The Growth of Multidisciplinarity in the Cognitive Science Society

In a case study of the growth of cognitive science, we analyzed the activities of the Cognitive Science Society with a particular emphasis on the multidisciplinary nature of the field. Analyses of departmental affiliations, training back-grounds, research methodology, and paper citations suggest that the journal Cognitive Science and the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society are dominated by cognitive psychology and computer science, rather than being an equal division among the constituent disciplines of cognitive science. However, at many levels, a growing percentage of work was found to involve a conjunction of multiple disciplines, such that approximately 30–50% of recent work in the Cognitive Science Society is multidisciplinary. In a questionnaire study of cognitive scientists involved in collaborative research, multidisciplinarity was found to shape the research process and affect the factors associated with successful research.     

LATERAL DIFFERENCES IN DIGIT AND NONSENSE FORM RECOGNITION AMONG JAPANESE AND ISRAELI SUBJECTS

Digit and nonsense figure sequences which were arranged vertically or horizontally, were tachistoscopically presented to native Japanese and Hebrew readers to the left or right visual field. Both groups showed a right visual field superiority in the horizontal condition and a strong tendency toward a right visual field superiority in the vertical condition for the digit sequences, and no visual field difference was shown both in the vertical and horizontal conditions for the nonsense figure sequences. There was no difference between Japanese and Israelis in either the direction or the degree of the visual field differences. A slight influence of the different directional reading biases between both groups appeared in the analysis of serial position effect in recall, but this influence was not prominent. Based on these findings, cross-cultural influences on cerebral functioning were discussed.     

Reversal Learning in Conditional Discriminations Is Not Controlled by Reinforcer Density

The Psychological Record - Three experiments have examined whether a whole-partial reversal effect is due to shift in reinforcement density across phases, between whole and partial reversal in both...     

Variable coordination of eye and head movements during the early development of attention: A longitudinal study of infants aged 12–36 months

This longitudinal study investigated the effects of attentional development on peripheral stimulus localization by analyzing the eye and head movements of toddlers as they matured from 12 to 36 months. On each trial of an experiment, a central fixation point and a 30° peripheral stimulus were presented, such that in the gap condition the fixation disappeared 300 ms before the peripheral stimulus, whereas in the no-overlap condition it disappeared simultaneously as the peripheral stimulus, and in the overlap condition the fixation remained present when the peripheral target occurred. Results showed that eye and head movement latencies were highly correlated in all conditions and ages. However, at 12 months, head movements were as fast as eye movements, whereas during the subsequent development, eye movements became increasingly faster than head movements. These findings are indicative of a transition between 12 and 36 months due either to a change in attentional control, or to changes in the size of the visual field in which only eye movements occur.     

Individual differences in disengagement of fixation and temperament: Longitudinal research on toddlers

It has been suggested that a shift occurs in the brain's control system from the orienting network in infancy to the executive network by the age of 3–4 years; however, there has been little empirical evidence of this shift during toddlerhood. Therefore, the present study examined how the orienting system in infancy is related to an effortful control system at a later age. Children were assessed longitudinally at 12, 18, 24, and 36 months of age, using a gap-overlap task in which dynamic geometrical-shape stimuli were presented. Parents completed temperament questionnaires about the children at each age. A delayed-gratification task was also given to 36-month-olds. Overall, saccadic latencies in the gap-overlap task were significantly faster at 36 months. At all ages, responses were slower during overlap trials than during gap or no-overlap trials. Longer latencies in the overlap condition were associated with low temperamental orienting/regulation scores at 12 months but with high effortful control scores at 18 and 24 months. The associations at 18 and 24 months are thought to represent a genuine positive association between effortful control and sustained and focused attention.     

Culture, emotion regulation, and adjustment

This article reports differences across 23 countries on 2 processes of emotion regulation--reappraisal and suppression. Cultural dimensions were correlated with country means on both and the relationship between them. Cultures that emphasized the maintenance of social order--that is, those that were long-term oriented and valued embeddedness and hierarchy--tended to have higher scores on suppression, and reappraisal and suppression tended to be positively correlated. In contrast, cultures that minimized the maintenance of social order and valued individual Affective Autonomy and Egalitarianism tended to have lower scores on Suppression, and Reappraisal and Suppression tended to be negatively correlated. Moreover, country-level emotion regulation was significantly correlated with country-level indices of both positive and negative adjustment.     

Detection of invariants by haptic touch across age groups: rod length perception

This study examined the development in the detection of maximum eigenvalues and static moment as invariants, through a task of perceiving rod length without visual information by haptic touch. 34 participants ages 6 to 83 years participated in the experiment. Their exploratory behavior and perceptions of rod length were analyzed by age group (Children: 6 to 12 years old; Young Adult: 21 to 25 years old; Middle Age: 31 to 56 years old; and Older: 65 to 83 years old). A behavior analysis indicated that use of vertical swinging increased for the Young Adult group and decreased with age for the Older group, whereas Children frequently held the rod without wielding. Analysis showed that, by age, differences in coefficients on the maximum eigenvalue and static moment were parallel with an exploratory behavioral change. Finally, the effect of different exploratory behaviors on length perception was discussed.