The challenge of characterizing operations in the mechanisms underlying behavior

Neuroscience and cognitive science seek to explain behavioral regularities in terms of underlying mechanisms. An important element of a mechanistic explanation is a characterization of the operations of the parts of the mechanism. The challenge in characterizing such operations is illustrated by an example from the history of physiological chemistry in which some investigators tried to characterize the internal operations in the same terms as the overall physiological system while others appealed to elemental chemistry. In order for biochemistry to become successful, researchers had to identify a new level of operations involving operations over molecular groups. Existing attempts at mechanistic explanation of behavior are in a situation comparable to earlier approaches to physiological chemistry, drawing their inspiration either from overall psychology activities or from low-level neural processes. Successful mechanistic explanations of behavior require the discovery of the appropriate component operations. Such discovery is a daunting challenge but one on which success will be beneficial to both behavioral scientists and cognitive and neuroscientists.     

A multitasking general executive for compound continuous tasks

As cognitive architectures move to account for increasingly complex real-world tasks, one of the most pressing challenges involves understanding and modeling human multitasking. Although a number of existing models now perform multitasking in real-world scenarios, these models typically employ customized executives that schedule tasks for the particular domain but do not generalize easily to other domains. This article outlines a general executive for the Adaptive Control of Thought–Rational (ACT–R) cognitive architecture that, given independent models of individual tasks, schedules and interleaves the models' behavior into integrated multitasking behavior. To demonstrate the power of the proposed approach, the article describes an application to the domain of driving, showing how the general executive can interleave component subtasks of the driving task (namely, control and monitoring) and interleave driving with in-vehicle secondary tasks (radio tuning and phone dialing).     

The Self, the symbolic and synchronicity: virtual realities and the emergence of the psyche

Jung's theory of synchronicity is seen as a step in the development of a complete theory of the symbol. In so doing, a number of proposals are made for modelling the symbolic process along lines already in use for modelling a variety of other phenomena, ranging from language to the behaviour of earthquakes. These modelling techniques involve processes of self-organization, and raise issues of scaling in systems including symbolic systems. The proposal is made that symbolic systems obey the same rules of scaling that these other systems obey, and that symbolic systems can therefore be understood as exhibiting the characteristics of a power law distribution-a concept that is explained and developed in the paper. It is finally proposed that synchronicity is an aspect of the symbolic that can be characterized as exhibiting a high degree of 'symbolic density'.     

情绪效价与面孔类型对幼儿无意视盲的影响

幼儿对不同的情绪面孔图片存在不同的注意偏向,考察情绪效价与面孔类型对幼儿无意视盲的影响,可以帮助我们进一步认识幼儿对情绪面孔的注意偏向。本研究采用静态无意视盲的实验范式,通过2（面孔类型：符号化卡通、真人）×2（情绪效价：积极、消极）被试间完全随机设计,考察了111名幼儿（62.5±3.6个月,男生60名）在无意注意条件下对不同情绪效价和不同类型面孔的觉察情况。结果表明：（1）幼儿对积极情绪面孔的觉察率显著高于消极情绪面孔;（2）符号化卡通面孔与真人面孔的整体觉察率不存在显著差异;（3）积极情绪面孔中符号化卡通面孔的觉察率高于真人面孔。综上,情绪效价对无意视盲的影响会基于面孔类型的不同而不同,幼儿对卡通积极情绪面孔有更显著的注意偏向。     

Social interactional behaviors and symbolic play competence as predictors of language development and their associations with maternal attention-directing strategies

Children’s early social interactional behaviors and symbolic play competence were studied at 14 months in a sample of 111 mother-infant pairs. The categories of social interactional behaviors, joint visual attention, socially coordinated and object oriented interactions were assessed via observations of mother-infant joint play. An index of symbolic play was derived from the child’s solitary play, which was assessed independently. We examined both the interrelations of these two types of early language predictors, and their relation to children’s language skills and maternal attention-directing strategies. Measures of children’s language comprehension and production were obtained using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories at 14 months, and Reynell Developmental Language Scales at 18 and 30 months. We found that at 14 months, social interactional behaviors and symbolic play competence were not statistically significantly related to each other. In line with our hypotheses, social interactional skills were associated more strongly with language production, and symbolic play competence more strongly with language comprehension. Maternal attention-directing strategies were strongly related to both children’s social interactional behaviors and symbolic play competence. Our findings indicated that maternal strategies that expanded the infant’s level of functioning were more effective in stimulating the children’s language development than were the other types of strategies.     

中国成人推理月份时间的加工模型

以两个实验对中国成年人推理月份时间的加工模型进行了探索。在实验一中未发现词表模型的距隔效应和方向效应。实验二的结果表明有越界效应,被试解决月份时间顺序作业与解决数字顺序任务在操作特征上有很大的相似性。本研究的结果表明,数字模型能较好地解释中国成年人推理月份时间的认知加工,而Friedman 提出的表象一词表模型则难以作出合理的解释。     

The synergy of memory, affects and metaphor

Recently, the concept of metaphor has been revitalized as a result of the convergence of interest in this subject from a variety of disciplines including neurobiology, linguistics and cognitive science. Metaphor is now viewed as an emergent property of mind. Metaphor is rooted in the body in two senses: metaphor is used to organize bodily sensation cognitively, especially affects, and secondly, metaphor is rooted in the body as it rests on the border between mind and brain. Metaphor is therefore viewed as a developmentally early, primitive mental function related to synesthesia. There is a significant distinction between frozen or foreclosed metaphors and open and generative metaphors. The foreclosed metaphor will dominate the perception of others in cases of trauma and can be understood as an explanation of transference repetition. Clinical examples of foreclosed metaphors are illustrated by vignettes of patients who have suffered traumas. Examples taken from two artists are used to illustrate instances in which the artist's own unassimilated experiences appear as generative metaphors.     

“Lying” in the pigeon

Two pigeons were taught to use symbols to communicate information about hidden colors to each other. When reporting red was more generously reinforced than reporting yellow or green, both birds passed through a period in which they “lied” by reporting another color as red.     

FINDING THE SOMETHING IN NOTHING

Formless Infinity: Clinical Explorations of Matte Blanco and Bion. By Riccardo Lombardi. Translated by Karen Christenfeld, Gina Atkinson, Andrea Sabbadini, and Philip Slotkin. London/New York: Routledge, 2016. 282 pp.