Do people use language production to make predictions during comprehension?

We present the case that language comprehension involves making simultaneous predictions at different linguistic levels and that these predictions are generated by the language production system. Recent research suggests that ease of comprehending predictable elements is due to prediction rather than facilitated integration, and that comprehension is accompanied by covert imitation. We argue that comprehenders use prediction and imitation to construct an "emulator", using the production system, and combine predictions with the input dynamically. Such a process helps to explain the rapidity of comprehension and the robust interpretation of ambiguous or noisy input. This framework is in line with a general trend in cognitive science to incorporate action systems into perceptual systems and has broad implications for understanding the links between language production and comprehension.     

Beyond design: cybernetics,biological computers and hylozoism

The history of British cybernetics offers us a different form of science and engineering, one that does not seek to dominate nature through knowledge. I want to say that one can distinguish two different paradigms in the history of science and technology: the one that Heidegger despised, which we could call the Modern paradigm, and another, cybernetic, nonModern, paradigm that he might have approved of. This essay focusses on work in the 1950s and early 1960s by two of Britain’s leading cyberneticians, Stafford Beer and Gordon Pask, in the field of what one can call biological computing. My object is to get as clear as I can on what Beer and Pask were up to. At the end, I will discuss Beer’s hylozoist ontology of matter, mind and spirit. This material is not easy to get the hang of—but that is what one should expect from an unfamiliar paradigm. Presented at an international conference on the philosophy of technology, Copenhagen, 13–15 Oct 2005. Revised for submission to Synthese.     

Redating Narrative Theology: A Challenge to The Conventional Chronology

This essay considers the work of G.K. Chesterton, and in particular The Everlasting Man, in relation to narrative theology. It discusses the apparent contradiction between Aidan Nichols’ judgement that this book develops a ‘Christocentric theology of history’ and Chesterton’s own assertion that its approach is ‘historical rather than theological’. It argues that Chesterton employs both natural and narrative theology in The Everlasting Man, and these two forms of theology frame a reading of the book which resolves the seeming contradiction between Nichols’ and Chesterton’s views, while also challenging the conventional chronology used in discussions of narrative theology.     

Movie exposure to smoking cues and adolescent smoking onset: a test for mediation through peer affiliations.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether the effect of movie exposure to smoking on adolescent smoking onset is mediated through increased affiliation with peers who smoke. DESIGN: A longitudinal study was conducted with a sample of 5th- 8th graders; persons who were nonsmokers at the baseline assessment (N = 2,614) were followed up 18 months later. Movie exposure to smoking cues was assessed at baseline with a rigorous coding procedure. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: A school-based survey and follow-up telephone interview determined whether the participant smoked cigarettes. RESULTS: Longitudinal structural modeling analysis indicated movie-smoking exposure was related to smoking onset both through an indirect effect involving increased affiliation with peer smokers and through a direct effect. The analysis controlled for demographics, parenting style, rebelliousness and sensation seeking, school performance, parental smoking, and sibling smoking; several of these variables also had mediated or direct effects to smoking onset. CONCLUSION: The effect of movie exposure on adolescent smoking onset is attributable in part to a social mechanism. Implications of media effects for prevention are discussed.     

The development of visuo-spatial working memory

Children's performance on tests of visuo-spatial working memory improves with age, although relatively little is known about why this happens. One explanation concerns the development of the ability to recode visually presented information into phonological form. This process appears to be used from around 8 years of age and is a major contributor to tasks in which stimuli can be verbally labelled. However, evidence suggests that phonological recoding cannot account for all of the age-related change in performance on visuo-spatial working memory tasks. In this review, four other mechanisms (knowledge, processing strategies, processing speed, and attentional capacity) are considered in terms of their contribution to children's visuo-spatial working memory development.     

Hippocampal involvement in spatial and working memory: a structural MRI analysis of patients with unilateral mesial temporal lobe sclerosis.

Forty-seven patients with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) were investigated on the Nine-Box Maze. The task was designed to compare working memory and spatial mapping theories of the functions of the hippocampus and provide measures of spatial, object, working, and reference memory. The results extended our previous findings in a larger group of patients. Spatial memory deficits across both working and reference memory conditions were found in patients with a right epileptogenic focus. There was no evidence of an object working memory deficit, but a nonlateralized impairment in object reference memory was revealed, which is consistent with our previous findings. The pattern of results was confirmed in a subgroup of 33 patients with unilateral atrophy localized to the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus, as verified by volumetric analysis of magnetic resonance images. In addition spatial memory errors significantly correlated with volumetric measures of mesial temporal lobe structures and not with measures of the remaining temporal cortex. In contrast, object reference memory errors correlated with volumetric measures of the temporal cortex and not with mesial temporal lobe structures. These findings support a specialized role for the right hippocampal region in spatial memory.