In his novel Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust argues that conventional descriptions of the phenomenology of consciousness are incomplete because they focus too much on the highly-salient sensory information that dominates each moment of awareness and ignore the network of associations that lies in the background. In this paper, I explicate Proust’s theory of conscious experience and show how it leads him directly to a theory of aesthetic perception. Proust’s division of awareness into two components roughly corresponds to William (...) James’ division of the stream of thought into a “nucleus” and “fringe.” Proust argues that the function of art is to evoke the underlying associative network indirectly in the mind of the observer by using carefully chosen sensory surfaces to control the stream of thought. I propose a possible neural basis for this Proustian/Jamesian phenomenology, and argue that the general principles of Proustian aesthetics can be applied to all forms of art. I conclude that a scientific theory of art should follow in a straightforward manner from a scientific theory of consciousness. (shrink)

Wayfinding is defined as the ability to learn and remember a route through an environment. Previous researchers have shown that young children have difficulties remembering routes. However, very few researchers have considered how to improve young children's wayfinding abilities. Therefore, we investigated ways to help children increase their wayfinding skills. In two studies, a total of 72 5-year olds were shown a route in a six turn maze in a virtual environment and were then asked to retrace this route by (...) themselves. A unique landmark was positioned at each junction and each junction was made up of two paths: a correct path and an incorrect path. Two different strategies improved route learning performance. In Experiment 1, verbally labeling on-route junction landmarks during the first walk reduced the number of errors and the number of trials to reach a learning criterion when the children retraced the route. In Experiment 2, encouraging children to attend to on-route junction landmarks on the first walk reduced the number of errors when the route was retraced. This was the first study to show that very young children can be taught route learning skills. The implications of our results are discussed. (shrink)

Environment learning is essential in everyday life. In individuals with Down syndrome (DS), this skill has begun to be examined using virtual exploration. Previous studies showed that individuals with DS can learn and remember paths in terms of sequences of turns and straight stretches, albeit with some difficulty, and this learning is supported by their cognitive abilities. This study further investigates environment learning in the DS population, newly examining their ability to learn a path from actual movements, and to learn (...) increasingly long paths, and how their performance relates to their visuo-spatial abilities and everyday spatial activities. A group of 30 individuals with DS and 30 typically-developing (TD) children matched for receptive vocabulary performed a 4 × 4 Floor Matrix task in a grid comprising 16 squares (total area 2.3 × 2.3 meters). The task involved repeating increasingly long sequences of steps by actually moving in the grid. The sequences were presented in two learning conditions, called Observation (when participants watched the experimenter’s moves), or Map (when they were shown a map reproducing the path). Several visuo-spatial measures were also administered. The results showed a clear difference between the two groups’ performance in the individual visuo-spatial measures. In the Floor Matrix task, after controlling for visuo-spatial reasoning ability, both groups benefited to the same degree from the Observation condition vis-à-vis the Map condition, and no group differences emerged. In the group with DS, visuo-spatial abilities were more predictive of performance in the Floor Matrix task in the Observation condition than in the Map condition. The same was true of the TD group, but this difference was much less clear-cut. The visuo-spatial working memory and visualization tasks were the strongest predictors of Floor Matrix task performance. Finally, the group with DS showed a significant relation between Floor Matrix task performance in the Observation condition and everyday spatial activity. These results enlarge on what we know about path learning in individuals with DS and its relation to their visuo-spatial abilities. These findings are discussed within the frame of spatial cognition and the atypical development domain. (shrink)