Location-specific attentional control is also possible in the Simon task

Goal-directed behavior usually requires mental control that directs attention to task-relevant information and ignores irrelevant information. For investigating how flexible this mechanism is, researchers have varied the proportion of congruent trials depending on some context, such as stimulus location. The corresponding studies revealed that attentional control indeed adapts to location-specific demands. However, until now, this flexibility has only been demonstrated for the Eriksen flanker task and for the Stroop task but not for the Simon task. Therefore, a Simon-task experiment was conducted in the present study, where the proportion of congruent trials differed for stimuli appearing above or below fixation, respectively. As a result, a reliable interaction between congruency and stimulus location was found. This demonstrates, for the first time, that location-specific control also is possible in the Simon task.     

Return of the question "why": advantages of exploring pre-existing explanations

We suggest that there are many advantages in thoroughly exploring the causal explanations given by clients or members of their social network to account for their problems. Specific interviewing techniques are presented to uncover clients' causal explanations or their impressions about the causal explanations of others. Various advantages of exploring these explanations are discussed. They include improved cooperation, development of "systemic empathy," detachment from the explanations of other professionals, recognition and avoidance of coalitions, loosening of firmly held explanations, dilution of noxious explanations, generation of new and positive explanations toward solutions, and taking a bird's-eye view or meta position about such explanations. We conclude that acceptance and appreciation of the human tendency to believe in causal explanations is a fruitful way to enhance interaction between clinicians and clients.     

Auditory verbal hallucinations: Dialoguing between the cognitive sciences and phenomenology

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are a highly complex and rich phenomena, and this has a number of important clinical, theoretical and methodological implications. However, until recently, this fact has not always been incorporated into the experimental designs and theoretical paradigms used by researchers within the cognitive sciences. In this paper, we will briefly outline two recent examples of phenomenologically informed approaches to the study of AVHs taken from a cognitive science perspective. In the first example, based on Larøi and Woodward (Harv Rev Psychiatry 15:109–117, 2007), it is argued that reality monitoring studies examining the cognitive underpinnings of hallucinations have not reflected the phenomenological complexity of AVHs in their experimental designs and theoretical framework. The second example, based on Jones (Schizophr Bull, in press, 2010), involves a critical examination of the phenomenology of AVHs in the context of two other prominent cognitive models: inner speech and intrusions from memory. It will be shown that, for both examples, the integration of a phenomenological analysis provides important improvements both on a methodological, theoretical and clinical level. This will be followed by insights and critiques from philosophy and clinical psychiatry—both of which offer a phenomenological alternative to the empiricist–rationalist conceptualisation of AVHs inherent to the cognitive sciences approach. Finally, the paper will conclude with ideas as to how the cognitive sciences may integrate these latter perspectives into their methodological and theoretical programmes.     

The role of cognitive stimulation on the relations between age and cognitive functioning

To make a convincing argument that cognitive stimulation moderates age trends in cognition there must be (a) a negative relation between age and level of cognitive stimulation, (b) a positive relation between level of cognitive stimulation and level of cognitive functioning, and (c) evidence of an interaction between age and cognitive stimulation in the prediction of cognitive functioning. These conditions were investigated in a study in which 204 adults between 20 and 91 years of age completed an activity inventory and performed a variety of cognitive tasks. Only the 1st condition received empirical support, and, thus, the results of this study provide little evidence for the hypothesis that cognitive stimulation preserves or enhances cognitive functioning that would otherwise decline.     

The overlooked ubiquity of first-person experience in the cognitive sciences

Synthese - Science aims to transform the subjectivity of individual observations and ideas into more objective and universal knowledge. Yet if there is any area in which first-person experience...     

Integrating computation into the mechanistic hierarchy in the cognitive and neural sciences

It is generally accepted that, in the cognitive and neural sciences, there are both computational and mechanistic explanations. We ask how computational explanations can integrate into the mechanistic hierarchy. The problem stems from the fact that implementation and mechanistic relations have different forms. The implementation relation, from the states of an abstract computational system (e.g., an automaton) to the physical, implementing states is a homomorphism mapping relation. The mechanistic relation, however, is that of part/whole; the explaining features in a mechanistic explanation are the components of the explanandum phenomenon and their causal organization. Moreover, each component in one level of mechanism is constituted and explained by components of an underlying level of mechanism. Hence, it seems, computational variables and functions cannot be mechanistically explained by the medium-dependent states and properties that implement them. How then, do the computational and the implementational integrate to create the mechanistic hierarchy? After explicating the general problem (Sect. 2), we further demonstrate it through a concrete example, of reinforcement learning, in the cognitive and neural sciences (Sects. 3 and 4). We then examine two possible solutions (Sect. 5). On one solution, the mechanistic hierarchy embeds at the same levels computational and implementational properties. This picture fits with the view that computational explanations are mechanistic sketches. On the other solution, there are two separate hierarchies, one computational and another implementational, which are related by the implementation relation. This picture fits with the view that computational explanations are functional and autonomous explanations. It is less clear how these solutions fit with the view that computational explanations are full-fledged mechanistic explanations. Finally, we argue that both pictures are consistent with the reinforcement learning example, but that scientific practice does not align with the view that computational models are merely mechanistic sketches (Sect. 6).

     

Action rules: why the visual control of reaching and grasping is not always influenced by perceptual illusions

It is generally accepted that vision first evolved for the distal control of movement and that perception or 'representational' vision emerged much later. Vision-for-action operates in real time and uses egocentric frames of reference and the real metrics of the world. Vision-for-perception can operate over longer time scales and is much more scene-based in its computations. These differences in the timing and metrics of the two systems have been examined in experiments that have looked at the way in which each system deals with visual illusions. Although controversial, the consensus is that actions such as grasping and reaching are often unaffected by high-level pictorial illusions, which by definition affect percetion. However, recent experiments have shown that, for actions to escape the effects of such illusions, they must be highly practiced actions, preferably with the right hand, and must be directed in real time at visible targets. This latter finding suggests that some of the critical components of the encapsulated (bottom-up) systems that mediate the visual control of skilled reaching and grasping movements are lateralised to the left hemisphere.     

Cross-cultural differences in cognitive development: attention to relations and objects

Growing evidence indicates a suite of generalized differences in the attentional and cognitive processing of adults from Eastern and Western cultures. Cognition in Eastern adults is often more relational and in Western adults is more object focused. Three experiments examined whether these differences characterize the cognition of preschool children in the two cultures. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds from the two cultures (N=64) participated in a relational match-to-standard task in two conditions, with simple or richly detailed objects, in which a focus on individual objects may hurt performance. Rich objects, consistent with past research, strongly limited the performance of U.S. children but not Japanese children. In Experiment 2, U.S. and Japanese 4-year-olds (N=72) participated in a visual search task that required them to find a specific object in a cluttered, but organized as a scene, visual field in which object-centric attention might be expected to aid performance and relational attentional pattern may hinder the performance because of relational structure that was poised by the scene. U.S. children outperformed Japanese children. In Experiment 3, 4-year-olds from both cultures (N=36) participated in a visual search task that was similar to Experiment 2 but with randomly placed objects, where there should not be a difference between the performance of two cultures because the relational structure that may be posed by the scene is eliminated. This double-dissociation is discussed in terms of implications for different developmental trajectories, with different developmental subtasks in the two cultures.     

Disciplining social psychology: a case study of boundary relations in the history of the human sciences

This paper explores the disciplinary status of social psychology through an analysis of the history of the boundary relations of psychology, sociology, and social psychology. After outlining some research on the nature of scientific disciplines, on the role of rhetoric in the constitution of disciplines, and on "boundary work," I consider the singular importance of social psychology as a discipline for the analysis of boundary relations, examining its units of analysis and its "disciplining." The boundaries of the disciplines of social psychology were seen as fluid, contingent, local, and contestable, reflecting the thematic preoccupations, disciplinary origins, and meta-theoretical commitments of social psychologists, of the parent disciplines, and of those who represent disciplinary practices.     

Memory guidance in distractor suppression is governed by the availability of cognitive control

Information stored in the memory systems can affect visual search. Previous studies have shown that holding the to-be-ignored features of distractors in working memory (WM) could accelerate target selection. However, such facilitation effect was only observed when the cued to-be-ignored features remained unchanged within an experimental block (i.e., the fixed cue condition). No search benefit was obtained if the to-be-ignored features varied from trial to trial (i.e., the varied cue condition). In the present study, we conducted three behavioral experiments to investigate whether the WM and long-term memory (LTM) representations of the to-be-ignored features could facilitate visual search in the fixed cue (Experiment 1) and varied cue (Experiments 2 and 3) conditions. Given the importance of the processing time of cognitive control in distractor suppression, we divided visual search trials into five quintiles based on their reaction times (RTs) and examined the temporal characteristics of the suppression effect. Results showed that both the WM and LTM representations of the to-be-ignored features could facilitate distractor suppression in the fixed cue condition, and the facilitation effects were evident across the quintiles in the RT distribution. However, in the varied cue condition, the RT benefits of the WM-matched distractors occurred only in the trials with the longest RTs, whereas no advantage of the LTM-matched distractors was observed. These results suggest that the effective WM-guided distractor suppression depends on the availability of cognitive control and the LTM-guided suppression occurs only if sufficient WM resource is accessible by LTM reactivation.     

The why,when, and how of cognitive simulation: A tutorial

Practical advice is given on cognitive simulation modeling; information is provided on why a simulation effort is worthwhile, when it should be undertaken, and how to do it. A cognitive simulation model is defined as a computer program that represents a hypothetical mental process that operates on symbolic structures.     

Studies of the cognitive representation of spatial relations: I. Overview

The present article reviews the major results and conclusions of two experiments on the mapping and planning of actual (campus buildings) and hypothetical (ideal town facilities) items in a two-dimensional space. Direct mapping (planning) techniques are preferred over the method of pair comparisons, especially in the case of the actual environment.     

The changing relations of representation and cognitive structure during the development of a cognitive map

In recent years, workers in cognitive science have come to recognize that cognitive structures should not be equated with computational ones. This realization has often been experienced as confusing. It is argued that cognitive science is moving closer to positions defended by genetic epistemologists. The course of development of a cognitive structure consists of two phases. During the first (Piaget's “phenotypic” adaptation), knowledge about successful ways of interacting with the environment is encoded in a relatively unspecialized format. Selected structural aspects of the resulting data base may later form the basis for a specifically appropriate format. It is during the first phase that knowledge about the environment is manifested in a behavioural structure which does not correspond to any computational entity. In the second phase, the internalized structure becomes computationally defined, which improves the system's efficiency. These ideas are illustrated with the Traveller, a detailed computational model of cognitive map development.     

Social relations and cognitive development: the influence of conversation type and representations of gender

While the productive role of social interaction between peers in promoting cognitive development has been clearly established, the communicative processes through which this is achieved have not been clearly identified. This paper reports a study in which 184 children aged between of 6.5 to 7.5 years were presented with a Piagetian task of conservation of liquid. Both male and female non‐conservers worked with a conserving partner in either same or mixed‐sex dyads, thus creating four different pair types. The pairs were asked to discuss their conflicting answers and agree upon a joint response. Cognitive progress was assessed by pre‐ to post‐test gains. The results indicated that the type of conversation established during the interaction was strongly related to the outcome. The results also indicate that the gender composition of the pairs influenced the type of conversation which occurred and the outcome measures. These results are discussed in relation to the general model of socio‐cognitive conflict, and highlight the role of representations and expectations of gender in the way in which the conflict is expressed and resolved in conditions of aligned or conflicting knowledge and gender asymmetries. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.