Doxological Extended Cognition

Many Christian theologians have proposed a universal knowledge of God implanted in all humans. Thomas Aquinas famously stated that all humans have some knowledge of God, confused though it may be. John Calvin developed this proposition in much more detail and concluded that there is a cognitive faculty in humans, the sensus divinitatis, committed to giving the cognizer knowledge of God. Independent of such theological concerns, a current movement in cognitive science proposes a radical change to the traditional boundaries drawn around the human mind. Proponents of mental extension, such as Andy Clark, argue that the mind extends well beyond the body and should be approached in a much broader conceptual analysis. This essay arises from the conviction that the Extended Mind (EM) framework offers new insights into developing a cognitive understanding of the sensus divinitatis. Drawing in equal parts on current arguments for mental extension and the sensus divinitatis, the essay establishes the compatibility between the two arguments and indicates how an integration of the two can yield significant benefits for both mental extension and the sensus divinitatis: the basing of the sensus divinitatis in a specific cognitive theory that offers explanations of its functions, and the introduction of theism to the EM argument as a potentially useful component in a collaborative cognitive science effort.     

L’internalisation des stéréotypes chez les « petits » fonctionnaires : impact du contact avec le public et du prestige perçu

This paper focuses on the internalization of stereotypes among French office workers in the lower category (category C). More precisely, we investigated the impact of two independent factors on this internalization of stereotypes: the perceived external prestige and public contact. Results obtained using questionnaires completed by 175 office workers have mainly showed that, in accordance with previous studies, the external prestige perceived influence significantly the internalization of stereotypes. But, contrary to previous studies, the frequency of contacts with the public has no impact on the internalization of stereotypes in our sample. Our results invite furter work on this population of office employees who is, paradoxically, increasingly confronted with stereotypes but subject of very few studies.     

The Role of External Sources of Information in Children's Evaluative Food Categories

Evaluative food categories are value‐laden assessments, which reflect the healthfulness and palatability of foods (e.g. healthy/unhealthy, yummy/yucky). In a series of three studies, this research examines how 3‐ to 4‐year‐old children (N = 147) form evaluative food categories based on input from external sources of information. The results indicate that children prefer to ask a mom and teacher over a cartoon and child for information about the evaluative status of foods. However, children are cautious to accept information about healthy foods from all of the external sources compared with unhealthy, yummy and yucky foods. The results also indicate that providing information about the positive taste of healthy foods helps to encourage children to select healthy foods to eat. Taken together, these results have potential implications for children's health and nutrition education. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cautious behaviors of pedestrians while crossing narrow streets: Exploration of behaviors using virtual reality experiments

This study explores the cautious behaviors of pedestrians in a typical local street environment using virtual reality (VR)-based experiments under various physical safety design scenarios for roadways. The built environment of this study focused on narrow local roads where frequent daily walking occurs within a neighborhood. VR experiments can provide an objective and accurate measurement of pedestrian behaviors, thus improving the understanding of complicated pedestrian behaviors. Based on experimental data from 200 university students, we identified pedestrians’ crossing behavior that is cautionary or risky concerning various physical safety designs of streets. This study found that there are trade-off relationships between various behaviors which should be systematically studied to produce safer street design guidelines. Furthermore, as the contexts and sequences matter in behaviors for intersection crossing, the interpretation of behaviors should carefully consider the context of built environments and sequential decisions made by pedestrians. This sequential understanding of before- and during-crossing behaviors and their connections expands our knowledge of pedestrians’ crossing behaviors.     

The effect of age and sensation seeking on pedestrian crossing safety in a virtual reality street

A wide range of individual, interpersonal and environmental factors influence the safety of pedestrians crossing the street, including human development (children take more risks than adolescents and adults) and sensation seeking (individuals higher in sensation seeking have greater risk). The interaction between those two variables has not been carefully studied, however. Does the effect of sensation seeking on pedestrian safety vary across human development as cognitive and other skills improve? This study investigated the primary effects of age and sensation seeking, plus their joint effects, on pedestrian crossing in a virtual reality environment. 209 children (10–13 years old), adolescents (14–18 years old) and young adults (20–24 years old) screened to be high and low level in sensation seeking participated. A 3 (age group: child vs adolescent vs young adult) × 2 (sensation seeking: high vs low) × 2 (traffic condition: easy vs harder crossing) mixed factorial design was conducted. Three pedestrian safety outcomes – start delay, missed opportunities and dangerous crossings – were considered. Results showed that when the traffic condition was easier to cross within, the start delay to enter traffic gaps was significantly shorter for children than for adolescents and young adults. There were no significant differences across age groups when the traffic condition was harder to cross within. Pedestrians also missed more opportunities to cross the road when the traffic condition was harder to cross within. Pedestrians low in sensation seeking missed more opportunities to cross than those high in sensation seeking. All age groups had more dangerous crossings during the harder crossing scenario than in the easier one, and adolescents had more dangerous crossings than young adults or children. Finally, the results of hierarchical regression models predicting dangerous crossings showed that traffic condition had a significant predictive effect on children's dangerous crossing behavior, and both high sensation seeking and harder traffic conditions predicted adolescents’ dangerous crossing behavior. No included variables significantly predicted adults' dangerous crossing behavior. We conclude that both age and sensation-seeking contribute to pedestrian safety. The effect of sensation seeking does not vary widely by age group, but its effect on adolescents was somewhat stronger than in the other age groups studied.     

Route learning with augmented reality navigation aids

Current trends point towards the development and implementation of augmented reality (AR) navigation assistance systems for drivers. Previous research has found augmented reality can benefit driving performance, but the impact of AR on route learning (spatial knowledge acquisition) has received less attention. The current study used simulated driving scenarios to determine how the type of navigation aid device used (i.e., paper map, electronic map, and AR system) affected driving performance and route learning of 62 driving adults. Route learning was examined at landmark, route, and survey levels. The hypotheses tested were that AR would improve driving performance but diminish route learning compared to paper map use; and that AR would outperform electronic map use in both driving performance and route learning. Results indicated that paper map use led to poorer driving performance and greater route learning. However, map recognition may have been a confounding factor in higher level spatial knowledge acquisition with paper map use. Driving performance and route learning were similar for drivers using the electronic map and AR, but some differences suggested that drivers have reduced uncertainty and hesitation while using AR to navigate in unfamiliar areas.     

Contextual information in situations of uncertainty: The value of explicit-information provision depends on expertise level,knowledge acquisition and prior-action congruency

In behavioral control, contextual information is used alongside incoming sensory inputs to reduce uncertainties about the unfolding situation. However, our understanding of this weighting process is limited; particularly regarding the applied question of whether individuals should be provided with information or whether they should rather generate it by themselves. We thus compared the provision of more or less valid (i.e., “true”) contextual information with a self-generation condition by examining the performance of elite and near-elite youth handball players (N = 30 + 27) in a virtual-reality defensive task. We measured response correctness, positioning as a function of the teammates’ defensive behaviors and the degree to which the experimentally induced patterns in the teammates’ strengths were detected. The results show that providing individuals with uncertain information neither enhances nor harms performance decisively. However, valid information enhances performance in congruent situations while degrading performance in incongruent situations, more pronouncedly in elite than in near-elite players. Consequently, individuals should be provided with explicit contextual information only if (i) their expertise level is not adequate enough to rely on self-generation, (ii) the situation-specific knowledge base cannot be sufficiently self-generated, and (iii) the instructor is sufficiently certain that the explicit information actually meets the upcoming situation.     

Relationship of cognitive strategy use to prospective memory performance in a diverse sample of nondemented older adults with varying degrees of cognitive complaints and impairment

Although older adults typically have better performance on prospective memory (PM) tasks carried out in naturalistic settings, a paucity of research directly assesses older adults’ use of compensatory strategies on such tasks. The current study investigates external memory strategy use during performance of a clinical PM test that features both short-term (in laboratory) and long-term (out of laboratory) subtasks (i.e., the Royal Prince Alfred Prospective Memory Test – RPA-ProMem. Nondemented, community-dwelling older adults (n = 214; mean age = 80.5; 68.2% female; 39.7% non-white) with mild cognitive impairment, subjective cognitive decline, and healthy controls completed the RPA-ProMem while external strategy use was permitted and recorded. Overall, participants utilized external strategies 41% of the time on the RPA-ProMem. Increased utilization of external memory strategies was significantly associated with better PM performance. Additionally, better performance on executive functioning tasks was associated with increased use of external memory strategies. Results are discussed in relation to how memory strategy use can be enhanced to improve everyday memory ability in older adults at risk for dementia.