Actual Cognitive Processes Research Articles

Cognition in Social Engineering Empirical Research: A Systematic Literature Review

The interdisciplinarity of the Social Engineering (SE) domain creates crucial challenges for the development and advancement of empirical SE research, making it particularly difficult to identify the space of open research questions that can be addressed empirically. This space encompasses questions on attack conditions, employed experimental methods, and interactions with underlying cognitive aspects. As a consequence, much potential in the breadth of existing empirical SE research and in its mapping to the actual cognitive processes it aims to measure is left untapped. In this work, we carry out a systematic review of 169 articles investigating overall 735 hypotheses in the field of empirical SE research, focusing on experimental characteristics and core cognitive features from both attacker and target perspectives. Our study reveals that experiments only partially reproduce real attacks and that the exploitable SE attack surface appears much larger than the coverage provided by the current body of research. Factors such as targets’ context and cognitive processes are often ignored or not explicitly considered in experimental designs. Similarly, the effects of different pretexts and varied targetization levels are overall marginally investigated. Our findings on current SE research dynamics provide insights into methodological shortcomings and help identify supplementary techniques that can open promising future research directions.

Neurophysiological Basis of the Cognitive Gender Differences in Adulthood in Humans. Evidence from Event-related Brain Potentials

Gender can affect nervous system functioning at multiple levels – from genetics to behaviour. In the present review, effects of gender on neurophysiologic mechanisms of mental rotation, efficiency of language processing, emotions and sensory processes were studied in adults by exploring event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Since these processes were best recognized as gender-dependent at the behavioural level, it was aimed to verify the presence of gender effects on the respective ERP correlates at the neurophysiologic level. Articles from the PubMed database were selected, with a publication year until 2020. The review additionally includes studies that were cited in the selected articles. Thus, forty-six articles published between 1982 and 2020 were included. The reviewed data of healthy humans demonstrate that gender affects the early (related to perception and identification) and the late stages of processing (related to actual cognitive processes) of ERPs elicited during the three cognitive categories (mental rotation, language, and emotions). Mental rotation process in males demonstrates smaller amplitudes and shorter latencies of ERP components. It is concluded that men perform mental rotation more efficiently than females because they not only apply a different processing strategy (implied by distinct topography patterns), but they also benefit from faster processing mechanisms. During language processing, gender differences are expressed in increased amplitudes, shortened latencies, and different scalp topographies of language-related ERPs in females compared to males. ERPs confirm that the two genders employ different processing strategies and provide new evidence that females’ advantages can be associated with the fact that women are involved in a more extensive, more in-depth semantic processing and have a more automatized language processing. Gender differences in the emotion-related processes are mainly expressed as increased ERP amplitudes in females compared to males for both the early and late ERP components. ERP results reveal that women are more sensitive to emotionally salient stimuli, especially to unpleasant negative ones, and that this sensitivity extends beyond early emotional reactivity to a later emotional and emotion-regulation processes. However, studies exploring the neurophysiological level of the mental rotation process, language, and emotional processing in men and women are still scarce and inconsistent and thus further extensive research is required. The present review provides important hints that many of the established gender effects on specific processes (mental rotation, language and emotion regulation) may originate from fundamental and material-unspecific effects of gender on sensory processing mechanisms, which also merits additional clarification.

On the integration of manufacturing strategy: deconstructing Hoshin Kanri

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show that Hoshin Kanri has the potential to integrate the operations strategy literature into a coherent structure. Hoshin Kanri’s planning process is typically described as a top-down cascading of goals, starting with the senior management’s goals and moving to the lowest organizational level. The authors argue that this misrepresents a firm’s actual cognitive processes in practice because it implies reasoning from the effects to the cause, and assumes a direct causal relationship between what the customer wants and what is realizable by the system.Design/methodology/approachThis study is conceptual, based on abductive reasoning and the literature.FindingsThe actual strategic thought process executed in an organization consists of three iterative processes: (i) a translation process that derives the desired customer attributes from customer/stakeholder data, (ii) a process of causal inference that predicts realizable customer attributes from a possible system design and (iii) an integrative process of strategic choices whereby (i) and (ii) are aligned. Each element relies on different cognitive processes (logical relation, causal relation and choice).Research limitations/implicationsBy aligning the thought and planning processes, the competing concepts of manufacturing strategy are integrated into a coherent structure.Practical implicationsDifferent techniques have to be applied for each of the three elements. As each element relies on different cognitive processes (logical relation, causal relation and choice), the use of unifying tools (e.g. in the form of matrices, as often presented in the literature) is inappropriate.Originality/valueThis is the first study to focus on the thought processes underpinning manufacturing strategy.

Knowledge revision through the lenses of the three-pronged approach.

In the present study, we employed the three-pronged approach to determine the actual cognitive processes theorized in knowledge revision. First, the Knowledge Revision Components (KReC) framework was identified as the guiding theory. Second, think-aloud analysis highlighted at which points in refutation texts readers detected discrepancies between their incorrect, commonsense beliefs and the correct beliefs, and the exact processes with which they dealt with these discrepancies-successfully or unsuccessfully, as indicated by posttest scores. Third, corroborating reading-time data and posttest data demonstrated that the structure of the refutation texts facilitated the coactivation and integration of the explanation with the commonsense belief, resulting in knowledge revision. Finally, an analysis directly connected the processes identified during think-aloud to sentence reading times. These findings systematically identify the cognitive processes theorized during knowledge revision and, in doing so, provide evidence for the conditions for revision outlined in the KReC framework.

Using a Test Adapted to Sign Language to Assess Metacognitive Skill of Deaf Students

Abstract Metacognition is people's knowledge about actual cognitive processes and products together with any other information that is relevant to learning. As children develop metacognitive strategies, they interiorize a body of knowledge that will enable them to regulate their learning. In the hearing population there is a clear relationship between metacognition, reading comprehension and academic achievement. However, until now there have been very few attempts to assess metacognition in the deaf in an appropriate way, despite the fact that the difficulties deaf people have in attaining reading comprehension are well documented. This study presents an adaptation of the Scale of Reading Consciousness (ESCOLA, in its Spanish acronym) so that it can be used for Spanish sign language and compares the results obtained from its standard and adapted application. This is followed by a discussion on the results and the biases in interpretation that can arise from an indiscriminate application of the standard test.

Internalizing the Impossible: Anorexic Outpatients' Experiences With Women's Beauty and Fashion Magazines

A growing body of research has linked the readership of women's beauty and fashion magazines with the development and perpetuation of anorexic behaviors in some young women. Although we know the link exists, little is known about the actual cognitive processes and the ways in which at risk women "use" these magazines to internalize the impossible thin ideal that appears to drive the illness. To understand this phenomenon and the process of internalization in greater depth, the authors conducted qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 28 outpatients at an eating disorder treatment facility in the western United States. Using a grounded theory approach, the authors' analysis provides a detailed description drawn from the patients' personal accounts of how the magazines have influenced their lives and eating-disordered behaviors.

Musical Grammar and the Study of Cognitive Processes of Composition

The concept of “grammar” is at the basis both of listening to and of composing music. Music grammar includes morphology and syntax, the former being defined as the identification of different categories of musical structures, the latter as that of rules connecting morphological unities. In listening to music morphology corresponds to “categorical” perception and syntax to “structural” perception. In composing and in music analysis, the intuitive procedures of perceptions must be transformed in explicitly rational knowledge: morphology corresponds to a clear definition of musical concepts and syntax to that of musical rules. According to the theory, morphology and syntax correspond to actual cognitive processes; however a distinction is made between a grammar, and its uses, that is, its applications in composing and listening activities. Some critical remarks on this point are made in respect of the tradition of cognitive studies. A further aspect of grammar is then underlined: the distinction between syntactic and semantic rules. The aim of both of these is to build expressive structures which can be understood and interpreted by means of socially legitimated hermeneutic conventions. In this sense grammar is to be conceived of not only as a psychic, but also as a social instrument. In order to understand the mental procedures of composition, all the methods so far proposed risk remaining at the surface of the problems to which they are applied unless they are integrated into amore accurate and adequate consideration of grammatical thinking.

Relational complexity metric is effective when assessments are based on actual cognitive processes

The core issue of our target article concerns how relational complexity should be assessed. We propose that assessments must be based on actual cognitive processes used in performing each step of a task. Complexity comparisons are important for the orderly interpretation of research findings. The links between relational complexity theory and several other formulations, as well as its implications for neural functioning, connectionist models, the roles of knowledge, and individual and developmental differences, are considered.