A cognitive development framework

Prominent stage theories of cognitive development show evidence of a structure in which each stage contains a number of subsidiary levels. Comparisons of the stages in these theories have commonly been made through the established links with stages of Piaget’s theory. In response to Kagan’s criticism of Piaget’s theory, features of these developmental theories were used in this paper as the basis for a general framework of interactive stages and levels of cognitive operations. Some implications of the proposed framework in relation to cognitive development theories and directions for further research are examined. Further application of this framework could help to identify commonalities in cognitive operations across different contents, contexts and cultures.     

A cognitive development framework

Prominent stage theories of cognitive development show evidence of a structure in which each stage contains a number of subsidiary levels. Comparisons of the stages in these theories have commonly been made through the established links with stages of Piaget’s theory. In response to Kagan’s criticism of Piaget’s theory, features of these developmental theories were used in this paper as the basis for a general framework of interactive stages and levels of cognitive operations. Some implications of the proposed framework in relation to cognitive development theories and directions for further research are examined. Further application of this framework could help to identify commonalities in cognitive operations across different contents, contexts and cultures.     

Self-Efficacy Beliefs Amongst Parents of Young Children: Validation of a Self-Report Measure

The self-efficacy belief (SEB) concept is discussed in the context of parenting. A questionnaire, the Echelle Globale du Sentiment de Compétence Parentale (EGSCP), assessing several domain-specific SEBs and three related cognitive constructs, was developed with 705 French-speaking parents of 3- to 7-year-old children. The EGSCP displayed good psychometric properties. Age-related differences and differences between mothers and fathers illustrated the questionnaire’s discriminative properties. Relations were also found between EGSCP and several criterion variables: support, satisfaction, self-esteem and stress, childrearing behavior, and children’s social competence and behavior. The refinement of the SEB concept in the parenting context provides a more comprehensive view of both mothers’ and fathers’ cognition. The empirical and clinical implications of this are discussed.     

Issues Involving Informed Consent for Research Participants with Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia which is estimated to impact 350,000 people over 65 years of age in Canada. The lack of effective treatment and the growing number of people who are expected to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in the near future are compelling reasons why continued research is in this area is necessary. With additional research, there needs to be greater recognition of the complexity of seeking ongoing informed consent from those with Alzheimer’s disease. This complexity is because the impairment of memory and cognitive ability does not diminish in a linear manner, but rather fluctuates between periods of impairment and relatively normal cognitive lucidness. There is limited discussion in the guidelines of those progressing from early stages of Alzheimer’s disease who have intermittent cognitive function. Guidelines to research and Research Ethics Boards require further development to facilitate researcher including those with Alzheimer’s disease while protecting this growing pool of potential participants.     

Simulation,simplicity, and selection: an evolutionary perspective on high-level mindreading

In this paper, I argue that a natural selection-based perspective gives reasons for thinking that the core of the ability to mindread cognitively complex mental states is subserved by a simulationist process—that is, that it relies on non-specialised mechanisms in the attributer’s cognitive architecture whose primary function is the generation of her own decisions and inferences. In more detail, I try to establish three conclusions. First, I try to make clearer what the dispute between simulationist and non-simulationist theories of mindreading fundamentally is about. Second, I try to make more precise an argument that is sometimes hinted at in support of the former: this ‘argument from simplicity’ suggests that, since natural selection disfavours building extra cognitive systems where this can be avoided, simulationist theories of mindreading are more in line with natural selection than their competitors. As stated, though, this argument overlooks the fact that building extra cognitive systems can also yield benefits: in particular, it can allow for the parallel processing of multiple problems and it makes for the existence of backups for important elements of the organism’s mind. I therefore try to make this argument more precise by investigating whether these benefits also apply to the present case—and conclude negatively. My third aim in this paper is to use this discussion of mindreading as a means for exploring the promises and difficulties of evolutionary arguments in philosophy and psychology more generally.     

Retrieval-induced forgetting in young children

A prominent theory of cognitive development attributes the poor performance that children show in many cognitive tasks to a general lack of inhibitory control. We tested this theory by examining children’s inhibitory capabilities in retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF), a memory task in which selective retrieval of previously studied material causes forgetting of related, nonretrieved material. Such forgetting is often attributed to inhibitory control processes, which supposedly suppress the nonretrieved items’ memory representation. We examined RIF in kindergartners, second graders, and adults, using both recall and recognition testing. Although all three age groups showed significant RIF in recall, only adults and second graders, but not kindergartners, showed RIF in recognition. Because inhibition-based RIF should be present in recall and recognition, these findings indicate that in adults and second graders, but not in kindergartners, RIF is mediated by inhibition. The results support the view of inefficient inhibitory processes in young children’s cognition.     

Children and Violence: The Role of Children’s Regulation in the Marital Aggression–Child Adjustment Link

Exposure to marital psychological and physical abuse has been established as a risk factor for children’s socio-emotional, behavioral, and cognitive problems. Understanding the processes by which children develop symptoms of psychopathology and deficits in cognitive functioning in the context of marital aggression is imperative for developing efficient and effective treatment programs for children and families, and has far-reaching mental health implications. The present paper outlines our research program, Child Regulation and Exposure to Marital Aggression, which focuses on children’s emotional and physiological reactivity and regulation as pathways in the marital aggression–child development link. Findings from our research program, which highlight the importance of children’s regulatory processes for understanding children’s adjustment in contexts of intimate partner violence, are presented, and future directions in this line of inquiry are outlined.     

Association Between Independent Reports of Maternal Parenting Stress and Children’s Internalizing Symptomatology

Although considerable research has investigated parenting stress and children’s externalizing behavior problems, comparatively less has considered parenting stress in relation to children’s internalizing difficulties. Even less research on parenting stress has incorporated children’s report of their internalizing symptoms or the potential mediating role of children’s attributional style. The current study hypothesized that children’s independent reports of internalizing symptoms would be associated with mothers’ reports of parenting stress through children’s attributional style. A community sample of 92 mother–child dyads participated. Results suggest maternal parenting stress from both child and parent sources were significantly associated with children’s anxious and depressive symptoms. Parenting stress was associated with children’s internalizing symptoms partially mediated by children’s maladaptive attributional style, primarily negative attributions for positive outcomes. Findings are discussed in terms of future directions to tease apart specific areas of parenting stress that may be most pertinent as well as to explore other cognitive mechanisms in children that may relate to parenting stress and children’s adjustment.     

Cognitive Theories of Depression in Children and Adolescents: A Conceptual and Quantitative Review

This paper quantitatively reviews longitudinal studies examining three central cognitive theories of depression—Beck’s theory, Hopelessness theory, and the Response Styles theory—among children (age 8–12) and adolescents (age 13–19). We examine the effect sizes in 20 longitudinal studies, which investigated the relation between the cognitive vulnerability–stress interaction and its association with prospective elevations in depression after controlling for initial levels of depressive symptoms. The results of this review suggest that across theories there is a small relation between the vulnerability–stress interaction and elevations in depression among children (pr = 0.15) and a moderately larger effect (pr = 0.22) among adolescents. Despite these important findings, understanding their implications has been obscured by critical methodological, statistical, and theoretical limitations that bear on cognitive theories of depression. The evidence base has been limited by poor measurement of cognitive vulnerabilities and over reliance on null hypothesis significance testing; these have contributed to a field with many gaps and inconsistencies. The relative paucity of research on developmental applications of such theories reveals that surprisingly little is known about their hypothesized etiologic mechanisms in children and adolescents. Ways to advance knowledge in the area of cognitive theories of depression among youth are discussed.     

Proper function and defeating experiences

Jonathan Kvanvig has argued that what he terms “doxastic” theories of epistemic justification fail to account for certain epistemic features having to do with evidence. I’m going to give an argument roughly along these lines, but I’m going to focus specifically on proper function theories of justification or warrant. In particular, I’ll focus on Michael Bergmann’s recent proper function account of justification, though the argument applies also to Alvin Plantinga’s proper function account of warrant. The epistemic features I’m concerned about are experiences that should generate a believed defeater but don’t. I’ll argue that proper functionalism as it stands cannot account for the epistemic effects of these defeating experiences—or, at least, that it can only do so by embracing a deeply implausible view of our cognitive faculties. I’ll conclude by arguing that the only plausible option Bergmann has for modifying his theory undercuts the consideration that motivates proper functionalism in the first place.     

Happiness Revisited: Ontological Well-Being as a Theory-Based Construct of Subjective Well-Being

The current model of subjective well-being (SWB) has been operationalized as the unity of affective and cognitive dimensions concerning the evaluation of one’s life, called emotional well-being and life satisfaction, respectively. There has been no theoretical framework, however, by which the unity is explained. The present paper offers a new construct of subjective well-being in an attempt to show that the cognitive and affective dimensions of SWB can be unified using the concept of goal. The concept of goal refers to the life as a project when the concern is the evaluation of life as a whole. The evaluation of the whole life, moreover, should take a whole-time perspective into account if it is supposed to be ‘whole’. Ontological well-being (OWB) construct is structured in a theoretical framework by which the cognitive and affective components of the current conceptualization of SWB are reframed and interpreted in a whole time perspective. By taking as base the historical and philosophical resources of the affective and cognitive dimensions of subjective well-being, this new construct defines subjective well-being as one’s evaluation of life in both past and future time perspectives in addition to the present.     

Naturalized truth and Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism

There are three major theses in Plantinga’s latest version of his evolutionary argument against naturalism. (1) Given materialism, the conditional probability of the reliability of human cognitive mechanisms produced by evolution is low; (2) the same conditional probability given reductive or non-reductive materialism is still low; (3) the most popular naturalistic theories of content and truth are not admissible for naturalism. I argue that Plantinga’s argument for (1) presupposes an anti-materialistic conception of content, and it therefore begs the question against materialism. To argue for (2), Plantinga claims that the adaptiveness of a belief is indifferent to its truth. I argue that this claim is unsupported unless it again assumes an anti-materialistic conception of content and truth. I further argue that Plantinga’s argument for (3) is not successful either, because an improved version of teleosemantics can meet his criticisms. Moreover, this version of teleosemantics implies that the truth of a belief is (probabilistically) positively related to its adaptiveness, at least for simple beliefs about physical objects in human environments. This directly challenges Plantinga’s claim that adaptiveness is indifferent to truth.     

3-D eye movement analysis

This paper presents a novel three-dimensional (3-D) eye movement analysis algorithm for binocular eye tracking within virtualreality (VR). The user’s gaze direction, head position, and orientation are tracked in order to allow recording of the user’s fixations within the environment. Although the linear signal analysis approach is itself not new, its application to eye movement analysis in three dimensions advances traditional two-dimensional approaches, since it takes into account the six degrees of freedom of head movements and is resolution independent. Results indicate that the 3-D eye movement analysis algorithm can successfully be used for analysis of visual process measures in VR. Process measures not only can corroborate performance measures, but also can lead to discoveries of the reasons for performance improvements. In particular, analysis of users’ eye movements in VR can potentially lead to further insights into the underlying cognitive processes of VR subjects.     

Universal Grammar as a Theory of Notation

What is common to all languages is notation, so Universal Grammar can be understood as a system of notational types. Given that infants acquire language, it can be assumed to arise from some a priori mental structure. Viewing language as having the two layers of calculus and protocol, we can set aside the communicative habits of speakers. Accordingly, an analysis of notation results in the three types of Identifier, Modifier and Connective. Modifiers are further interpreted as Quantifiers and Qualifiers. The resulting four notational types constitute the categories of Universal Grammar. Its ontology is argued to consist in the underlying cognitive schema of Essence, Quantity, Quality and Relation. The four categories of Universal Grammar are structured as polysemous fields and are each constituted as a radial network centred on some root concept which, however, need not be lexicalized. The branches spread out along troponymic vectors and together map out all possible lexemes. The notational typology of Universal Grammar is applied in a linguistic analysis of the ‘parts of speech’ using the English language. The analysis constitutes a ‘proof of concept’ in (1) showing how the schema of Universal Grammar is capable of classifying the so-called ‘parts of speech’, (2) presenting a coherent analysis of the verb, and (3) showing how the underlying cognitive schema allows for a sub-classification of the auxiliaries.     

Hermann Cohen and Bakhtin’s early aesthetics

In this article, Bakhtin’s early aesthetics is reread in the context of Hermann Cohen’s system of philosophy, especially his aesthetics. Bakhtin’s thinking from the early ethical writing Toward a Philosophy of Act to Author and Hero in Artistic Activity and Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics is followed. In Author and Hero, an individual is in his life conceived as involved in cognitive and ethical action but as remaining without a consummative form; the form, or the ‘soul’, is bestowed upon a person by the creative activity of the artist alone. In his understanding of artistic creativity and the relationship between the ‘hero’ and the author, Bakhtin closely follows Cohen, with the exception that for Cohen the object of artistic form-giving is the universal, idealized man, whereas for Bakhtin it is an individual. In the concept of a ‘polyphonic novel’ as developed in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin, however, considers this view of the activity of the artist (or the novelist) to apply to the “traditional” novel only, while in a Dostoevskyean novel the characters are not subordinated to any defining power of the author. Bakhtin’s theory of the Dostoevskyean novel is thus a return to the emphasis of the cognitive and ethical autonomy of the individual. His understanding of the encounter between persons as a ‘subject’—‘subject’ or an ‘I’—‘thou’ relation has a predecessor, among others, in Cohen.     

On the role of beliefs in observational flavor conditioning

In previous research (Baeyens, Vansteenwegen et al., 1996) we demonstrated that when observers consume a series of CS+ and CS−flavored drinks while simultaneously watching a videotaped model who synchronically drinks identical drinks and facially expresses his evaluation (dislike to CS+, neutral to CS−) of the liquids, the observers acquire a dislike for CS+ flavored relative to CS−flavored drinks. The aim of the present experiments was to test some predictions derived from a “direct conditioning” theory of such observational flavor learning. Using the same observational flavor conditioning procedure, we investigated (Exp. 1) the effect of manipulating the observers’ belief concerning the relationship between the drinks that they and the model were consuming (same/different/no information). Observational flavor conditioning was obtained when observers were led to believe that they were drinking the same drinks as the model did, and when they were not informed about this relationship, but not when told to be drinking different drinks. At the same time, however, the observers were not able to correctly identify the source of the model’s expression of dislike: They showed no CS-US contingency-awareness. Whereas the former finding suggests the causal involvement of conscious beliefs and cognitive inference processes in observational learning, the latter is more in line with the idea that the model’s facial expressions may act like a US’ which is automatically associated with the paired flavor CS+, without any involvement of conscious beliefs or cognitive inferences. These two crucial findings were replicated in Exp. 2. Also, we obtained evidence in this study that the belief manipulation affected learning through its influence on the observers’ attention for the model’s facial evaluative expressions. These results can be integrated either by a cognitive theory allowing the beliefs on which the inferences are based to be of an implicit nature, or by a “direct conditioning” theory that conceives of the US’ as an interpreted event, rather than as a mechanistically and invariantly acting physical entity.     

On the role of beliefs in observational flavor conditioning

In previous research (Baeyens, Vansteenwegen et al., 1996) we demonstrated that when observers consume a series of CS+ and CS−flavored drinks while simultaneously watching a videotaped model who synchronically drinks identical drinks and facially expresses his evaluation (dislike to CS+, neutral to CS−) of the liquids, the observers acquire a dislike for CS+ flavored relative to CS−flavored drinks. The aim of the present experiments was to test some predictions derived from a “direct conditioning” theory of such observational flavor learning. Using the same observational flavor conditioning procedure, we investigated (Exp. 1) the effect of manipulating the observers’ belief concerning the relationship between the drinks that they and the model were consuming (same/different/no information). Observational flavor conditioning was obtained when observers were led to believe that they were drinking the same drinks as the model did, and when they were not informed about this relationship, but not when told to be drinking different drinks. At the same time, however, the observers were not able to correctly identify the source of the model’s expression of dislike: They showed no CS-US contingency-awareness. Whereas the former finding suggests the causal involvement of conscious beliefs and cognitive inference processes in observational learning, the latter is more in line with the idea that the model’s facial expressions may act like a US’ which is automatically associated with the paired flavor CS+, without any involvement of conscious beliefs or cognitive inferences. These two crucial findings were replicated in Exp. 2. Also, we obtained evidence in this study that the belief manipulation affected learning through its influence on the observers’ attention for the model’s facial evaluative expressions. These results can be integrated either by a cognitive theory allowing the beliefs on which the inferences are based to be of an implicit nature, or by a “direct conditioning” theory that conceives of the US’ as an interpreted event, rather than as a mechanistically and invariantly acting physical entity.     

Analog and digital,continuous and discrete

Representation is central to contemporary theories regarding the mind/brain. But the nature of representation—both in the mind/brain and more generally—is a source of ongoing controversy. One way of categorizing representational types is to distinguish between the analog and the digital: the received view is that analog representations vary smoothly, while digital representations vary in a step-wise manner. In other words, ‘digital’ is synonymous with ‘discrete’, while ‘analog’ is synonymous with ‘continuous’. I argue that this characterization is inadequate to account for the ways in which representation is (and should be) used in cognitive science; in its place, I suggest an alternative taxonomy. I will defend and extend David Lewis’s account of analog and digital representation, distinguishing analog from continuous representation, as well as digital from discrete representation. I will argue that the distinctions available in this fourfold account better accord with representational features of interest in cognitive science than the received analog/digital dichotomy.     

The cognitive act and the first-person perspective: an epistemology for constructive type theory

The notion of cognitive act is of importance for an epistemology that is apt for constructive type theory, and for epistemology in general. Instead of taking knowledge attributions as the primary use of the verb ‘to know’ that needs to be given an account of, and understanding a first-person knowledge claim as a special case of knowledge attribution, the account of knowledge that is given here understands first-person knowledge claims as the primary use of the verb ‘to know’. This means that a cognitive act is an act that counts as cognitive from a first-person point of view. The method of linguistic phenomenology is used to explain or elucidate our epistemic notions. One of the advantages of the theory is that an answer can be given to some of the problems in modern epistemology, such as the Gettier problem.