Cognitive Account Research Articles

Puritanism needs purity, and moral psychology needs pluralism.

This account of puritanical morality is useful and innovative, but makes two errors. First, it mischaracterizes the purity foundation as being unrelated to cooperation. Second, it makes the leap from cooperation (broadly construed) to a monist account of moral cognition (as harm or fairness). We show how this leap is both conceptually incoherent and inconsistent with empirical evidence about self-control moralization.

Phantastic Content

Phantastic interpreters of the emotions in Aristotle argue that a quasi-perceptual faculty, phantasia, is responsible for grasping the relevant value content. This article argues that phantasia cannot do this work. Rather, it claims, a phantastic account either collapses into the straight-up perceptual account or it fails to offer a cognitive account at all (despite the claims made by some of its adherents). According to the first option the focal value properties, such as slights and danger, are part of perceptual content from the start. It ends by proposing that phantastic interpreters are better off opting for the straight-up perceptual account, a view that has wide-ranging implications for our interpretation of Aristotle.

A cognitive account of the puzzle of ideography.

We posit a cognitive account of the puzzle of ideography, which complements the standardization account of Morin. Efficient standardization of spoken language is phenomenologically attributed to a modality effect coupled with chunking of cognitive representations, further aided by multisensory integration and the serialized nature of attention. These mechanisms explain why languages dominate graphic codes for general-purpose communication.

Relationship Between Mental Health Education Competency and Interpersonal Trust Among College Counselors: The Mediating Role of Neuroticism

Based on the motivated cognition account, this study aimed to explore the relationship between mental health education competency and interpersonal trust among college counselors, as well as the mediating effect of neuroticism. A total of 483 college counselors were selected, including 155 men and 328 women. Theyoungestcollege counselor was 22 years old and the oldest was 56 years old (M = 31.69, SD = 6.12). The college counselors were asked to fill out the Mental Health Education Competency Scale for College Counselors, a 10-item short version of the Big Five Inventory, and an Interpersonal Trust Scale. (1) This study found a significantly positive correlation between mental health education competency and interpersonal trust. (2) Mental health education competency and interpersonal trust were negatively correlated with neuroticism. (3) The mediating role of neuroticism in the association between mental health education competency and interpersonal trust was significant. Mental health education competency partly affected interpersonal trust via the mediating effect of neuroticism.

Towards a conative account of mental imagery

ABSTRACT Philosophers and psychologists assume that mental imagery is a cognitive state, that it represents things as being a certain way. However, I argue that imagery is a conative state: it represents things as to be made a certain way. I challenge the traditional assumption by targeting an increasingly popular cognitive account that identifies mental imagery, such as inner speech, with predictions of sensory input. This predictive account faces both empirical and theoretical problems. The account not only fails to capture the salience effects exhibited by mental imagery, it also cannot explain why subjects should not spend their lives minimizing prediction error by engaging in fantasy. These shortcomings highlight what I call the conative profile of imagery, which includes its salience, motivational, and performance effects. I argue that an alternative, conative view of imagery, according to which mental images are goal states, is best able to account for its conative profile.

Think then act, or act then think? Double-response reaction times shed light on decision dynamics in precrastination.

People often try to complete tasks as soon as possible, even at the expense of extra effort-a phenomenon called precrastination (Rosenbaum et al., 2014). Because precrastination is so widespread-as in answering emails too quickly, submitting papers before they have been polished, or, on larger scales, convicting people in the rush to judgment, or even going to war in the rush for revenge-it is important to understand its basis. Building on previous work on this phenomenon, we focused on two plausible accounts of it. According to the behavioral account, there is a desire to act for the sake of acting itself. According to the cognitive account, there is a desire to shorten one's mental to-do list so cognitive resources can be directed to other things. We invented a new task to distinguish between these hypotheses. Our participants made yes-no decisions under the requirement that they always respond twice per trial. We found that participants took longer for the first choice than the second and rarely changed their minds, even when second response accuracy was emphasized. This outcome went against the behavioral account, which predicted shorter first-response times than second-response times and lower (near chance) first-response accuracies than second-response accuracies. Instead, the data clearly showed that participants did all or most of their decision-making up front. The double-response reaction time task provides a new tool for studying decision dynamics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Developments in Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to Study Human Cognition.

Developments in Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to Study Human Cognition.

Ghosts, Divination, and Magic among the Nuosu: An Ethnographic Examination from Cognitive and Cultural Evolutionary Perspectives

I present a detailed ethnographic study of magic and divination of the Nuosu people in southwest China and offer a cognitive account of the surprising prevalence of these objectively ineffective practices in a society that has ample access to modern technology and mainstream Han culture. I argue that in the belief system of the Nuosu, ghosts, divination, and magical healing rituals form a closely interconnected web that gives sense and meaning to otherwise puzzling practices, and such a belief system is importantly supported and reinforced by individual's everyday experiences. Contemporary Nuosu people overwhelmingly treat these practices as instruments for achieving specific ends and often entertain considerable uncertainty regarding their efficacy, which may be overestimated for a number of reasons, including the following: (1) the intuitive plausibility of divination for ghost identification and exorcist rituals is enhanced by the belief in the existence of ghosts as a result of abductive reasoning, (2) negative instances (divinatory or healing ritual failures) are underreported, and (3) people's misperception of the probability of uncertain events' occurrence often prevents them from realizing that the efficacies of magical/divinatory practices do not outperform chance. I conclude with some comments on the generalizability of the psychological and social mechanisms discussed.

Influence of cognitive abilities on literacy skills in a Korean-Japanese bilingual child with developmental dyslexia.

Some individuals with developmental dyslexia show dissociation in reading skills between languages. The occurrence of dissociation depends on differences in the orthographic characteristics and cognitive demands of languages. This article reports on a Korean-Japanese bilingual and biliterate boy, SJ, with developmental dyslexia (aged 11 years), who displayed dissociation between Korean and Japanese in reading and writing accuracy. This study aimed to discuss possible accounts for the profile of his literacy skills from orthographic and cognitive perspectives. To accomplish this aim, we measured SJ's literacy skills, receptive vocabulary, and cognitive abilities (i.e., phonological skills, naming speed, and visual skills) in both Korean and Japanese. Then, we compared his skills to those of monolingual and bilingual children. In terms of accuracy, his reading skills in Korean did not differ significantly from those of bilinguals, although they were lower than Korean monolinguals. His spelling skills were within the average range for Korean monolinguals and bilinguals. In contrast, his reading and writing accuracy levels in Japanese were low compared to both Japanese monolinguals and bilinguals. Moreover, his reading and writing deficits were more remarkable in Japanese kanji. However, his cognitive profile was similar between languages. Specifically, he showed deficits in phonological skills and naming speed in both languages, as well as deficits in visual skills. These results were explained by the facts that visual skills are one of the significant predictors of reading and writing accuracy in Japanese but not in Korean, and that visual skills are a key in learning kanji. Thus, our case, SJ, supports the cognitive account, namely, the idea that different cognitive demands on the development of literacy skills can cause dissociation in literacy skills (especially in terms of accuracy) in bilingual children.

Testable or bust: theoretical lessons for predictive processing

The predictive processing (PP) account of action, cognition, and perception is one of the most influential approaches to unifying research in cognitive science. However, its promises of grand unification will remain unfulfilled unless the account becomes theoretically robust. In this paper, we focus on empirical commitments of PP, since they are necessary both for its theoretical status to be established and for explanations of individual phenomena to be falsifiable. First, we argue that PP is a varied research tradition, which may employ various kinds of scientific representations (from theories to frameworks and toolboxes), differing in the scope of empirical commitments they entail. Two major perspectives on PP qua cognitive theory may then be distinguished: generalized vs. hierarchical. The first one fails to provide empirical detail, and the latter constrains possible physical implementations. However, we show that even hierarchical PP is insufficiently restrictive to disallow incorrect models and may be adjusted to explain any neurocognitive phenomenon–including non-existent or impossible ones–through flexible adjustments. This renders PP a universal modeling tool with an unrestricted number of degrees of freedom. Therefore, in contrast with declarations of its proponents, it should not be understood as a unifying theoretical perspective, but as a computational framework, possibly informing further theory development in cognitive science.

Force dynamics as the path to the Spanish subjunctive

AbstractThe causative construction poses a challenge to all mainstream approaches to Spanish mood. Mejías-Bikandi, Errapel. 2014. A cognitive account of mood in complements of causative predicates in Spanish.Hispania97(4), 651–665, elaborating on his previous approach (Mejías-Bikandi, Errapel. 1998. Presupposition and old information in the use of the subjunctive mood in Spanish.Hispania81(4), 941–948), which associates the indicative to information that is pragmatically asserted (i.e., presented as both true and new), claims that the use of the subjunctive in the complements of volitive and causative verbs results from the fact that these complements are not independently grounded and so cannot be asserted. His proposal, though, raises some serious objections. In this paper, an alternative account is presented, whereby the use of the subjunctive in this context is understood as reflecting the antagonist’s viewpoint and epistemic assessment on the goal process within a force dynamics pattern.

Getting real about pretense

This paper argues that radical enactivism (RE) offers a framework with the required nuance needed for understanding of the full range of the various forms of pretense. In particular, its multi-storey account of cognition, which holds that psychological attitudes can be both contentless and contentful, enables it to appropriately account for both the most basic and most advanced varieties of pretense. By comparison with other existing accounts of pretense, RE is shown to avoid the pitfalls of representationalist theories while also allowing us to combine the best elements of the praxeological enactivist (Weichold & Rucińska, 2021) and Langland-Hassan’s (2020, 2021) proposals about pretense, while avoiding their key shortcomings.

No fingers, no SNARC? Neither the finger counting starting hand, nor its stability robustly affect the SNARC effect

The Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect (i.e., faster left/right sided responses to small/large magnitude numbers, respectively) is considered to be strong evidence for the link between numbers and space. Studies have shown considerable variation in this effect. Among the factors determining individual differences in the SNARC effect is the hand an individual uses to start the finger counting sequence. Left-starters show a stronger and less variable SNARC effect than right-starters. This observation has been used as an argument for the embodied nature of the SNARC effect. For this to be the case, one must assume that the finger counting sequence (especially the starting hand) is stable over time. Subsequent studies challenged the view that the SNARC differs depending on the finger counting starting hand. At the same time, it has been pointed out that the temporal stability of the finger counting starting hand should not be taken for granted. Thus, in this preregistered study, we aimed to replicate the difference in the SNARC between left- and right-starters and explore the relationship between the self-reported temporal stability of the finger counting starting hand and the SNARC effect. In line with the embodied cognition account, left-starters who declare more temporarily stable finger counting habits should reveal a stronger SNARC effect. Results of the preregistered analysis did not show the difference between left- and right-starters. However, further exploratory analysis provided weak evidence that this might be the case. Lastly, we found no evidence for the relationship between finger counting starting hand stability and the SNARC effect. Overall, these results challenge the view on the embodied nature of the SNARC effect.

The perspectival account of faith

AbstractThis article articulates and defends an underexplored account of faith – the perspectival account of faith – according to which faith is a value-oriented perspective on the world towards which the subject has a pro-attitude. After describing this account of faith and outlining what it is to have faith on the perspectival account, I show that the perspectival account meets methodological criteria for an account of faith. I then show that this account of faith can be used to unify various faith locutions: having faith that p (propositional faith), having faith in something (attitudinal faith), being a person of faith (global faith), articles of faith (creedal faith), and acts of faith (praxical faith). Finally, since the perspectival account of faith is a cognitive account of faith, I defend the perspectival view against objections to cognitive accounts of faith.

Socially Extended Scientific Knowledge.

A three-tiered account of social cognition is set out—along with the corresponding variety of social knowledge that results from this social cognition—and applied to the special case of scientific collaboration. The first tier is socially-facilitated cognition, which results in socially-facilitated knowledge. This is a form of cognition which, while genuinely social (in that social factors play an important explanatory role in producing the target cognitive success), falls short of socially extended cognition. The second tier is socially extended cognition, which generates socially extended knowledge. This form of cognition is social in the specific sense of the information-processing of other agents forms part of the socially extended cognitive process at issue. It is argued, however, that the core notion of socially extended cognition is individual in nature, in that the target cognitive success is significantly creditable to the socially extended cognitive agency of the individual. Socially extended cognition, in its core sense, thus generates individual knowledge. Finally, there is distributed cognition, which generates distributed knowledge. This is where the cognitive successes produced by a research team are attributable to a group agent rather than to individuals within the team. Accordingly, where this form of social cognition generates knowledge (distributed knowledge), the knowledge is irreducibly group knowledge. It is argued that by making clear this three-tiered structure of social scientific knowledge a prima facie challenge is posed for defenders of distributed scientific cognition and knowledge to explain why this form of social knowledge is being exhibited and not one of the two weaker (and metaphysically less demanding) forms of social knowledge.

Dr. Strangelove and the Psychology of Comic Distance

In 1964, near the height of Cold War nuclear anxiety, millions of Americans flocked to movie theatres to see their own nuclear annihilation hilariously enacted for them in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. How did Kubrick transform one of his time’s most pressing causes of psychological distress into a source of humorous pleasure? To answer this question, I offer a cognitive account of how comic distance works on film, building on research indicating humor to be an evolved response to benign violations. I show that Kubrick consistently optimized for psychological distance in Dr. Strangelove, comparing his narrative and stylistic choices to those of Sidney Lumet in Fail Safe, a contemporaneous film that plays the same essential story for drama instead of laughs.

Individual differences in the decline of the Deontic nci construction

Abstract This paper addresses the question of the (speaker-level) ‘cognitive how’ of (language-level) constructional attrition, defined as a systemic decrease in the occurrence of a construction in the history of a language. Presenting and analysing data from an historical idiolectal corpus on the frequency development in individual speakers’ use of a partially schematic construction instantiated by such types as be obliged to and be permitted to, it offers a first attempt to measure whether a general decline in the frequency of this construction can also be observed to be an internal development during a speaker’s lifespan. The results confirm this to be the case in a sizeable group of speakers and the paper provides an initial insight into how this may contribute to a genuinely cognitive account of the speaker-external development.

Over Again: A Cognitive Account of its Meaning Transference in the Light of an Image-schema Based Model

Over Again: A Cognitive Account of its Meaning Transference in the Light of an Image-schema Based Model

Assessing Psychological Inflexibility Pertaining to Self in Patients With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Using an Indirect Measure of (Nonassociative) Propositions

Relational frame theory (RFT) is a modern behavioral account of human language and cognition, which focuses on relations or propositions, rather than associations, as core explanatory constructs. In an attempt to measure such propositions, RFT researchers have developed the implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP). It has been argued that the size of an IRAP effect may provide a metric for psychological inflexibility. The current study aimed to determine whether psychological inflexibility, as measured by the self-focused Natural Language-IRAP (NL-IRAP), would be higher in a clinical sample of individuals with a diagnosis of PTSD (N = 29) when compared to a nonclinical sample. Subsequently, the study investigated whether the self-focused NL-IRAP could be used to predict the presence of a clinical diagnosis, using a ROC analysis. As predicted, higher levels of psychological inflexibility were observed for the clinical group. The self-focused NL-IRAP also correctly classified the presence of PTSD (AUC = 76%) with a sensitivity level of 79.3% and a specificity level of 59.2%. Overall, the use of the IRAP as a nonassociative clinical measure appears promising.

Pymdp: A Python library for active inference in discrete state spaces

Active inference is an account of cognition and behavior in complex systems which brings together action, perception, and learning under the theoretical mantle of Bayesian inference. Active inference has seen growing applications in academic research, especially in fields that seek to model human or animal behavior. While in recent years, some of the code arising from the active inference literature has been written in open source languages like Python and Julia, to-date, the most popular software for simulating active inference agents is the DEM toolbox of SPM, a MATLAB library originally developed for the statistical analysis and modelling of neuroimaging data. Increasing interest in active inference, manifested both in terms of sheer number as well as diversifying applications across scientific disciplines, has thus created a need for generic, widely-available, and user-friendly code for simulating active inference in open-source scientific computing languages like Python. The Python package we present here, pymdp (see https://github.com/infer-actively/pymdp), represents a significant step in this direction: namely, we provide the first open-source package for simulating active inference with partially-observable Markov Decision Processes or POMDPs. We review the package's structure and explain its advantages like modular design and customizability, while providing in-text code blocks along the way to demonstrate how it can be used to build and run active inference processes with ease. We developed pymdp to increase the accessibility and exposure of the active inference framework to researchers, engineers, and developers with diverse disciplinary backgrounds. In the spirit of open-source software, we also hope that it spurs new innovation, development, and collaboration in the growing active inference community.