Situated Social Cognition

ABSTRACT— Social cognition refers to the mental representations and processes that underlie social judgments and behavior—for example, the application of stereotypes to members of social groups. Theories of social cognition have generally assumed that mental representations are abstract and stable and that they are activated and applied by relatively automatic, context-independent processes. Recent evidence is inconsistent with these expectations, however. Social-cognitive processes have been shown to be adaptive to the perceiver's current social goals, communicative contexts, and bodily states. Although these findings can often be given ad hoc explanations within current conceptual frameworks, they invite a fuller integration with the broad intellectual movement emphasizing situated cognition. Such an approach has already been influential in many areas within psychology and beyond, and theories in the field of social cognition would benefit by taking advantage of its insights.     

Bilingualism and Creativity: Towards a Situated Cognition Approach

In this paper, the association between bilingualism and creativity is investigated. In the first part, the results of a literature review are reported. Previous research predominantly found that bilinguals outperform monolinguals on creativity tasks, which was explained by bilinguals’ enhanced executive functioning compared to monolinguals, and their experience with multiple cultures. Most previous research has examined the relationship between bilingualism and creativity within a psychological trait framework, which does not take into account that cognitive processes are regarded to be situated‐embodied, meaning that they are influenced by environmental factors, and by a person's perceptions of and actions towards these environmental factors. In the second part, we discuss an alternative approach, in which creativity can be defined as the emerging skill of an individual to discover affordances, to come up with creative ideas and products. Recommendations for future research are discussed as well.     

Behaviour variability and the Situated Focus Theory of Power

Power often affects judgement and behaviour differently in different contexts. The present chapter proposes the Situated Focus Theory of Power in an attempt to explain the greater variability in the behaviour and judgements of powerful compared to powerless individuals. It is proposed that power increases attunement to the situation by means of selective attention and processing flexibility. Factors that drive cognition such as motivation (e.g., needs, goals, expectancies), inner experiences (e.g., feelings, ease of retrieval), as well as properties of the environment (e.g., affordances), guide more unequivocally the responses of powerful compared to powerless individuals. Powerful individuals process more extensively information that is relevant compared to information that is irrelevant to these factors, whereas powerless individuals attend more equally to different types of information. These differences in processing focus affect content-free aspects of behaviour. Specifically, power promotes readiness to act, prioritisation, and behaviour variability across situations.     

Situated Behavior and the Place of Measurement in Psychological Theory

Measured values of human behavior may entail contradictory attributes of wave and particle by analogy with the wave/particle attributes of the electron. 1/f scaling is the wave attribute in this analogy and punctate data points are the particle attribute. One consequence of the wave/particle duality in physics was to elevate measurement to a primary place in physical theory, and one purpose of the present analogy is to likewise elevate measurement to a primary place in psychological theory. Another purpose is to emulate Robert Shaw's creative use of analogies, consistent with the brief quotation that begins this article.     

弗洛姆的道德认识理论

弗洛姆的道德认识理论建立在对人的研究的基础上。认识善、恶以及道德规范,主要是对人性以及蕴含在人性中的可能性的认识。由于人是有生命的,处于不断的生成过程中,因此,对人的认识必须打破客观主义的认识模式,认识主体打破与对象之间的鸿沟,实现融合合一,以整个的内在体验对象,从而获得如对象本来所是的样子去认识对象。弗洛姆的体验性知识在强调人的主观情感投入到认识中的同时,认为认识对象是外在实在的,知识是普遍性有效的,因而是一种客观的认识。弗洛姆的道德认识理论与认识论的实践转向的暗相契合。     

Gender and Hedging: From Sex Differences to Situated Practice

In a reanalysis of women's language, Holmes (1995) has argued that women's use of hedges expresses interpersonal warmth and not, as many researchers have maintained, linguistic tentativeness. It is typically men, she suggests, who employ hedges to convey imprecision and incertitude. In this study, we investigated the use of the hedges sort of and you know in a sample of South African students. Holmes's method of analysis was applied to hedging behavior in 52 dyadic conversations. The study consisted of a 2 (Speaker Gender: Male/Female) × 2 (Audience Gender: Male/Female) × 2 (Condition: Competitive/Noncompetitive) between-subjects experimental design. The results showed that contextual influences eclipsed the effects of gender; in fact, no main effects were found for speaker gender. Fewer hedges were deployed in the competitive condition than in the noncompetitive condition. Moreover, perhaps reflecting differences in social status, both sexes used sort of to express tentativeness more frequently when talking to male addressees. When speaking to female addressees, on the other hand, men deployed facilitative you know hedges more readily than women.     

以历史唯物主义为基础的生态文明理论何以可能?——从生态学马克思主义的视角看

<正>在西方绿色思潮那里,历史唯物主义被认为是和技术决定论、人类中心主义联系在一起的,并且没有考虑自然资源的枯竭和自然对于生产的限制问题;因此,其断定以历史唯物主义为基础的生态文     

Neural Computation and the Computational Theory of Cognition

We begin by distinguishing computationalism from a number of other theses that are sometimes conflated with it. We also distinguish between several important kinds of computation: computation in a generic sense, digital computation, and analog computation. Then, we defend a weak version of computationalism—neural processes are computations in the generic sense. After that, we reject on empirical grounds the common assimilation of neural computation to either analog or digital computation, concluding that neural computation is sui generis. Analog computation requires continuous signals; digital computation requires strings of digits. But current neuroscientific evidence indicates that typical neural signals, such as spike trains, are graded like continuous signals but are constituted by discrete functional elements (spikes); thus, typical neural signals are neither continuous signals nor strings of digits. It follows that neural computation is sui generis. Finally, we highlight three important consequences of a proper understanding of neural computation for the theory of cognition. First, understanding neural computation requires a specially designed mathematical theory (or theories) rather than the mathematical theories of analog or digital computation. Second, several popular views about neural computation turn out to be incorrect. Third, computational theories of cognition that rely on non‐neural notions of computation ought to be replaced or reinterpreted in terms of neural computation.     

从双重关系的角度重新理解马克思的社会形式论

马克思将青年黑格尔派及其他激进批判理论对现实社会弊端的批判指向由人们的思想、道德、观念等等意识形式领域转向现实的社会关系领域,而对社会关系的认识又分为两个方面:即人与人之间的关系和人与物之间的关系,前者是交往关系,后者是交换关系.马克思在"1857-1858年政治经济学批判手稿"中对社会发展形式的阐述就是对这一社会关系的横向维度在社会历史纵向维度中一般进程的认识.本文通过对这一纵向维度中人一物双重关系的横向维度分析,尝试着说明这样一个问题:即无论我们将马克思的社会形式理论理解为三阶段说、还是五阶段说,实际上不同社会形式的变化从双重关系的意义上来说,包含着两种基本的不同性质的双重关系.     

Novelty as Opportunity and Risk: A Situated Cognition Analysis of Psychological Control and Novelty Seeking

Novel products present unknown opportunities as well as unknown risks. Past research suggested that low psychological control highlights risks and reduces the adoption of novel products. Consistent with a situated cognition perspective, we show that this depends on the specifics of low control. Across five studies, novelty seeking was lower after consumers thought about instances of low (vs. high) personal influence, but higher after consumers thought about instances of low (vs. high) predictability of the world. Thinking about a lack of personal influence increased the perceived importance of personal capability and in turn impaired the exploration of novel options, whereas thinking about an unpredictable world increased the perceived importance of preparedness for an unknown future and in turn the exploration of novel options. Throughout, perceiving low personal influence benefited familiar products, whereas seeing the world as unpredictable benefited novel products. This highlights that understanding consumers' responses to a lack of control requires joint consideration of the specifics of threat and task, consistent with situated cognition principles.     

关于自由的一种存在论观点

一、关于自由的准备性理解自由、幸福和公正是在伦理学中必须讨论的三个基本问题 ,但是 ,自由并不是伦理学问题 ,而是伦理学的哲学基础问题 (与之不同 ,幸福和公正则是伦理学的核心问题 )。这样一个细微的区分并非没有必要 ,因为在现代社会里 ,绝大多数人都把自由看作是一种价值 ,而这是一个细微但是重要的错误。价值意味着关于各种事物的一种评价标准和生活偏好 ,人们有着不同的价值观 ,因此总能够选择或者拒绝某种价值。假如把自由看作是一种价值 ,就好像是说 ,某些人喜欢自由 ,那么他们将选择自由 ;而某些人没有对自由的价值偏好 ,那么他…     

Evidence for Direct Perception From Cognition in the Wild

This article describes a portion of a study of cognition in the wild that was conducted to investigate how human operators of nuclear power plants monitor the state of the plant to detect abnormalities. Although the study was originally motivated by applied concerns, it surprisingly led to evidence relevant to basic theories of perception. The findings reveal that the instruments in the control room that operators can use for monitoring are both fallible and limited in their informativeness, thereby occasionally providing an inaccurate indication of plant status. As a result, operators sometimes leave the control room to directly observe components in the plant using their unaided perceptual systems. Because such information is lawfully constrained and not mediated by instruments, it provides a rich, reliable, and therefore, unique and highly valued indication of the true status of the environment. These findings show that Gibson's (1979/1986) distinction between directed and mediated perception is both pragmatically and psychologically relevant. The results also have very important implications for experiments on direct perception based on computer-simulated, rather than lawfully constrained, experimental stimuli.     

Intuitionism,Meaning Theory and Cognition

Michael Dummett has interpreted and expounded upon intuitionism under the influence of Wittgensteinian views on language, meaning and cognition. I argue against the application of some of these views to intuitionism and point to shortcomings in Dummett's approach. The alternative I propose makes use of recent, post-Wittgensteinian views in the philosophy of mind, meaning and language. These views are associated with the claim that human cognition exhibits intentionality and with related ideas in philosophical psychology. Intuitionism holds that mathematical constructions are mental processes or objects. Constructions are, in the first instance, forms of consciousness or possible experience of a particular type. As such, they must be understood in terms of the concept of intentionality. This view has a historical basis in the literature on intuitionism. In a famous 1931 lecture Heyting in fact identifies constructions with fulfilled or fulfillable mathematical intentions. I consider some of the consequences of this identification and contrast them with Dummett's views on intuitionism.     

社会技术系统论视角下的工程伦理学研究

20世纪以来,STS研究中的技术研究从技术决定论、技术的社会建构论向技术与社会共同塑造理论的转变,在一定意义上促进了对于工程伦理学研究的反思。诞生于这一学术运动中的社会技术系统论,有助于从关注社会技术系统复杂性的视角对传统工程伦理学的外在主义进路进行批判。基于社会技术系统论建立的解释—操作—对话模型,是开展社会技术系统语境下的工程伦理学研究的一项积极尝试。     

心理理论的比较认知研究

非人灵长类的心理理论是比较认知研究的重要内容,它对于揭示心理理论的起源和本质,具有重要的意义。该文综述了近年来有关心理理论比较认知的现场观察研究和实验室研究,分析了关于非人灵长类对视觉知觉经验的理解,对意图和目的的理解,以及对愿望和信念理解研究的方法和结果。许多研究关于实验设计,实验结果以及对结果的解释存在争议。如非人灵长类对意图和目的的理解,是运用心理表征,还是刺激－反应的联结,非人灵长类理解同种个体和理解人类个体的心理状态存在什么差异,实验设计是否可靠而有效地测量了非人灵长类的心理理论等。该文提出实验结果和理论解释的差异和争议,可能与研究者所持的理论假设,实验任务和设计等有关。关于非人灵长类的心理理论概念的界定,从社会生态学效度和文化差异等角度综合考虑,设计恰当的实验来考察非人灵长类的心理理论,是解决目前争议必须解决的问题,也是心理理论比较认知研究面临的困难。     

知识表征的新观点--知觉符号理论

在认知科学中一个经典的争论是知识在人的头脑中是如何表征的。其中占主流的理论一直是命题符号理论,而最近Barsalou又提出了一种新的观点——知觉符号理论。本文对这一新理论做了介绍,阐述了它的主要特征,比较了它与命题符号理论的差异,并提供了现今对这一理论的实验证实。希望借此能启发国内的研究者也来关注和研究这一理论。     

Situating Emotions: From Embodied Cognition to Mindreading

In this article we analyze the strengths and weaknesses of mindreading versus embodied cognition approaches to emotion understanding. In the first part of the article we argue that mindreading explanations of how we understand the emotions of others (TT, ST or hybrid) face a version of the frame problem, i.e. the problem of how to limit the scope of the information that is relevant to mindreading. Also, we show that embodied cognition explanations are able to by-pass this problem because they provide a characterization of social understanding as being essentially situated. However, embodied cognition explanations seem to be limited in scope insofar as they do not target the more sophisticated forms of emotion understanding that have traditionally been the main focus of mindreading explanations. In the second part of the article we discuss Goldie’s account of emotion understanding as a possible way to complement embodied cognition approaches without re-introducing the frame problem. We offer two suggestions that might further the integration of Goldie’s account of emotion understanding within the framework of embodied cognition.     

颜色词与颜色认知的关系:相互作用理论及其证据

颜色词与颜色认知的关系是探讨语言与认知关系的重要领域.对颜色词与颜色认知的关系,普遍进化理论认为,颜色词与颜色认知相互独立;语言关联性假设认为,颜色词对颜色认知有重要影响;折衷的理论认为,颜色认知既受光波的物理属性影响,又受人眼的生物特性影响,还受语言和文化影响.在国内外研究基础上,作者提出了颜色词与颜色认知关系的相互作用理论,认为颜色认知包括物理-生理、认知-智力、社会-文化三个水平,涉及物理、生理、认知、智力、语言和文化六个因素;三个层次、六个因素的相互作用,为人们提供了丰富多彩的颜色世界.