Occasion setting is specific to the CS-US association

In Experiment 1, rats were trained on a discrimination in which one occasion setter, A, signaled that one cue (conditioned stimulus, CS), x, would be followed by one outcome, p (unconditioned stimulus, US), and a second CS, y, by a different outcome, q (x → p and y → q); a second occasion setter, B signalled the reverse CS-outcome relations (x → q and y → p). In a subsequent stage, the animals were divided into two groups, and trained as before, except that both A and B were presented in compound with a novel occasion setter, C. For Group S (same) the CS-outcome relations following A and B were identical to those in the pretraining stage, whereas in Group D (different) they were reversed. In a subsequent test, stimulus C was shown to be a more effective occasion setter in Group D than in Group S. In Experiment 2, rats were trained on a negative occasion-setting discrimination in which CS x signaled outcome p, and y outcome q; when x and y were signaled by the occasion setter A then no outcome followed (x → p, y → q, A:x-, and A:y-). In a subsequent stage, A was now trained as a positive occasion setter, signaling reinforcement of x and y. In Group S, x and y signaled the same outcomes as in the prior training stage (x-, y-, A:x → p, and A:y → q), whereas in Group D they signaled the opposite outcomes (x, y, A:x → q, and A:y → p); more efficient test performance was seen in the latter group. These results suggest that the each occasion setter conveyed information about the specific combination of CS and US paired in its presence (i.e., x → p and y → q, or x → no p and y → no q). These results are consistent with the suggestion that occasion setters operate, at least in part, on a specific CS-US association.     

Social cognition,artefacts, and stigmergy revisited: Concepts of coordination

A number of different coordination concepts have been developed to explain how individual activities are coordinated on a social level, and the variety of concepts shows there is an interest in many domains to find such explanations. Stigmergy being one of them, has come to be increasingly applied on various kinds of human activities. In other domains we find other concepts for explaining how environmental resources contribute to work activities or how people use them to structure their work. This paper discusses different coordination concepts, including stigmergy, articulation work, coordination mechanisms, triggers, placeholders, and entry points. The first three concepts are explicitly concerned with coordination among several agents, while the last three instead concern individual activities, but arguably they can be extended to the social level. They also bring an explicitly cognitive dimension to coordination, which is not as salient in the former concepts. The concepts discussed here do have some similarities, but also important differences. They may not be interchangeable, but they could complement each other, or contribute to further elaboration of existing concepts. The stigmergic sign, e.g., could usefully be developed to recognise qualitative differences in its role as a coordination mechanism.     

A standard conceptual framework for the study of subjective time

Research on the mental representation of time (‘subjective time’) has provided broad insights into the nature of time perception and temporal processing. As the field comprises different scientific disciplines, such as psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience, studies differ with regard to the basic terms and concepts used. For this reason, research on subjective time lacks a coherent conceptual system. We argue that research in the field of subjective time should aim at establishing such a system, i.e., a more standardized terminology, in order to strengthen its theoretical basis and to support an efficient communication of results. Based on key empirical findings and concepts that are commonly (but inconsistently) used in the literature, we argue for a conceptual framework for the study of subjective time that differentiates between three types of mental representations of time: basic temporal processing, time perception in terms of passage, and time perception in terms of duration.     

Dissociating the representation of action- and sound-related concepts in middle temporal cortex

Modality-specific models of conceptual memory propose close links between concepts and the sensory-motor systems. Neuroimaging studies found, in different subject groups, that action-related and sound-related concepts activated different parts of posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG), suggesting a modality-specific representation of conceptual features. However, as these different parts of pMTG are close to each other, it is possible that the observed anatomical difference is merely related to interindividual variability. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we now investigated within the same participant group a possible conceptual feature-specific organization in pMTG. Participants performed lexical decisions on sound-related (e.g., telephone) and action-related (hammer) words. Sound words elicited higher activity in anterior pMTG adjacent to auditory association cortex, but action-related words did so in posterior pMTG close to motion sensitive areas. These results confirm distinct conceptual representations of sound and action in pMTG, just adjacent to the respective modality-specific cortices.     

Intraindividual differences dimensions of mood change during pregnancy identified in five P-technique factor analyses

Daily-self-ratings of mood and state were obtained for approximately 120 days of observation from five pregnant subjects. Measurements were based on a total pool of 75 adjectives culled from the literature to represent eight dimensions of affect established in primarily cross-sectional studies. The data were analyzed in a P-technique factor analysis context to determine both the extent to which interindividual differences and intraindividual variability concepts were interchangeable and how general such intraindividual variability concepts were among different subjects. Although evidence was found that subjects construe many adjectives differently, for dimensions such as Energy, Well Being, Fatigue, and Concentration, the data indicate that cross-sectionally and longitudinally based personality concepts exhibit a fair degree of convergence.     

The cataphoric use of the indefinite this in spoken narratives

Are concepts that were introduced with the unstressed, indefinite articlethis, as opposed to the indefinitea/an, more accessible from listeners’ mental representations? Subjects heard and then verbally continued each of a series of informal narratives. The last clause of each narrative introduced a new noun phrase that began with either the indefinitethis or the indefinitea/an (e.g.,this egg oran egg). When the concepts were introduced with the indefinitethis, the subjects referred to them more frequently, often within the first clauses that they produced, and typically via pronouns. In contrast, when the concepts were introduced witha/an, the subjects referred to them less frequently and typically via full noun phrases. Thus, concepts introduced with the indefinitethis were more accessible; therefore, the indefinitethis appears to operate cataphorically to improve referential access.     

On the Conditions of Possibility for Comparative and Intercultural Philosophy

In this essay, we present a theory of intercultural philosophical dialogue and comparative philosophy, drawing on both hermeneutics and analytic philosophy. We advocate the approach of “de-essentialization” across the board. It is true that similarities and differences are always to be observed across languages and traditions, but there exist no immutable cores or essences. “De-essentialization” applies to all “levels” of concepts: everyday notions such as green and qing 青, philosophical concepts such as emotion(s) and qing 情, and philosophical categories such as forms of life and dao 道. We argue that interpretation is a holistic multi-directional process constrained by the principle of mutual attunement. It is necessary to assume that “the other” is a human being, who, in most cases, is consistent and stating that which is true or right. This is the condition of possibility for intercultural philosophical dialogue and comparative philosophy. No more necessary conditions are needed. There is no need to presuppose concepts or categories that are universal for all humans and their languages (such as emotion(s) and qing 情).     

Sensory load incurs conceptual processing costs

Theories of grounded cognition propose that modal simulations underlie cognitive representation of concepts [Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(4), 577-660; Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617-645]. Based on recent evidence of modality-specific resources in perception, we hypothesized that verifying properties of concepts encoded in different modalities are hindered more by perceptual short-term memory load to the same versus different sensory modality as that used to process the property. We manipulated load to visual and auditory modalities by having participants store one or three items in short-term memory during property verification. In the high (but not low) load condition, property verification took longer when the property (e.g., yellow) involved the same modality as that used by the memory load (e.g., pictures). Interestingly, similar interference effects were obtained on the conceptual verification and on the memory task. These findings provide direct support for the view that conceptual processing relies on simulation in modality-specific systems.     

On the role of simplicity in science

Simple assumptions represent a decisive reason to prefer one theory to another in everyday scientific praxis. But this praxis has little philosophical justification, since there exist many notions of simplicity, and those that can be defined precisely strongly depend on the language in which the theory is formulated. The language dependence is a natural feature—to some extent—but it is also believed to be a fatal problem, because, according to a common general argument, the simplicity of a theory is always trivial in a suitably chosen language. But, this trivialization argument is typically either applied to toy-models of scientific theories or applied with little regard for the empirical content of the theory. This paper shows that the trivialization argument fails, when one considers realistic theories and requires their empirical content to be preserved. In fact, the concepts that enable a very simple formulation, are not necessarily measurable, in general. Moreover, the inspection of a theory describing a chaotic billiard shows that precisely those concepts that naturally make the theory extremely simple are provably not measurable. This suggests that—whenever a theory possesses sufficiently complex consequences—the constraint of measurability prevents too simple formulations in any language. This explains why the scientists often regard their assessments of simplicity as largely unambiguous. In order to reveal a cultural bias in the scientists’ assessment, one should explicitly identify different characterizations of simplicity of the assumptions that lead to different theory selections. General arguments are not sufficient.     

Three conditions on conceptual naturalness

Human infants are predisposed to organize their experience in terms of certain concepts and not in terms of others. The favored concepts are called natural, the remainder, unnatural. A major problem in psychology is to state a principled distinction between the two kinds of concepts. Toward this end, the present paper offers three, formal necessary conditions on the naturalness of concepts. The conditions attempt to link the problem of naturalness to the distinctions between sense versus nonsense, simplicity versus complexity, and validity versus invalidity.     

The Impact of Power on Information Processing Depends on Cultural Orientation

Two studies show that different culturally based concepts of interpersonal power have distinct implications for information processing. People with a vertical individualist (VI) cultural orientation view power in personalized terms (power is for gaining status over and recognition by others), whereas people with a horizontal collectivist (HC) cultural orientation view power in socialized terms (power is for benefitting and helping others). The distinct goals associated with these power concepts are served by different mindsets, such as stereotyping others versus learning the individuating needs of others. Therefore, for high-VI individuals, making personalized power salient increases stereotyping in processing product information. That is, they recognize better information that is congruent with their prior product expectations, relative to their recognition of incongruent information. In contrast, for high-HC people, making socialized power salient increases individuating processes, characterized by better memory for incongruent information.     

How objectivity undermines the study of personhood: Toward an intersubjective epistemology for psychological science

As a science, psychology embraces the value of objectivity. An objective observation is one that is (a) based upon publically observable phenomena (i.e., overt behavior); (b) unbiased, in the sense that it records only what was observed, without either adding or taking away from the observation, and (c) an accurate representation of the world as it truly is. To understand the person, however, it is necessary to come to grips with seemingly elusive concepts such as agency, symbolism, experience, meaning, inter-subjectivity, and morality. Such concepts make reference to phenomena that are not observable in way that one can observe objects in the physical world of space and time. In this paper, I examine how psychology's commitment to objectivity obscures our ability to understand persons. A remnant of the Cartesian distinction between a mind and body, the principle of objectivity forces psychologists to seek “objective” indicators of “subjective” processes. Following Wittgenstein and recent research on the mirror resonance system, I argue that psychological knowledge arises neither from within (subjectively) nor from without (objectively), but instead from between (intersubjectively). To understand what it means to be a person, we must abandon the false distinction between objectivity and subjectivity, and embrace an epistemology based on intersubjectivity.     

Cyclists' perception of cycling infrastructure – A Repertory Grid approach

Previous research indicate that cyclists prefer safe and comfortable infrastructure. However, concepts like safety or comfort may be understood and defined in different ways by different individuals. Moreover, these concepts are so broad that it is unclear to which specific characteristics of the traffic infrastructure they are linked. Therefore, the aim of this study is to inductively examine individual evaluation criteria that cyclists use to perceive and evaluate certain route attributes. Using the Repertory Grid technique, we elicited the personal constructs of 23 participants about given route attributes and asked them to rate every attribute on every construct. The constructs were categorized and clustered resulting in five evaluation criteria, namely Mental Comfort, Physical Comfort, Interaction, Environment, and Ease of Use. Both comfort clusters were rated the most relevant for route choice, but they strengthen the suggestion of two distinct aspects of comfort, one referring to mental stress, the other referring to physical effort. Furthermore, the analyses revealed Interaction as a relatively new route criterion which also raises a new view on the negative evaluation of motor traffic and expands the concept of stress. Regarding the evaluation of route attributes, a high traffic volume and cobbled stone were rated the most negative, whereas separated cycling facilities were evaluated as most positive. Findings of this study expand existing research by qualitative insights and provide a more detailed understanding of route criteria like comfort or safety. This can be used to enhance cycling facilities and to offer preferable infrastructure for cyclists.     

Abstract-concept learning in Black-billed magpies (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pica hudsonia</Emphasis>)

Abstract relational concepts depend upon relationships between stimuli (e.g., same vs. different) and transcend features of the training stimuli. Recent evidence shows that learning abstract concepts is shared across a variety species including birds. Our recent work with a highly-skilled food-storing bird, Clark’s nutcracker, revealed superior same/different abstract-concept learning compared to rhesus monkeys, capuchin monkeys, and pigeons. Here we test a more social, but less reliant on food-storing, corvid species, the Black-billed magpie (Pica hudsonia). We used the same procedures and training exemplars (eight pairs of the same rule, and 56 pairs of the different rule) as were used to test the other species. Magpies (n = 10) showed a level of abstract-concept learning that was equivalent to nutcrackers and greater than the primates and pigeons tested with these same exemplars. These findings suggest that superior initial abstract-concept learning abilities may be shared across corvids generally, rather than confined to those strongly reliant on spatial memory.     

Personality Psychology: Lexical Approaches, Assessment Methods, and Trait Concepts Reveal Only Half of the Story—Why it is Time for a Paradigm Shift

This article develops a comprehensive philosophy-of-science for personality psychology that goes far beyond the scope of the lexical approaches, assessment methods, and trait concepts that currently prevail. One of the field’s most important guiding scientific assumptions, the lexical hypothesis, is analysed from meta-theoretical viewpoints to reveal that it explicitly describes two sets of phenomena that must be clearly differentiated: 1) lexical repertoires and the representations that they encode and 2) the kinds of phenomena that are represented. Thus far, personality psychologists largely explored only the former, but have seriously neglected studying the latter. Meta-theoretical analyses of these different kinds of phenomena and their distinct natures, commonalities, differences, and interrelations reveal that personality psychology’s focus on lexical approaches, assessment methods, and trait concepts entails a) erroneous meta-theoretical assumptions about what the phenomena being studied actually are, and thus how they can be analysed and interpreted, b) that contemporary personality psychology is largely based on everyday psychological knowledge, and c) a fundamental circularity in the scientific explanations used in trait psychology. These findings seriously challenge the widespread assumptions about the causal and universal status of the phenomena described by prominent personality models. The current state of knowledge about the lexical hypothesis is reviewed, and implications for personality psychology are discussed. Ten desiderata for future research are outlined to overcome the current paradigmatic fixations that are substantially hampering intellectual innovation and progress in the field.     

Comparative concepts

Comparative concepts such as greener than or higher than are ways of ordering objects. They are fundamental to our grasp of gradable concepts, that is, the type of meanings expressed by gradable general terms, such as ??is green?? or ??is high??, which are embeddable in comparative constructions in natural language. Some comparative concepts seem natural, whereas others seem gerrymandered. The aim of this paper is to outline a theoretical approach to comparative concepts that bears both on the account of naturalness for comparative concepts and on the theory of gradable concepts. The approach is novel in that it carries some basic assumptions from Peter G?rdenfors?? conceptual spaces account of categorical concepts over to comparative concepts. The offered approach is more general than G?rdenfors?? account in that it supplies a framework of graded categorisation that includes his categorisation rule as a limiting case. Importantly, it provides also a new argument for adopting G?rdenfors?? particular model of categorisation.     

Why is number word learning hard? Evidence from bilingual learners

Young children typically take between 18 months and 2 years to learn the meanings of number words. In the present study, we investigated this developmental trajectory in bilingual preschoolers to examine the relative contributions of two factors in number word learning: (1) the construction of numerical concepts, and (2) the mapping of language specific words onto these concepts. We found that children learn the meanings of small number words (i.e., one, two, and three) independently in each language, indicating that observed delays in learning these words are attributable to difficulties in mapping words to concepts. In contrast, children generally learned to accurately count larger sets (i.e., five or greater) simultaneously in their two languages, suggesting that the difficulty in learning to count is not tied to a specific language. We also replicated previous studies that found that children learn the counting procedure before they learn its logic – i.e., that for any natural number, n, the successor of n in the count list denotes the cardinality n + 1. Consistent with past studies, we found that children’s knowledge of successors is first acquired incrementally. In bilinguals, we found that this knowledge exhibits item-specific transfer between languages, suggesting that the logic of the positive integers may not be stored in a language-specific format. We conclude that delays in learning the meanings of small number words are mainly due to language-specific processes of mapping words to concepts, whereas the logic and procedures of counting appear to be learned in a format that is independent of a particular language and thus transfers rapidly from one language to the other in development.     

Exploring metaphor's epistemic function: Uncertainty moderates metaphor-consistent priming effects on social perceptions

Consistent with conceptual metaphor theory's claim that metaphors operate at a conceptual, and not just linguistic, level, prior research shows that priming perceptions related to concrete concepts influences perceptions related to dissimilar, more abstract concepts in metaphor-consistent ways. However, the theory's claim that metaphors function to reduce uncertainty about abstract concepts has yet to be experimentally assessed. Two studies tested whether situational variation in uncertainty moderates metaphor-consistent priming effects. Study 1 focused on the metaphor life is a path and showed that priming path perceptions (vs. literal representations) increased perceived autobiographical continuity only if uncertainty about personal identity was salient. Study 2 focused on verticality metaphors and showed that vertical orientation primes influenced satisfaction with the decision to attend one's current university in both directions (up is good, bad is down) only if uncertainty about the value of the college experience was salient.