儿童青少年认知能力发展与脑发育

自发展认知神经科学兴起以来, 研究者就开始借助MRI等脑成像技术探讨儿童青少年认知能力发展与大脑结构发育和功能特点等之间的关系, 这为揭示行为发展与生理成熟之间的关系、儿童认知发展的神经活动规律、正常和障碍群体的独特大脑神经结构及活动特点等提供了重要启示。通过对有关儿童青少年智力、工作记忆、反应抑制等认知能力发展与大脑结构发育、大脑功能发育之间关系, 以及认知能力训练与大脑可塑性等研究的介绍, 指出发展认知神经科学的未来研究应重视采用纵向设计, 关注自然成熟和经验对正常或障碍儿童青少年认知发展与脑发育关系的交互影响, 同时从练习和训练的角度对大脑可塑性的特点进行探讨。     

Enhancing the Cognitive Vitality of Older Adults

Aging is associated with decline in a multitude of cognitive processes and brain functions. However, a growing body of literature suggests that age-related decline in cognition can sometimes be reduced through experience, cognitive training, and other interventions such as fitness training. Research on cognitive training and expertise has suggested that age-related cognitive sparing is often quite narrow, being observed only on tasks and skills similar to those on which individuals have been trained. Furthermore, training and expertise benefits are often realized only after extensive practice with specific training strategies. Like cognitive training, fitness training has narrow effects on cognitive processes, but in the case of fitness training, the most substantial effects are observed for executive-control processes.     

Turing redux: Enculturation and computation

Many of our cognitive capacities are shaped by enculturation. Enculturation is the acquisition of cognitive practices such as symbol-based mathematical practices, reading, and writing during ontogeny. Enculturation is associated with significant changes to the organization and connectivity of the brain and to the functional profiles of embodied actions and motor programs. Furthermore, it relies on scaffolded cultural learning in the cognitive niche. The purpose of this paper is to explore the components of symbol-based mathematical practices. Phylogenetically, these practices are the result of concerted organism-niche interactions that have led from approximate number estimations to the emergence of discrete, symbol-based mathematical operations. Ontogenetically, symbol-based mathematical practices are associated with plastic changes to neural circuitry, action schemata, and motor programs. It will be suggested that these practices rely on previously acquired capacities such as subitizing and counting. With these considerations in place, I will argue that computations, understood in the sense of Turing (1936), are a specific kind of symbol-based mathematical practices that can be realized by human organisms, machines, or by hybrid organism-machine systems. In sum, this paper suggests a new way to think about mathematical cognition and computation.     

Hypermnesia in older people and its relationship with successful ageing / La hipermnesia en personas mayores y su relación con el envejecimiento exitoso

Abstract

This study analyses the phenomenon of hypermnesia and its relationship with variables associated with successful ageing such as age, sex, cognitive status and cognitive plasticity in older people. The sample consists of 124 institutionalized and non-institutionalized participants, whose ages ranged from 65 to 91. A specific task was used to evaluate hypermnesia; a cognitive screening test and a verbal fluency test were used to assess cognitive status, and the AVLT-LP test was used to measure cognitive plasticity. The results show significant improvements between the hypermnesia recall tests for the total sample and for all the groups, according to the variables studied. Participants with successful ageing characterized by a younger age, a high level of cognitive functioning and a greater cognitive plasticity showed better results than the other participants in the hypermnesia task with the exception of sex, which did not present differences between groups. This study confirms that hypermnesia occurs more significantly in older people with successful ageing regardless of whether they are male or female.     

EVOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS CAPACITY IN THE GENUS HOMO: ORIGINS AND BUILDING BLOCKS

The large, ancient ape population of the Miocene reached across Eurasia and down into Africa. From this genetically diverse group, the chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and humans evolved from populations of successively reduced size. Using the findings of genomics, population genetics, cognitive science, neuroscience, and archaeology, the authors construct a theoretical framework of evolutionary innovations without which religious capacity could not have emerged as it did. They begin with primate sociality and strength from a basic ape model, and then explore how the human line came to be the most adaptive and flexible of all, while coming from populations with reduced genetic variability. Their analysis then delves into the importance of neurological plasticity and a lengthening developmental trajectory, and points to their following article and the last building block: the expansion of the parietal areas, which allowed visuospatial reckoning, and imagined spaces and beings essential to human theologies. Approximate times for the major cognitive building blocks of religious capacity are given.     

Intention inertia and the plasticity of planning

In this article, I examine Michael Bratman’s account of stability in his planning theory of intention (PTI). Future-directed intentions should be stable, or appropriately resistant to change, over time. Bratman claims that the norm of stability governs both intentions and plans. The aim of this article is to critically enrich Bratman’s account of stability by introducing plasticity as an additional norm of planning. I construct plasticity as a kind of stability of intentions which supplements Bratman’s notion of “reasonable stability.” Unlike the latter, plasticity applies mainly to cases in which plan states are abandoned without reconsideration. I focus on the intra-theoretical problems of PTI and elucidate: (1) the distinction between future-directed intentions and plans, (2) the conceptual difference between stability and inertia, which is only implicit in PTI, and (3) the role of the environment of the planner, which has a vestigial role in Bratman’s work. I also defend my incorporation of plasticity against one possible objection and support it in the context of Bratman’s later works. Although critical, my proposal is in moderate harmony with PTI.     

Individual differences in the acquisition of second language phonology

Perceptual training was employed to characterize individual differences in non-native speech sound learning. Fifty-nine adult English speakers were trained to distinguish the Hindi dental–retroflex contrast, as well as a tonal pitch contrast. Training resulted in overall group improvement in the ability to identify and to discriminate the phonetic and the tonal contrasts, but there were considerable individual differences in performance. A category boundary effect during the post-training discrimination of the Hindi but not of the tonal contrast suggests different learning mechanisms for these two stimulus types. Specifically, our results suggest that successful learning of the speech sounds involves the formation of a long-term memory category representation for the new speech sound.