Framing cognition: Dewey’s potential contributions to some enactivist issues

It is well known that John Dewey was very far from embracing the traditional idea of cognition as something happening inside one’s own mind and consisting in a pictorial representation of the alleged purely external reality out there. His position was largely convergent with enactivist accounts of cognition as something based in life and consisting in human actions within a natural environment. The paper considers Dewey’s conception of cognition by focusing on its potential contributions to the current debate with enactivism. It claims that Dewey’s anti-substantial, continuistic, and emergentistic conception of the mind as a typically human conduct pulls the rug out of the idea of cognition as representation, as well as pushes the current discussion towards a serious reconsideration of representationalist assumptions about conceptuality and language. The paper emphasises that Dewey—differently from enactivists—frames the role of cognition within experience: he argues that cognition concerns those intermediate phases of our experiences of the world which are characterised by an indeterminate or troubled situation, because he claims that human beings’ interactions with their own environment are qualitatively richer and broader than cognition, including as they do many different and intertwined modes of experience. Finally, the author suggests that a coherent development of Dewey’s lines of thought should avoid rigid distinctions and hierarchies between lower and higher degrees of cognition in humans, which are still maintained in certain forms of radical enactivism. Differently, we should consider the impact of the cultural and broadly linguistic configuration of the human–environment even on perception, motor action, and affective sensibility.

     

Creativity between individual insight and group support. An explorative study in the Italian fashion industry / La creatividad entre la introspección individual y el apoyo grupal. Un estudio exploratorio de la industria de la moda italiana

Abstract

Creativity has been defined across time and fields highlighting different perspectives and variables, from the power of individual insight to creative intelligence, to the role played by mind wandering. After a brief literature review, the present paper presents an explorative study on the dialogue between individual and collective creativity in the fashion industry. The research design is inspired by mix-method research. The dataset is made up of in-depth interviews with 12 Italian stylists, focused on the creative processes. Data have been analysed both in qualitative terms (metaphors analysis) and in quantitative terms (automatic content analysis supported by T-Lab software). According to our results, the creativity processes involved in the fashion industry are mainly individual with a growing role played by teamwork. Stylists present themselves as psychologists in dialogue with their audience, so that the general public, in some sense, become an additional actor in the creative process.     

Task effects on tactile temporal order judgments: when space does and does not matter

The ability to report the temporal order of 2 tactile stimuli (1 applied to each hand) has been shown to decline when the arms are crossed over compared with when they are uncrossed. However, these effects have only been measured when temporal order was reported by stimulus location. It is unknown whether this spatial manipulation of the body affects all tactile temporal order judgments (TOJs) or only those judgments that are spatially defined. The authors examined the effect of crossing the arms on tactile TOJs when stimuli were identified by either spatial (location) or nonspatial (frequency or duration) attributes. Spatial TOJs were significantly impaired when the arms were in crossed compared with uncrossed postures, but there was no effect of posture when order was judged by nonspatial attributes. Task-dependent modulation of the effects of posture was also evident when response complexity was reduced to go/no-go responses. These results suggest that crossing the arms impairs tactile localization and thus spatial TOJs. However, the data also suggest that localization is not a necessary precursor when temporal order can be computed by nonspatial means.     

Focusing on the relation: fewer exemplars facilitate children's initial verb learning and extension

One of the most prominent theories for why children struggle to learn verbs is that verb learning requires the abstraction of relations between an object and its action (Gentner, 2003). Two hypotheses suggest how children extract relations to extend a novel verb: (1) seeing many different exemplars allows children to detect the invariant relation between actions in different contexts (Gentner, 2003), and (2) repetition of fewer exemplars allows children to move beyond the entities involved to extract the relation (Kersten & Smith, 2002). We tested 2 1/2- and 3-year-olds' ability to extend a novel verb after viewing the repetition of one novel actor compared to four different actors performing a novel action. Both ages were better at learning and extending a novel verb to a novel actor when shown only one actor rather than four different actors. These results indicate that during initial verb learning less information is more effective.     

The influence of evaluation and potency on perceivers' causal attributions

In two experiments, this paper examines how the labels used to describe interpersonal interactions can affect perceivers' judgments of who caused the interaction. Two universal, connotative dimensions of word meaning underlying the labels, evaluation and potency, influenced expectations about interactants' behaviors and experiences, which in turn affected perceivers' causal attributions. Evaluation and potency ratings for a set of experiencer verbs, a set of action verbs, a set of trait labels (Experiment 1) and a set of social category labels (Experiment 2) were used to construct sentences describing interactions between two people. The complete set of sentences contained all possible combinations of high or low evaluation and potency for all the sentence constituents. Participants were asked to judge who caused the event—subject or object—without having been told that evaluation and potency were the dimensions of interest. When the sentence subject and object differed in evaluation, the evaluative match between the sentence subject and the verb was the most important factor influencing attributions. The potency of the constituents and the class of the verb (experiencer or action) affected the magnitude of the attributions. When the sentence subject and object shared the same valence, attributions were based on verb class. The results highlight the important role of language in interpreting social behavior. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-Reported Differences in the Experience and Expression of Anger Between Girls and Boys

Gender differences with regard to the emotion of anger were studied using elementary school-aged children in an urban, a suburban, and a rural school district. Both the suburban and rural samples were predominantly white (88% and 82%, respectively) while the urban sample was predominantly black (57%). Five hundred and fifty seven 4th and 5th grade children (287 boys and 270 girls) were given a self-report anger questionnaire. No significant differences were found between boys and girls in the self-reported total anger level However, item analysis indicated that some of the specific hypothetical situations that elicited anger differed in boys and girls. In addition, there were significant differences in the expression of anger between boys and girls. Consistent with previous research, boys reported significantly higher levels of aggressive responses. The location in which the children attended school emerged as an important variable with regard to the experience and expression of anger. As a group, urban youngsters reported significantly higher levels of anger than children who attended school in rural or suburban settings.     

HEURISTICS FOR DETERMINING THE OPTIMAL INTERVAL BETWEEN CHECKUPS

Abstract –How often should one check on a system that is at risk for some malfunction? The optimal interval between inspections depends on the likelihood of malfunction, the cost of inspection, and the cost of treatment We develop a mathematical expression for the optimal inspection interval as a function of these parameters and then an approximation for that expression The approximation indicates that as the risk increases or the ratio of inspection to disease cost decreases by a factor of n, the inspection interval should be reduced by n1/2 We also report an experiment indicating that subjects who generate optimal inspection intervals use examples as anchors and then perform adjustments for variations in risk and cost factors However, they do not approximate the appropriate square-root adjustment rule The observed anchor-and-adjust process suggests that normative recommendations may serve as influential benchmarks, even if they are not adhered to directly.     

Differential effects of frequency shifted feedback between child and adult stutterers

It has been reported previously that presentation of an altered form of the voice enhances the fluency of people who stutter. One of these forms of alteration is frequency shifted feedback. The effects of frequency shifted feedback was compared between two speaker groups that differed in age. The fluency enhancing effects of frequency shifted feedback was greater for adult speakers (mean age 21;3) than for children (mean age 9;11). The results are discussed in terms of their implications for theory and treatment.     

Tactile roughness perception with a rigid link interposed between skin and surface

Subjects made roughness judgments of textured surfaces made of raised elements, while holding stick-like probes or through a rigid sheath mounted on the fingertip. These rigid links, which impose vibratory coding of roughness, were compared with the finger (bare or covered with a compliant glove), using magnitude-estimation and roughness differentiation tasks. All end effectors led to an increasing function relating subjective roughness magnitude to surface interelement spacing, and all produced above-chance roughness discrimination. Although discrimination was best with the finger, rigid links produced greater perceived roughness for the smoothest stimuli. A peak in the magnitude-estimation functions for the small probe and a transition from calling more sparsely spaced surfaces rougher to calling them smoother were predictable from the size of the contact area. The results indicate the potential viability of vibratory coding of roughness through a rigid link and have implications for teleoperation and virtual-reality systems.     

Multipotential Abilities and Vocational Interests in Gifted Adolescents: Fact or Fiction?

The widely held view that highly intellectually gifted adolescents are multipotential in their abilities and career interests was investigated in two samples (N = 322 and N = 217) of gifted high school seniors. Three measures of intellectual abilities—verbal, mathematical, and mechanical—and a measure of vocational interest based upon nonacademic talented activities and accomplishments that yielded scores for vocational interest in three areas—Science, Social, and Artistic—were administered. Contrary to the widely held view, a very large proportion of intellectually gifted adolescents reported a differentiated pattern of both abilities and interests, and a very small proportion reported the expected high-flat ability and interest profiles. The findings suggest that the working assumptions of career education and counselling of intellectually gifted adolescents should perhaps be reconsidered.