Is motor knowledge part and parcel of the concepts of manipulable artifacts? Clues from a case of upper limb aplasia

The sensory-motor theory of conceptual representations assumes that motor knowledge of how an artifact is manipulated is constitutive of its conceptual representation. Accordingly, if we assume that the richer the conceptual representation of an object is, the easier that object is identified, manipulable artifacts that are associated with motor knowledge should be identified more accurately and/or faster than manipulable artifacts that are not (everything else being equal). In this study, we tested this prediction by investigating the identification of manipulable artifacts in an individual, DC, who was totally deprived of hand motor experience due to upper limb aplasia. This condition prevents him from interacting with most manipulable artifacts, for which he thus has no motor knowledge at all. However, he had motor knowledge for some of them, which he routinely uses with his feet. We contrasted DC’s performance in a timed picture naming task for manipulable artifacts for which he had motor knowledge versus those for which he had no motor knowledge. No detectable advantage on DC’s naming performance was found for artifacts for which he had motor knowledge compared to those for which he did not. This finding suggests that motor knowledge is not part of the concepts of manipulable artifacts.     

Rotating With Rotated Text: A Natural Behavior Approach to Investigating Cognitive Offloading

Determining how we use our body to support cognition represents an important part of understanding the embodied and embedded nature of cognition. In the present investigation, we pursue this question in the context of a common perceptual task. Specifically, we report a series of experiments investigating head tilt (i.e., external normalization) as a strategy in letter naming and reading stimuli that are upright or rotated. We demonstrate that the frequency of this natural behavior is modulated by the cost of stimulus rotation on performance. In addition, we demonstrate that external normalization can benefit performance. All of the results are consistent with the notion that external normalization represents a form of cognitive offloading and that effort is an important factor in the decision to adopt an internal or external strategy.     

Evaluations Versus Expectations: Children's Divergent Beliefs About Resource Distribution

Past research reveals a tension between children's preferences for egalitarianism and ingroup favoritism when distributing resources to others. Here we investigate how children's evaluations and expectations of others' behaviors compare. Four‐ to 10‐year‐old children viewed events where individuals from two different groups distributed resources to their own group, to the other group, or equally across groups. Groups were described within a context of intergroup competition over scarce resources. In the Evaluation condition, children were asked to evaluate which resource distribution actions were nicer. In the Expectation condition, children were asked to predict which events were more likely to occur. With age, children's evaluations and expectations of others' actions diverged: Children evaluated egalitarian actions as nicer yet expected others to behave in ways that benefit their own group. Thus, children's evaluations about the way human social actors should behave do not mirror their expectations concerning those individuals' actions.     

The vision heuristic: Judging music ensembles by sight alone

Team effectiveness and group performance are often defined by standards set by domain experts. Professional musicians consistently report that sound output is the most important standard for evaluating the quality of group performance in the domain of music. However, across six studies, visual information dominated rapid judgments of group performance. Participants (1062 experts and novices) were able to select the actual winners of live ensemble competitions and distinguish top-ranked orchestras from non-ranked orchestras based on 6-s silent video recordings yet were unable to do so from sound recordings or recordings with both video and sound. These findings suggest that judgments of group performance in the domain of music are driven at least in part by visual cues about group dynamics and leadership.     

Perspective-taking in dialogue as self-organization under social constraints

We present a dynamical systems account of how simple social information influences perspective-taking. Our account is motivated by the notion that perspective-taking may obey common dynamic principles with perceptuomotor coupling. We turn to the prominent HKB dynamical model of motor coordination, drawing from basic principles of self-organization to describe how conversational perspective-taking unfolds in a low-dimensional attractor landscape. We begin by simulating experimental data taken from a simple instruction-following task, in which participants have different expectations about their interaction partner. By treating belief states as different values of a control parameter, we show that data generated by a basic dynamical process fits overall egocentric and other-centric response distributions, the time required for participants to enact a response on a trial-by-trial basis, and the action dynamics exhibited in individual trials. We end by discussing the theoretical significance of dynamics in dialog, arguing that high-level coordination such as perspective-taking may obey similar dynamics as perceptuomotor coordination, pointing to common principles of adaptivity and flexibility during dialog.     

What Does Children's Spatial Language Reveal About Spatial Concepts? Evidence From the Use of Containment Expressions

Children's overextensions of spatial language are often taken to reveal spatial biases. However, it is unclear whether extension patterns should be attributed to children's overly general spatial concepts or to a narrower notion of conceptual similarity allowing metaphor‐like extensions. We describe a previously unnoticed extension of spatial expressions and use a novel method to determine its origins. English‐ and Greek‐speaking 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds used containment expressions (e.g., English into, Greek mesa) for events where an object moved into another object but extended such expressions to events where the object moved behind or under another object. The pattern emerged in adult speakers of both languages and also in speakers of 10 additional languages. We conclude that learners do not have an overly general concept of Containment. Nevertheless, children (and adults) perceive similarities across Containment and other types of spatial scenes, even when these similarities are obscured by the conventional forms of the language.     

Spatial numerical associations in preschoolers

ABSTRACT

Three-to-five-year-old French children were asked to add or remove objects to or from linear displays. The hypothesis of a universal tendency to represent increasing number magnitudes from left to right led to predict a majority of manipulations at the right end of the rows, whatever children's hand laterality. Conversely, if numbers are not inherently associated with space, children were expected to favour laterality-consistent manipulations. The results showed a strong tendency to operate on the right end of the rows in right-handers, but no preference in left-handers. These findings suggest that the task elicited a left-to-right oriented representation of magnitudes that counteracted laterality-related responses in left-handed children. The young age of children and the lack of a developmental trend towards right preference weaken the hypothesis of a cultural origin of this oriented representation. The possibility that our results are due to weaker brain lateralisation in left-handers compared to right-handers is addressed in Discussion section.