in its physical sense, but also its social, cultural, political, economic, technological and even psychological aspects. The students were able to discover their own design methods from their criticisms of the urban ground, which also allowed them to determine their sites and programmes. In this way, Atelier 1 promoted freedom and flexibility as well as criticality in the design process, and pointed out that the relationship of architecture with city, ground and criticism should be discussed from a new theoretical perspective, primarily in the architectural design studio, as the core of architectural education. Atelier 1, as a theory‐based architectural design studio, motivated the students to develop a critical approach to the urban ground of Ankara so as to replace the rising formalism with criticism in architecture.