Beyond Single-Mindedness: A Figure-Ground Reversal for the Cognitive Sciences

A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognized by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here, we explore the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, we highlight the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists.     

Where angels fear to tread: neurophenomenology and the matter of belief

The article explores Manuel Vásquez’ treatment of cultural neurophenomenology within the broader context of his non-reductionist methodology. By paying particular attention to the context of Tibetan Buddhist monks in disapora – the primary subjects of neurophenomenological research – it is suggested that Vásquez’ neurophenomenology is not as culturally mediated as he claims. His treatment may undermine his larger contention that politics shape both religious experience and the scholarly methodologies used to explore them.     

Making Sense of Sense-Making: Reflections on Enactive and Extended Mind Theories

This paper explores some of the differences between the enactive approach in cognitive science and the extended mind thesis. We review the key enactive concepts of autonomy and sense-making. We then focus on the following issues: (1) the debate between internalism and externalism about cognitive processes; (2) the relation between cognition and emotion; (3) the status of the body; and (4) the difference between ‘incorporation’ and mere ‘extension’ in the body-mind-environment relation.

Your heart makes my heart move: Cues of social connectedness cause shared emotions and physiological states among strangers

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that cues of social connectedness could lead even new interaction partners to experience shared emotional and physiological states. In Experiment 1, a confederate prepared for a stress-inducing task. Participants who had been led to feel socially connected to the confederate reported feeling greater stress than participants who had not. In Experiment 2, a confederate ran vigorously in place. Socially-connected participants had greater cardiovascular reactivity (heart rate and blood pressure) than controls. Each study held constant exposure to the confederate. The results suggest that the sharing of psychological and physiological states does not occur only between long-standing relationship partners, but can also result from even subtle experiences of social connectedness. These findings illustrate the dynamic and fluid ways in which important aspects of self can change in response to cues of social relatedness.     

The molecules of social recognition memory: implications for social cognition, extended mind, and neuroethics

Social cognition, cognitive neuroscience, and neuroethics have reached a synthesis of late, but some troubling features are present. The neuroscience that currently dominates the study of social cognition is exclusively cognitive neuroscience, as contrasted with the cellular and increasingly molecular emphasis that has gripped mainstream neuroscience over the past three decades. Furthermore, the recent field of molecular and cellular cognition has begun to unravel some molecular mechanisms involved in social cognition, especially pertaining to the consolidation of memories of particular conspecific organisms. Some new experimental techniques for positive interventions into these hypothesized mechanisms offer opportunities for establishing direct causal linkages between intra-neuronal molecular events and the behaviors used to measure social cognitive phenomena. Predicted results from an experiment described below also cast doubt on the application of the “extended mind” approach from recent cognitive science to ground the neuroscience of social cognition. Since neuroethics relies heavily on our best neuroscience of social cognition, that field may soon need to extend its attention beyond cognitive neuroscience, and into neuroscience’s cellular and molecular mainstream.     

具身认知:身体主题在心身关系研究中的回归

上世纪80年代以来,随着经典认知研究的步履维艰,认知研究逐渐显示出具身化的特点。具身认知是第二代认知科学的代表,它强调身体在认知形成中的重要性,认为身体对认知有限制、分配和调节作用,并具有与经典认知不同的运动观。近年来研究者们以实验手段力求为具身认知的存在提供证据,着力考察认知与身体感知运动状态的相互影响。具身认知理论在认知构建、生态效度等方面具有自己的优势,但目前具身认知还是一个新兴的研究领域,有待进一步的深入探讨。     

Positive affective tone and team performance: The moderating role of collective emotional skills

Research on affect as a group-level phenomenon has shown that over time, individual members within a group become highly similar in their affect (i.e., members experience and display similar emotions and moods), and often become similar enough that the aggregation of individuals’ affect can meaningfully represent the “affective tone” of the group. It is generally assumed that a more positive affective tone will lead to better team performance. We challenge the conclusion that positive affective tone is always good for team performance, suggesting that the relationship between positive affective tone and team performance is subject to moderating influences. Across two studies, we demonstrate that the self-reported collective emotional skills of team members play a crucial role in determining whether positive affective tone is beneficial or detrimental to team performance. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Dynamic self- and other-focused emotional intelligence: A theoretical framework and research agenda

This paper introduces a theoretical framework for research on the dynamics of self- and other-focused emotional intelligence (EI). The EI-framework focuses specifically on the interplay between different EI dimensions when individuals are processing their own emotions and the emotions of others. The framework captures different phases of processing self- and other-emotions. The first phase consists of situational cues (e.g., an argument) that elicit interdependent emotions in the self and others. The next phase specifies differential and interacting effects of EI dimensions when processing these emotions, and the third phase describes what proximal and distal consequences this processing may have. In addition, the framework includes candidate dispositional and contextual factors (e.g., emotion type, motivation) that may qualify the process.     

A social-cognitive framework for understanding serious lies: Activation-decision-construction-action theory

Little is known about the cognition of deception (Gombos, 2006). We propose a cognitive account of serious lying (i.e., deception involving high stakes) in response to a solicitation of a truth: Activation-Decision-Construction-Action Theory (ADCAT). Built on the Activation-Decision-Construction Model of answering questions deceptively (Walczyk, Roper, Seeman, & Humphrey, 2003), the theory elaborates on the roles of executive processes, theory of mind, emotions, motivation, specifies cognitive processing thoroughly, and considers the rehearsal of lies. ADCAT's four processing components are (a) activation of the truth, the (b) decision whether and how to alter deceptively the information shared, (c) construction of a deception, and (d) action [acting sincere while delivering a lie]. Core constructs are “theory of mind” and “cognitive resources”. Specifically, throughout serious deception, individuals are inferring the current or potential mental states of targets and taking steps to minimize the allocation of cognitive resources during delivery to appear honest and lie well.     

Excluded emotions: The role of anger in antisocial responses to ostracism

In this article, we examined the role of anger in the link between social exclusion and antisocial behavior. We compared the effects of anger to another negative emotion, sadness. In Study 1, social exclusion was associated with feelings of anger, and anger was associated with antisocial behavior. In contrast, sadness was not associated with antisocial behavior. In Study 2, feelings of anger were manipulated by excluding participants for either a fair or unfair reason. Unfairly excluded participants were more angry and were more likely to engage in antisocial behavior than fairly excluded participants. Implications for the study of emotions in the context of social exclusion are discussed.     

The influence of discrete emotions on judgement and decision-making: A meta-analytic review

During the past three decades, researchers interested in emotions and cognition have attempted to understand the relationship that affect and emotions have with cognitive outcomes such as judgement and decision-making. Recent research has revealed the importance of examining more discrete emotions, showing that same-valence emotions (e.g., anger and fear) differentially impact judgement and decision-making outcomes. Narrative reviews of the literature (Lerner & Tiedens, 2006 Lerner, J. S. and Tiedens, L. Z. 2006. Portrait of the angry decision maker: How appraisal tendencies shape anger's influence on cognition. Journal of Behavioral Decision-Making, 19: 115–137. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Pham, 2007 Pham, M. T. 2007. Emotion and rationality: A critical review and interpretation of empirical evidence. Review of General Psychology, 11(2): 155–178. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) have identified some under-researched topics, but provide a limited synthesis of findings. The purpose of this study was to review the research examining the influence of discrete emotions on judgement and decision-making outcomes and provide an assessment of the observed effects using a meta-analytic approach. Results, overall, show that discrete emotions have moderate to large effects on judgement and decision-making outcomes. However, moderator analyses revealed differential effects for study-design characteristics and emotion-manipulation characteristics by emotion type. Implications are discussed.     

Beyond job satisfaction: A five-year prospective analysis of the dispositional approach to work attitudes

Mounting evidence indicates a dispositional component to global job satisfaction. Unfortunately, however, relatively little attention has been given to the potential effects of dispositions on work-related attitudes other than global job satisfaction. We used a five-year prospective design to investigate the relationships of affective disposition with a set of attitudes oriented toward different aspects of work: the job, the organization, and the career. Job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job involvement, career commitment and career satisfaction each showed significant stability over five years. Cross-lagged panel analyses suggested that affective disposition plays an important role in the change of job attitudes across time. Analyses also support the hypothesis that affective disposition would be more weakly related to job involvement than to the other attitudes.     

The many faces of the Still-Face Paradigm: A review and meta-analysis

The Still-Face Paradigm (SFP) designed by Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, and Brazelton (Tronick, E., Als, H., Adamson, L., Wise, S., & Brazelton, T. B. (1978). Infants response to entrapment between contradictory messages in face-to-face interaction. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 17, 1–13) has been used for many different purposes in over 80 empirical studies. In the current paper, the nature and correlates of infant behavior in the SFP were examined in a systematic narrative review and a series of meta-analyses. The results of the meta-analyses confirmed the classic still-face effect of reduced positive affect and gaze, and increased negative affect, as well as a partial carry-over effect into the reunion episode consisting of lower positive and higher negative affect compared to baseline. The still-face effect is very robust as it was found regardless of most sample variations such as infant gender and risk status, and regardless of most procedural variations, such as the length of the SFP episodes and the use of intervals between episodes. The few moderator effects that were found in the meta-analyses tended to put findings from the narrative review in a new perspective. Additional meta-analyses confirmed the narrative review in finding that higher maternal sensitivity predicted more infant positive affect during the still-face. Infants’ higher positive affect and lower negative affect during the still-face were predictive of secure attachment at age 1 year. The meta-analytic results for maternal depression were equivocal. Implications for future research include a need for studies testing the role of the adults’ identity (parent versus stranger, mother versus father) to elucidate the relationship-specificity of the still-face effect. Also, the role of maternal sensitivity and temperament as potential moderators of the still-face effect need to be examined further. On a procedural level, the effects of the timing of the still-face and of the duration of the reunion on infant responses deserve future research attention.     

Lay theories in affective forecasting: The progression of affect

Various studies have investigated the precision with which individuals forecast the duration of their affective states that result from events. It is hypothesized that these forecasts rely on lay theories about the progression of affect over time such that lay theories of decreasing affect lead to shorter estimates of the duration of affect than do lay theories of continuing affect. Two studies subtly primed lay theories of progression—one priming theories of affect progression specifically, and the other priming theories of progression more generally—and demonstrated that the accessibility of these lay theories influenced affective forecasts as hypothesized. Study 2 demonstrated that the impact of these lay theories was less pronounced under high elaboration conditions. Results and implications for the inaccuracy of affective forecasts are discussed.     

心理理论研究三十年：回顾与反思

自Premack和Woodruff于1978年提出心理理论至今,心理理论研究已走过了30年的历程。当前心理理论研究已经成为发展心理学、心灵哲学、认知科学所关注的热门课题。文章回顾了心理理论研究的缘起和概念、内容与基本范式、问题与困境,在此基础上反思了心理理论研究困境与解释模型的关系,并对该领域未来研究方向做了展望。     

Embodying gestures: The Social Orienting Model and the study of early gestures in autism

Autistic spectrum disorders impair the ability to interact socially. Detecting and understanding their onset is not only an empirical enterprise, but also a theoretical one, often linked to studies on intersubjectivity. Different theoretical perspectives have been elaborated in the past to account for the deficit. The main purpose of this paper is to reinforce and offer empirical grounding to a recent approach, termed Social Orienting Model, by presenting the main theoretical approaches to autism and contrasting them to this view, as well as considering its possible effect on empirical research, focusing on current literature analyzing gestures in children with autism.

Personal Identity and the Importance of One's Own Body: A Response to Derek Parfit

In this essay I take issue with Derek Parfit's reductionist account of personal identity.Parfit is concerned to respond to what he sees as flaws in the conception of the role of 'person' in self-interest theories. He attempts to show that the notion of a person as something over and above a totality of mental and physical states and events (in his words, a 'further fact'), is empty, and so, our ethical concerns must be based on something other than this. My objections centre around the claim that Parfit employs an impoverished conception of 'life'. Parfit misconceives the connection between 'I' and one's body, and, so, despite his rejection of a metaphysical conception of 'self', remains within the logic of Cartesianism. What Parfit and other reductionists call an 'impersonal' perspective, I shall call the third-person perspective: a perspective which one in general may take. Against Parfit I shall offer a more complex conception of 'self' through the concept of 'bodily perspective'. I emphasize the irreducible ambiguities of human embodiment in order to show the presuppositions and the limitations of Parfit's view. Of interest is the conception of time and the model of continuity that is appropriate to an embodied subject's life. I employ Paul Ricoeur's concept of 'human time' to argue that the reflective character of human experience demands a model of temporality and continuity that differs significantly from the one Parfit employs.     

The social face of emotion recognition: Evaluations versus stereotypes

The goal of the present paper was to demonstrate the influence of general evaluations and stereotype associations on emotion recognition. Earlier research has shown that evaluative connotations between social category members and emotional expression predict whether recognition of positive or negative emotional expressions will be facilitated (e.g. Hugenberg, 2005). In the current paper we tested the hypothesis that stereotype associations influence emotion recognition processes, especially when the difference between valences of emotional expressions does not come into play. In line with this notion, when participants in the present two studies were asked to classify positive versus negative emotional expressions (i.e. happy versus anger, or happy versus sadness), valence congruency effects were found. Importantly, however, in a comparative context without differences in valence in which participants were asked to classify two distinct negative emotions (i.e. anger versus sadness) we found that recognition facilitation occurred for stereotypically associated discrete emotional expressions. With this, the current results indicate that a distinction between general evaluative and cognitive routes can be made in emotion recognition processes.