Is perception discrete or continuous?

How does conscious perception evolve following stimulus presentation? The idea that perception relies on discrete processing epochs has been often considered, but never widely accepted. The alternative, a continuous translation of the external world into explicit perception, although more intuitive and subjectively appealing, cannot satisfactorily account for a large body of psychophysical data. Cortical and thalamocortical oscillations in different frequency bands could provide a neuronal basis for such discrete processes, but are rarely analyzed in this context. This article reconciles the unduly abandoned topic of discrete perception with current views and advances in neuroscience.     

Can language restructure cognition? The case for space

Frames of reference are coordinate systems used to compute and specify the location of objects with respect to other objects. These have long been thought of as innate concepts, built into our neurocognition. However, recent work shows that the use of such frames in language, cognition and gesture varies cross-culturally, and that children can acquire different systems with comparable ease. We argue that language can play a significant role in structuring, or restructuring, a domain as fundamental as spatial cognition. This suggests we need to rethink the relation between the neurocognitive underpinnings of spatial cognition and the concepts we use in everyday thinking, and, more generally, to work out how to account for cross-cultural cognitive diversity in core cognitive domains.     

Is a modular cognitive architecture compatible with the direct perception of mental states?

The Direct Social Perception Hypothesis maintains that we can perceive other people’s psychological states. Furthermore, it claims that doing so does not require any cognitive process that is simulative or theory-like, putting it in sharp contrast with mainstream accounts of social cognition. This paper contrasts the DSPH against the modular account of mindreading as proposed by Peter Carruthers and H. Clark Barrett. It maintains that the modularity view can respond to the challenges levelled by the DSPH, and that the positions are not as distinct as they originally appear. Finally, the paper discusses the role of non-folk psychological state concepts in our perceptions of other people.     

The vision in “blind” justice: Expert perception,judgment, and visual cognition in forensic pattern recognition

Many forensic disciplines require experts to judge whether two complex patterns are sufficiently similar to conclude that both originate from the same source. Studies in this area have revealed that there are a number of factors that affect perception and judgment and that decisions are subjective and susceptible to extraneous influences (such as emotional context, expectation, and motivation). Some studies have shown that the same expert examiner, examining the same prints but within different contexts, may reach different and contradictory decisions. However, such effects are not always present; some examiners seem more susceptible to such influences than do others—especially when the pattern matching is “hard to call” and when the forensic experts are not aware that they are being observed in an experimental study. Studying forensic examiners can contribute to our understanding of expertise and decision making, as well as have implications for forensic science and other areas of expertise.     

Revision: is visual perception a requisite for visual imagery?

Vision is the most highly developed sense in man and represents the doorway through which most of our knowledge of the external world arises. Visual imagery can be defined as the representation of perceptual information in the absence of visual input. Visual imagery has been shown to complement vision in this acquisition of knowledge--it is used in memory retrieval, problem solving, and the recognition of properties of objects. The processes underlying visual imagery have been assimilated to those of the visual system and are believed to share a neural substrate. However, results from studies in congenitally and cortically blind subjects have opposed this hypothesis. Here I review the currently available evidence.     

Should persuasion be affective or cognitive? The moderating effects of need for affect and need for cognition

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that need for affect and need for cognition influence receptivity to affect- and cognition-based persuasive messages. Experiment 1 found that an affective message elicited more positive attitudes among individuals high in need for affect and low in need for cognition, whereas a cognitive message elicited more positive attitudes among individuals low in need for affect and high in need for cognition. Experiment 2 found that individual differences in need for affect influenced receptivity to an affect-based (but not cognition-based) message, whereas individual differences in need for cognition influenced receptivity to a cognition-based (but not affect-based) message. Experiment 3 found that individual differences in need for affect were associated with increased recognition of information from an affect-based (but not cognition-based) message, whereas individual differences in need for cognition were associated with increased recognition of information from a cognition-based (but not affect-based) message. Overall, the studies point to the importance of individual differences in need for affect and need for cognition in understanding how individuals respond to different types of persuasive messages.     

Is continuous visual monitoring necessary in visually guided locomotion?

Subjects were asked to walk to targets that were up to 21 m away, either with vision excluded during walking or under normal visual control. Over the entire range, subjects were accurate whether or not vision was available as long as no more than approximately 8 sec elapsed between closing the eyes and reaching the target. If more than 8 sec elapsed, (a) this had no influence on distances up to 5 m, but (b) distances between 6-21 m were severely impaired. The results are interpreted to mean that two mechanisms are involved in guidance. Up to 5 m, motor programs of relatively long duration can be formulated and used to control activity. Over greater distances, subjects internalized information about the environment in a more general form, independently of any particular set of motor instructions, and used this to control activity and formulate new motor programs. Experiments in support of this interpretation are presented.     

Nonconceptual content: A reply to Toribio's “Nonconceptualism and the cognitive impenetrability of early vision”

Toribio argues against my thesis that the cognitive penetrability (CP) of the content of early vision is a necessary and sufficient condition for this content to be nonconceptual content (NCC)–the MET (mutually entailing thesis). Her main point is that MET presupposes a non-standard, causal interpretation of NCC that either trivializes NCC or fails to engage with the contemporary literature on NCC, in which the property of being nonconceptual is not construed in empirical but in constitutive terms. I argue that Toribio's arguments presuppose views of NCC that clash with important themes in the nonconceptualist literature, and that constitutive considerations concerning NCC are inextricably linked with causal considerations since the latter are required to address the concerns that led philosophers to postulate NCC.     

Individual performance based on cognitive experimental measurements? The case of inhibition of return

Inhibition of Return (IOR) is a mechanism whereby the attentional system favors novel locations by inhibiting already scanned ones. In spatial attention tasks, it commonly occurs when the interval between cue onset and target onset is longer than 300 ms. The positive difference between reactions in the valid condition and those in the invalid one shows that responses to target stimuli are slower following a valid cue than responses to target stimuli following an invalid cue. IOR is a very robust phenomenon at the group mean level; however, this study demonstrates that its standard error of measurement is extremely high, which seriously challenges any attempt to interpret an individual score as representing the characteristics of a subject's attention system. Furthermore, this reliability problem might diminish the likelihood of finding differences between groups and conditions. The study shows that these problems may be partially corrected by employing the back-to-center paradigm.     

Failures of cognitive control or attention? The case of stop-signal deficits in schizophrenia

We used Bayesian cognitive modelling to identify the underlying causes of apparent inhibitory deficits in the stop-signal paradigm. The analysis was applied to stop-signal data reported by Badcock et al. (Psychological Medicine 32: 87-297, 2002) and Hughes et al. (Biological Psychology 89: 220-231, 2012), where schizophrenia patients and control participants made rapid choice responses, but on some trials were signalled to stop their ongoing response. Previous research has assumed an inhibitory deficit in schizophrenia, because estimates of the mean time taken to react to the stop signal are longer in patients than controls. We showed that these longer estimates are partly due to failing to react to the stop signal (“trigger failures”) and partly due to a slower initiation of inhibition, implicating a failure of attention rather than a deficit in the inhibitory process itself. Correlations between the probability of trigger failures and event-related potentials reported by Hughes et al. are interpreted as supporting the attentional account of inhibitory deficits. Our results, and those of Matzke et al. (2016), who report that controls also display a substantial although lower trigger-failure rate, indicate that attentional factors need to be taken into account when interpreting results from the stop-signal paradigm.     

Mule cognition: a case of hybrid vigour?

This study compares the behaviour of the mule (Equus asinus × Equus caballus) with that of its parent species to assess the effects of hybridization on cognition. Six mules, six ponies (E. caballus) and six donkeys (E. asinus) were given a two choice visual discrimination learning task. Each session consisted of 12 trials and pass level was reached when subjects chose the correct stimulus for at least 9 out of the 12 trials in three consecutive sessions. A record was made of how many pairs each subject learnt over 25 sessions. The mules’ performance was significantly better than that of either of the parent species (Kruskal-Wallis: H_x = 8.11, P = 0.017). They were also the only group to learn enough pairs to be able to show a successive reduction in the number of sessions required to reach criterion level. This study provides the first empirical evidence that the improved characteristics of mules may be extended from physical attributes to cognitive function.     

Complex problem solving: a case for complex cognition?

Complex problem solving (CPS) emerged in the last 30 years in Europe as a new part of the psychology of thinking and problem solving. This paper introduces into the field and provides a personal view. Also, related concepts like macrocognition or operative intelligence will be explained in this context. Two examples for the assessment of CPS, Tailorshop and MicroDYN, are presented to illustrate the concept by means of their measurement devices. Also, the relation of complex cognition and emotion in the CPS context is discussed. The question if CPS requires complex cognition is answered with a tentative “yes.”     

Is conscious perception gradual or dichotomous? A comparison of report methodologies during a visual task

In a recent article, [Sergent, C. &; Dehaene, S. (2004). Is consciousness a gradual phenomenon? Evidence for an all-or-none bifurcation during the attentional blink, Psychological Science, 15(11), 720–729] claim to give experimental support to the thesis that there is a clear transition between conscious and unconscious perception. This idea is opposed to theoretical arguments that we should think of conscious perception as a continuum of clarity, with e.g., fringe conscious states [Mangan, B. (2001). Sensation’s ghost—the non-sensory “fringe” of consciousness, Psyche, 7, 18]. In the experimental study described in this article, we find support for this opposite notion that we should have a parsimonious account of conscious perception. Our reported finding relates to the hypothesis that there is more than one perceptual threshold [Merikle, P.M., Smilek, D. &; Eastwood, J.D. (2001). Perception without awareness: perspectives from cognitive psychology, Cognition, 79, 115–134], but goes further to argue that there are different “levels” of conscious perception.     

Is event frequency encoded automatically? The case of alcohol intoxication

The four experiments reported show that sensitivity to event frequency is diminished by alcohol intoxication. In two experiments on confusion between presented and generated words, the function relating estimated to actual frequency was steeper for sober than intoxicated subjects. In two experiments on word-frequency estimates after a word-pronunciation task, the influence of alcohol intoxication was identified at the input as opposed to the test stage. We conclude that these findings are inconsistent with the idea that frequency-of-occurrence information is automatically encoded.     

Representational unification in cognitive science: Is embodied cognition a unifying perspective?

In this paper, we defend a novel, multidimensional account of representational unification, which we distinguish from integration. The dimensions of unity are simplicity, generality and scope, non-monstrosity, and systematization. In our account, unification is a graded property. The account is used to investigate the issue of how research traditions contribute to representational unification, focusing on embodied cognition in cognitive science. Embodied cognition contributes to unification even if it fails to offer a grand unification of cognitive science. The study of this failure shows that unification, contrary to what defenders of mechanistic explanation claim, is an important mechanistic virtue of research traditions.