Where have all the (ape) gestures gone?

Comparative analysis of the gestural communication of our nearest animal relatives, the great apes, implies that humans should have the biological potential to produce and understand 60–70 gestures, by virtue of shared common descent. These gestures are used intentionally in apes to convey separate requests, rather than as referential items in syntactically structured signals. At present, no such legacy of shared gesture has been described in humans. We suggest that the fate of “ape gestures” in modern human communication is relevant to the debate regarding the evolution of language through a possible intermediate stage of gestural protolanguage.     

Toward the Language-Ready Brain: Biological Evolution and Primate Comparisons

The approach to language evolution suggested here focuses on three questions: How did the human brain evolve so that humans can develop, use, and acquire languages? How can the evolutionary quest be informed by studying brain, behavior, and social interaction in monkeys, apes, and humans? How can computational modeling advance these studies? I hypothesize that the brain is language ready in that the earliest humans had protolanguages but not languages (i.e., communication systems endowed with rich and open-ended lexicons and grammars supporting a compositional semantics), and that it took cultural evolution to yield societies (a cultural constructed niche) in which language-ready brains could become language-using brains. The mirror system hypothesis is a well-developed example of this approach, but I offer it here not as a closed theory but as an evolving framework for the development and analysis of conflicting subhypotheses in the hope of their eventual integration. I also stress that computational modeling helps us understand the evolving role of mirror neurons, not in and of themselves, but only in their interaction with systems “beyond the mirror.” Because a theory of evolution needs a clear characterization of what it is that evolved, I also outline ideas for research in neurolinguistics to complement studies of the evolution of the language-ready brain. A clear challenge is to go beyond models of speech comprehension to include sign language and models of production, and to link language to visuomotor interaction with the physical and social world.     

Algebraic reasoning and bat-and-ball problem variants: Solving isomorphic algebra first facilitates problem solving later

The classic bat-and-ball problem is used widely to measure biased and correct reasoning in decision-making. University students overwhelmingly tend to provide the biased answer to this problem. To what extent might reasoners be led to modify their judgement, and, more specifically, is it possible to facilitate problem solution by prompting participants to consider the problem from an algebraic perspective? One hundred ninety-seven participants were recruited to investigate the effect of algebraic cueing as a debiasing strategy on variants of the bat-and-ball problem. Participants who were cued to consider the problem algebraically were significantly more likely to answer correctly relative to control participants. Most of this cueing effect was confined to a condition that required participants to solve isomorphic algebra equations corresponding to the structure of bat-and-ball question types. On a subsequent critical question with differing item and dollar amounts presented without a cue, participants were able to generalize the learned information to significantly reduce overall bias. Math anxiety was also found to be significantly related to bat-and-ball problem accuracy. These results suggest that, under specific conditions, algebraic reasoning is an effective debiasing strategy on bat-and-ball problem variants, and provide the first documented evidence for the influence of math anxiety on Cognitive Reflection Test performance.     

The Perceptual Basis of Vast Space

“Vast” is a word often applied to environmental terrain that is perceived to have large spatial extent. This judgment is made even at viewing distances where traditional metric depth cues are not useful. This paper explores the perceptual basis of vast experience, including reliability and visual precursors. Experiment 1 demonstrated strong agreement in ratings of the spatial extent of two-dimensional (2D) scene images by participants in two countries under very different viewing conditions. Image categories labeled “vast” often exemplified scene attributes of ruggedness and openness (Oliva & Torralba, 2001). Experiment 2 quantitatively assessed whether these properties predict vastness. High vastness ratings were associated with highly open, or moderately open but rugged, scenes. Experiment 3 provided evidence, consistent with theory, that metric distance perception does not directly mediate the observed vastness ratings. The question remains as to how people perceive vast space when information about environmental scale is unavailable from metric depth cues or associated scene properties. We consider possible answers, including contribution from strong cues to relative depth.     

The dynamics of multimodal integration: The averaging diffusion model

We combine extant theories of evidence accumulation and multi-modal integration to develop an integrated framework for modeling multimodal integration as a process that unfolds in real time. Many studies have formulated sensory processing as a dynamic process where noisy samples of evidence are accumulated until a decision is made. However, these studies are often limited to a single sensory modality. Studies of multimodal stimulus integration have focused on how best to combine different sources of information to elicit a judgment. These studies are often limited to a single time point, typically after the integration process has occurred. We address these limitations by combining the two approaches. Experimentally, we present data that allow us to study the time course of evidence accumulation within each of the visual and auditory domains as well as in a bimodal condition. Theoretically, we develop a new Averaging Diffusion Model in which the decision variable is the mean rather than the sum of evidence samples and use it as a base for comparing three alternative models of multimodal integration, allowing us to assess the optimality of this integration. The outcome reveals rich individual differences in multimodal integration: while some subjects’ data are consistent with adaptive optimal integration, reweighting sources of evidence as their relative reliability changes during evidence integration, others exhibit patterns inconsistent with optimality.     

Measuring Emotional Intelligence Enhances the Psychological Evaluation of Chronic Pain

The assessment of emotional factors, in addition to other psychosocial factors, has been recommended as a means of identifying individuals with chronic pain who may not respond to certain pain treatments. Systematic reviews of the evidence regarding the prediction of responsiveness to a treatment called the spinal cord stimulator (SCS) have yielded inconclusive results. Emotional intelligence is a term which refers to the ability to identify and manage emotions in oneself and others and has been shown to be inversely associated with emotional distress and acute pain. This study aims to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence, chronic pain, and the more established psychosocial factors usually used for SCS evaluations by clinical psychologists in medical settings. A sample of 112 patients with chronic pain on an acute hospital waiting list for SCS procedures in a pain medicine service were recruited. Psychological measures were completed including: a novel measure of emotional intelligence; usual measures of emotional distress and catastrophizing; and a numerical rating scale designed to assess pain intensity, pain-related distress, and interference. As predicted, findings revealed significant associations between most of the measures analyzed and current pain intensity. When entered into a simultaneous regression analysis, emotional intelligence scores remained the only significant predictor of current pain intensity. There are potential clinical, ethical, and organizational implications of emotional intelligence processes partially predicting pain in patients on a waiting list for a medical procedure. These results may offer new insight, understanding, and evaluation targets for clinical psychologists in the field of pain management.     

Addressing Relationship Health Needs in Primary Care: Adapting the Marriage Checkup for Use in Medical Settings with Military Couples

The overall objective of this study was to pilot the Marriage Checkup (MC), a brief intervention for enhancing marital resiliency tailored to a military population, for use by internal behavioral health consultants (IBHCs) working in an integrated primary care clinic. The MC was revised to fit into the fast-paced environment of primary care (e.g., streamlined to fit within three 30-min appointments), and military-relevant material was added to the content. IBHCs working in primary care were then trained to offer the intervention. Thirty participants were enrolled in the study and completed a relationship checkup and one-month follow-up questionnaires. Analysis of post-test and one-month follow-up data showed statistically significant improvements in participants’ marital health compared to pre-treatment. The MC intervention appeared to be well received by both couples and IBHCs.     

What bats have to say about speech and language

Understanding the biological foundations of language is vital to gaining insight into how the capacity for language may have evolved in humans. Animal models can be exploited to learn about the biological underpinnings of shared human traits, and although no other animals display speech or language, a range of behaviors found throughout the animal kingdom are relevant to speech and spoken language. To date, such investigations have been dominated by studies of our closest primate relatives searching for shared traits, or more distantly related species that are sophisticated vocal communicators, like songbirds. Herein I make the case for turning our attention to the Chiropterans, to shed new light on the biological encoding and evolution of human language-relevant traits. Bats employ complex vocalizations to facilitate navigation as well as social interactions, and are exquisitely tuned to acoustic information. Furthermore, bats display behaviors such as vocal learning and vocal turn-taking that are directly pertinent for human spoken language. Emerging technologies are now allowing the study of bat vocal communication, from the behavioral to the neurobiological and molecular level. Although it is clear that no single animal model can reflect the complexity of human language, by comparing such findings across diverse species we can identify the shared biological mechanisms likely to have influenced the evolution of human language.     

The metaphor police: A case study of the role of metaphor in explanation

While many scholars have pointed to the role of metaphor in explanation, relatively little experimental research has examined whether and how metaphors are used and understood in everyday explanatory discourse. Across 3 experiments, we investigated the nature and function of metaphor in explanation by drawing on a real-world example where the terms guardian and warrior were used to metaphorically explain the role of police officers. We found, first, that the associations participants brought to mind for these concepts differed depending on whether they had previously answered questions about law enforcement (e.g., associations for warrior emphasized aggression and violence rather than strength and bravery when participants had previously answered questions about policing). Second, people were almost evenly split in their judgment of which metaphor was more appropriate to explain the role of law enforcement; this preference was highly predictive of beliefs related to policing and the criminal justice system. Third, and most important, using these metaphors to explain the job of policing causally influenced attitudes toward law enforcement in a metaphor-congruent manner (i.e., exposure to the guardian metaphor led to more positive attitudes), a finding that could not be accounted for by basic lexical priming. These studies complement existing work that has identified metaphor as a mechanism for representing abstract concepts, but also highlight the communicative and explanatory, rather than representational, functions of metaphor by showing that metaphors can encapsulate and convey an array of structured attitudes and beliefs.     

Developmental Origins of Biological Explanations: The case of infants’ internal property bias

People’s explanations about the biological world are heavily biased toward internal, non-obvious properties. Adults and children as young as 5 years of age find internal properties more causally central than external features for explaining general biological processes and category membership. In this paper, we describe how this ‘internal property bias’ may be grounded in two different developmental precursors observed in studies with infants: (1) an early understanding of biological agency that is apparent in infants’ reasoning about animals, and (2) the acquisition of kind-based representations that distinguish between essential and accidental properties, spanning from animals to artifacts. We argue that these precursors may support the progressive construction of the notion of biological kinds and explanations during childhood. Shortly after their first year of life, infants seem to represent the internal properties of animates as more central and identity-determining that external properties. Over time, this skeletal notion of biological kinds is integrated into diverse explanations about kind membership and biological processes, with an increasingly better understanding of the causal role of internal properties.