Basic response time tools for studying general processing capacity in attention, perception, and cognition

One of the more important constructs in the study of attention, perception, and cognition is that of capacity. The authors reviewed some of the common meanings of this construct and proposed a more precise treatment. They showed how the distribution of response times can be used to derive measures of process capacity and to further illustrate how these measures can be used to address important hypotheses in cognition.     

Aging, Training, and the Brain: A Review and Future Directions

As the population ages, the need for effective methods to maintain or even improve older adults’ cognitive performance becomes increasingly pressing. Here we provide a brief review of the major intervention approaches that have been the focus of past research with healthy older adults (strategy training, multi-modal interventions, cardiovascular exercise, and process-based training), and new approaches that incorporate neuroimaging. As outcome measures, neuroimaging data on intervention-related changes in volume, structural integrity; and functional activation can provide important insights into the nature and duration of an intervention’s effects. Perhaps even more intriguingly, several recent studies have used neuroimaging data as a guide to identify core cognitive processes that can be trained in one task with effective transfer to other tasks that share the same underlying processes. Although many open questions remain, this research has greatly increased our understanding of how to promote successful aging of cognition and the brain.     

Action, mindreading and embodied social cognition

One of the central insights of the embodied cognition (EC) movement is that cognition is closely tied to action. In this paper, I formulate an EC-inspired hypothesis concerning social cognition. In this domain, most think that our capacity to understand and interact with one another is best explained by appeal to some form of mindreading. I argue that prominent accounts of mindreading likely contain a significant lacuna. Evidence indicates that what I call an agent??s actional processes and states??her goals, needs, intentions, desires, and so on??likely play important roles in and for mindreading processes. If so, a full understanding of mindreading processes and their role in cognition more broadly will require an understanding of how actional mental processes interact with, influence, or take part in mindreading processes.     

Foxhole atheism,revisited: The effects of mortality salience on explicit and implicit religious belief

Although fear of death features prominently in many historical and contemporary theories as a major motivational factor in religious belief, the empirical evidence available is ambivalent, and limited, we argue, by imprecise measures of belief and insufficient attention to the distinction between implicit and explicit aspects of cognition. The present research used both explicit (questionnaire) and implicit (single-target implicit association test; property verification) measurement techniques to examine how thoughts of death influence, specifically, belief in religious supernatural agents. When primed with death, participants explicitly defended their own religious worldview, such that self-described Christians were more confident that supernatural religious entities exist, while non-religious participants were more confident that they do not. However, when belief was measured implicitly, death priming increased all participants' beliefs in religious supernatural entities, regardless of their prior religious commitments. The results are interpreted in terms of a dual-process model of religious cognition, which can be used to resolve conflicting prior data, as well as to help explain the perplexing durability of religious belief.     

A moratorium on cyborgs: Computation,cognition, and commerce

By examining the contingent alliance that has emerged between the computational theory of mind and cyborg theory, we discern some questionable ways in which the literalization of technological metaphors and the over-extension of the “computational” have functioned, not only to influence conceptions of cognition, but also by becoming normative perspectives on how minds and bodies should be transformed, such that they can capitalize on technology’s capacity to enhance cognition and thus amend our sense of what it is to be “human”. We consider “a moratorium on cyborg discourse” as a way of focusing the conceptual and social–political problems posed by this alliance.     

Application of EEG,ERP and intracranial recordings to the investigation of cognitive functions in children

Neurophysiological measures can provide important information about the substrate of cognitive function in children, and most importantly, can give precise temporal information about ‘on‐line’ brain function. These measures can be readily used in infants and children, and we present some examples of their application to understanding cognitive development. The most widely used of these techniques for developmental research is the method of event‐related potentials (ERPs). In addition, the electroencephalogram (EEG) and the more rarely used invasive, intracranial investigations are also important to furthering our knowledge of how the brain–behaviour relations develop. The paper summarizes practical issues and presents some selected examples of experimental and clinical research.     

儿童的社会权力认知及其与社会行为的关系

有关成人社会权力认知的研究已有大量的成果及理论, 但儿童的社会权力认知近期才受到关注。社会权力认知是儿童社会认知的重要组成部分。社会权力经常体现在社会支配及社会地位上的差异。从很早开始, 儿童就能基于不同的线索来判断社会权力, 儿童基于这些线索的认知发展有进化上的适应意义。儿童对社会权力获得方式的认知会随年龄增长而发生变化, 年幼儿童更认可基于支配的社会权力获得方式, 而年长儿童更认可基于声望的社会权力获得方式。儿童的社会权力认知会影响选择性信任、资源分配及亲社会行为。未来研究需要考虑影响儿童社会权力认知发展的内部机制以及儿童社会权力对社会行为影响的过程机制, 并考虑文化因素和早期互动经验对儿童社会权力认知发展的影响。     

Age,Gender, and Self-Esteem Differences in Adolescent Coping Styles

Abstract

A self-complete inventory was used to collect data concerning consumer cognition and activity among a sample of 211 young adults. Eysenck's (1958) short personality questionnaire was incorporated into the inventory, so that the respondents could be classified by both degree of extraversion-introversion (E) and stability-neuroticism (N). The results show that, although levels of E and N were not directly related to measures of spatial cognition among the sample consumers, a statistically significant relationship was found between N and actual spatial behavior, with stable consumers tending to use relatively fewer centers. Further analysis, however, revealed that the E dimension of personality was of significance when levels of actual center usage were considered as a proportion of the total universe of known opportunities. Moreover, when the sample was disaggregated by gender, it was found that extraverted-unstable men indulged in more extensive spatial behavior in relation to known opportunities than did other personality groups.     

Quantifying developing country research capacity in the areas of malaria,schistosomiasis, and leprosy

Implicit in addressing the issue of how to build and strengthen health related endogenous research capacity is that both donor organizations and developing country policymakers distinguish betweenhealth priorities andhealth research priorities. This distinction has important policy consequences in that the majority of developing countries are not in a position, either in financial or human resource terms, to simultaneously generate and implement broad-based priorities in both areas. In this context, it is important that health research priority setting be developed in tandem with existing research capacity. This underlines the importance of assessing the amount and nature of available expertise, and positioning research output, both in the national health needs, and the international science research contexts. The present article, which more properly constitutes a feasibility study, uses scientometric methods to assess the amount and nature of scientific output in three important tropical diseases: malaria, schistosomiasis and leprosy. The major goals of this study have been to i) compare the amount and nature of research produced in developed and developing countries for the three diseases; ii) determine in how far scientometric methods can be used to measure research capacity, and whether this measurement can facilitate the determination of health (research) priorities.     

Does personality matter in exercise participation?

This research extends previous work by demonstrating how the relationships between social cognition and exercise are influenced by different personality types. The theory of planned behaviour forms the basis of our theoretical model, and the Big Five personality framework was used to determine personality types. Data were collected from a quota sample of 512 Malaysian adults. The results suggest that an individual's personality can prevent him or her from exercising. For example, an extrovert is likely to be driven by affect and self‐confidence in their capability to exercise, and thus are more likely to participate in exercise. Those who are more conscientious (and less neurotic) feel more in control and thus possess a greater ability to exercise in comparison with their less conscientious and more neurotic counterparts. Our findings demonstrate the importance of considering personality factors in exercise research and caution us about underestimating the relationship between perceived control, attitude and its potential behavioural outcomes that could lead to a misinterpretation of its true impact. Our core contribution lies in identifying the underlying causes of social cognition differences in a moderating capacity, which has potential to yield important theoretical and practical implications. This study sets the ground for social marketers to improve their understanding of exercise behaviour and, in turn, consumer welfare. Ultimately, they could be in a better position to develop effective health intervention and educational programmes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

手指的感知、运动以及数量表征对数字认知的促进作用

手指是儿童在习得数字符号之前最常使用的表征数量的工具,大量研究都表明手指在数字认知中具有促进作用。但是,目前仍不清楚手指在数字认知中的作用机制。综述从手指感知、手指运动以及手指数量表征三个方面总结了手指在数字认知中所起的作用。手指感知可能通过影响儿童的数量表征能力间接地影响其它数学能力;与表征量有关的手指运动可能促进了数量大小的加工。关于手指数量表征在数字认知中的作用存在两种有争议的观点：一种认为手指数量表征促进了儿童由非符号数量表征向符号数量表征的转化;另一种认为手指数量表征可能是一种数量语义表征方式。未来应该在发展、作用机制、性别差异等方向继续开展研究,进一步探讨手指在数字认知中所起的作用。     

How does cognition evolve? Phylogenetic comparative psychology

Now more than ever animal studies have the potential to test hypotheses regarding how cognition evolves. Comparative psychologists have developed new techniques to probe the cognitive mechanisms underlying animal behavior, and they have become increasingly skillful at adapting methodologies to test multiple species. Meanwhile, evolutionary biologists have generated quantitative approaches to investigate the phylogenetic distribution and function of phenotypic traits, including cognition. In particular, phylogenetic methods can quantitatively (1) test whether specific cognitive abilities are correlated with life history (e.g., lifespan), morphology (e.g., brain size), or socio-ecological variables (e.g., social system), (2) measure how strongly phylogenetic relatedness predicts the distribution of cognitive skills across species, and (3) estimate the ancestral state of a given cognitive trait using measures of cognitive performance from extant species. Phylogenetic methods can also be used to guide the selection of species comparisons that offer the strongest tests of a priori predictions of cognitive evolutionary hypotheses (i.e., phylogenetic targeting). Here, we explain how an integration of comparative psychology and evolutionary biology will answer a host of questions regarding the phylogenetic distribution and history of cognitive traits, as well as the evolutionary processes that drove their evolution.     

Implicit social cognition: from measures to mechanisms

Most human cognition occurs outside conscious awareness or conscious control. Some of these implicit processes influence social perception, judgment and action. The past 15 years of research in implicit social cognition can be characterized as the Age of Measurement because of a proliferation of measurement methods and research evidence demonstrating their practical value for predicting human behavior. Implicit measures assess constructs that are distinct, but related, to self-report assessments, and predict variation in behavior that is not accounted for by those explicit measures. The present state of knowledge provides a foundation for the next age of implicit social cognition: clarification of the mechanisms underlying implicit measurement and how the measured constructs influence behavior.     

Genes and the parsing of cognitive processes

Now that the human genome has been sequenced there exists the possibility of identifying specific genes that affect human cognition. In this article, recent studies that have found associations between common gene variants and specific cognitive processes are reviewed. Several principles for evaluating this new field are also discussed. The interpretation of results is far from simple because a single gene can affect multiple processes, multiple genes can impact on a single process, and multiple cognitive processes are intercorrelated. In general, functional neuroimaging has been a more sensitive assay of cognitive processing than behavioral measures used alone, although there are important caveats regarding its use. Replicated findings so far involve associations between a COMT polymorphism and prefrontally-based executive functions and neurophysiology, and a BDNF polymorphism and medial-temporal-cortex based declarative memory processes. Implicit in this review is a concern that many of the cognitive paradigms used evolved for purposes well outside those described here. As such it may be necessary to view cognition in novel ways, based on constraints imposed by genomics and neurobiology, in order to increase the effect size of genotypic influences on cognition.     

基础认知与社会认知中内隐过程及其脑机制*

认知过程及其脑机制是心理学研究的重要内容。社会认知是人们在社会生活中对他人行为的意图及情感的认识,是人际互动的重要方面,具有深刻的理论和实践意义。本文全面深入地对社会认知和基础认知中自动加工过程进行了研究综述,对基础认知与社会认知的研究方式进行了比较。自动加工过程是社会认知和基础认知中都存在的重要过程,从脑机制研究角度,相关的电生理学指标(如N400等)都可以作为研究的指标来考察社会认知中的自动加工过程。本文从社会认知与基础认知的比较入手,介绍了各种领域的研究方法,特别是事件相关电位技术等认知神经科学研究方法。     

Cognitive Style, Schizophrenia, and the Family: Methodological Implications of Contextual Effects

The study of a single case of a family with one schizophrenic daughter is reported here. A variety of measures were used in the study and it was carried out in a number of different contexts. The study has substantive interest in regard to the inter-connections of schizophrenia and of individual and familial patterns of cognition and perception. In addition it raises important methodological considerations stemming from the variability of the measures across differing contexts.     

The development of memory efficiency and value-directed remembering across the life span: a cross-sectional study of memory and selectivity

Although attentional control and memory change considerably across the life span, no research has examined how the ability to strategically remember important information (i.e., value-directed remembering) changes from childhood to old age. The present study examined this in different age groups across the life span (N = 320, 5-96 years old). A selectivity task was used in which participants were asked to study and recall items worth different point values in order to maximize their point score. This procedure allowed for measures of memory quantity/capacity (number of words recalled) and memory efficiency/selectivity (the recall of high-value items relative to low-value items). Age-related differences were found for memory capacity, as young adults recalled more words than the other groups. However, in terms of selectivity, younger and older adults were more selective than adolescents and children. The dissociation between these measures across the life span illustrates important age-related differences in terms of memory capacity and the ability to selectively remember high-value information.     

Similarity-based cognition: radical enactivism meets cognitive neuroscience

Similarity-based cognition is commonplace. It occurs whenever an agent or system exploits the similarities that hold between two or more items—e.g., events, processes, objects, and so on—in order to perform some cognitive task. This kind of cognition is of special interest to cognitive neuroscientists. This paper explicates how similarity-based cognition can be understood through the lens of radical enactivism and why doing so has advantages over its representationalist rival, which posits the existence of structural representations or S-representations. Specifically, it is argued that there are problems both with accounting for the content of S-representations and with understanding how neurally-based structural similarities can work as representations (even if contentless) in guiding intelligent behavior. Finally, with these clarifications in place, it is revealed how radical enactivism can commit to an account of similarity-based cognition in its understanding of neurodynamics.