Basic Cognitive Capacities Research Articles

Gesture, meaning, and intentionality: from radical to pragmatist enactive theory of language

AbstractThe article argues in favour of a pragmatist enactive interpretation of the emergence of the symbolic and contentful mind from a basic form of social communicative interaction in which basic cognitive capacities are involved. Through a critical overview of Radical Enactivists (RECers)’ view about language, the article focuses on Mead’s pragmatist behavioural theory of meaning that refers to the gestural conversation as the origin of the evolution of linguistic conversation. The article develops as follows. After exposing the main elements of REC’s theory of cognition and language that involve the construction of a theory of natural signs (teleosemiotics) and basic directionality (Ur-intentionality), some critical points of Hutto and Myin’s proposal will be highlighted. To foster a continuist perspective of language, the behavioural theory of meaning and language that Mead develops from the notion of gesture will be analysed. His theory is akin to REC and could augment the bare bones of REC’s sketched perspective, helping to include Ur-intentionality in a broader non-dualistic phylogenetic and ontogenetic theory of symbolic language from gestural communication, thus helping to overcome the distinction between a content-less intentionality and a content-involving intentionality, i.e., a semantic propositional intentionality. Furthermore, a recent revival of Mead’s theory testifies to its up-to-date relevance to explain the innate social dimension of human and non-human animals, and the human communicative capacity through the conditioning of bio-social canons and structures.

Aristotle’s Empiricism

<i>Aristotle’s Empiricism</i>

Evaluating the neuropeptide-social cognition link in ageing: the mediating role of basic cognitive skills.

The roles of oxytocin (OT) and arginine-vasopressin (AVP) as crucial modulators of social cognition and related behaviours have been extensively addressed in the literature. The involvement of these neuropeptides in social cognition in ageing, however, and a potential mediating effect of basic cognitive capacities on this link, are not well understood. To fill these research gaps, this study assessed associations of plasma OT and AVP levels with dynamic emotion identification accuracy in generally healthy older men (aged 55-95 years) and probed the underlying roles of crystallized and fluid cognition in these associations. Higher plasma OT levels were associated with lower accuracy in dynamic emotion identification, with this negative relationship fully mediated by cognition. For plasma AVP levels, in contrast, there was no association with dynamic emotion identification accuracy. Integrated within existing theoretical accounts, results from this study advance understanding of the neuropeptide-social cognition link in ageing and support basic cognitive capacities as mediators in this association. This article is part of the theme issue 'Interplays between oxytocin and other neuromodulators in shaping complex social behaviours'.

Situated Neural Representations: Solving the Problems of Content.

Situated approaches to cognition maintain that cognition is embodied, embedded, enactive, and affective (and extended, but that is not relevant here). Situated approaches are often pitched as alternatives to computational and representational approaches, according to which cognition is computation over representations. I argue that, far from being opposites, situatedness and neural representation are more deeply intertwined than anyone suspected. To show this, I introduce a neurocomputational account of cognition that relies on neural representations. I argue not only that this account is compatible with (non-question-begging) situated approaches, but also that it requires embodiment, embeddedness, enaction, and affect at its very core. That is, constructing neural representations and their semantic content, and learning computational processes appropriate for their content, requires a tight dynamic interaction between nervous system, body, and environment. Most importantly, I argue that situatedness is needed to give a satisfactory account of neural representation: neurocognitive systems that are embodied, embedded, affective, dynamically interact with their environment, and use feedback from their interaction to shape their own representations and computations (1) can construct neural representations with original semantic content, (2) their neural vehicles and the way they are processed are automatically coordinated with their content, (3) such content is causally efficacious, (4) is determinate enough for the system's purposes, (5) represents the distal stimulus, and (6) can misrepresent. This proposal hints at what is needed to build artifacts with some of the basic cognitive capacities possessed by neurocognitive systems.

Extending the scope of the ‘cognitive advantage’ hypothesis: multilingual individuals show higher flexibility of goal adjustment

ABSTRACT The cognitive advantage (CA) hypothesis claims that multilingualism promotes the development of several basic cognitive capacities. A large number of empirical findings support this hypothesis, but recently there have also been numerous contradictory findings and methodological objections. The present paper extends the investigation of possible cognitive advantages from basic cognitive (executive) functions to broader cognitive competencies such as cognitive flexibility. A promising candidate for this is ‘flexibility of goal adjustment’ (FGA), a capacity of developmental regulation that solves problems through flexible adaptation processes. In a study with N = 119 monolingual and multilingual adults we found the predicted positive correlation between multilingualism and FGA. However, the mediator function of executive capacities entailed in the CA hypothesis operationalised as Stroop and flanker tasks could not be demonstrated.

Cognitive reappraisal capacity mediates the relationship between prefrontal recruitment during reappraisal of anger-eliciting events and paranoia-proneness

Difficulties in emotion regulation, particularly in using adaptive regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal, are a commonly observed correlate of paranoia. While it has been suggested that poor implementation of cognitive reappraisal in dealing with aversive events precedes the onset of subclinical paranoid thinking, there is little empirical research on neural activation patterns during cognitive reappraisal efforts that might indicate vulnerability towards paranoid thinking. Prefrontal EEG alpha asymmetry changes were recorded while n = 57 participants were generating alternative appraisals of anger-eliciting events, and were linked to a behavioral measure of basic cognitive reappraisal capacity and self-reported paranoia proneness (assessed by personality facets of hostility and suspiciousness; Personality Inventory for DSM-5). Mediation analysis revealed that less left-lateralized activation at ventrolateral prefrontal sites during reappraisal efforts predicted a higher degree of paranoia proneness. This relationship was mediated through poorer cognitive reappraisal capacity. Matching previous evidence, findings suggest that inappropriate brain activation during reappraisal efforts impairs individuals’ capacity to come up with effective alternative interpretations for anger-evoking situations, which may accentuate personality features related to increased paranoid thinking. The findings add to our understanding of neurally underpinned impairments in the capacity to generate cognitive reappraisals and their link to maladaptive personality and behavior.

A boy named Sue

AbstractOne major lesson learned in the cognitive sciences is that even basic human cognitive capacities are extraordinarily complicated and elusive to mechanistic explanations. This is definitely the case for naming and identity. Nothing seems simpler than using a proper name to refer to a unique individual object in the world. But psychological research has shown that the criteria and mechanisms by which humans establish and use names are unclear and seemingly contradictory. Children only develop the necessary knowledge and skills after years of development and naming degenerates in unusual selective ways with strokes, schizophrenia, or Alzheimer disease. Here we present an operational model of social interaction patterns and cognitive functions to explain how naming can be achieved and acquired. We study the Grounded Naming Game as a particular example of a symbolic interaction that requires naming and present mechanisms that build up and use the semiotic networks necessary for performance in the game. We demonstrate in experiments with autonomous physical robots that the proposed dynamical systems indeed lead to the formation of an effective naming system and that the model hence explains how naming and identity can get socially constructed and shared by a population of embodied agents.

Learning Mathematics in a Visuospatial Format: A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Mental Abacus Instruction.

Mental abacus (MA) is a technique of performing fast, accurate arithmetic using a mental image of an abacus; experts exhibit astonishing calculation abilities. Over 3years, 204 elementary school students (age range at outset: 5-7years old) participated in a randomized, controlled trial to test whether MA expertise (a) can be acquired in standard classroom settings, (b) improves students' mathematical abilities (beyond standard math curricula), and (c) is related to changes in basic cognitive capacities like working memory. MA students outperformed controls on arithmetic tasks, suggesting that MA expertise can be achieved by children in standard classrooms. MA training did not alter basic cognitive abilities; instead, differences in spatial working memory at the beginning of the study mediated MA learning.

Communication about absent entities in great apes and human infants

There is currently debate about the extent to which non-linguistic beings such as human infants and great apes are capable of absent reference. In a series of experiments we investigated the flexibility and specificity of great apes’ (N=36) and 12month-old infants’ (N=40) requests for absent entities. Subjects had the choice between requesting visible objects directly and using the former location of a depleted option to request more of these now-absent entities. Importantly, we systematically varied the quality of the present and absent options. We found that great apes as well as human infants flexibly adjusted their requests for absent entities to these contextual variations and only requested absent entities when the visible option was of lower quality than the absent option. These results suggest that the most basic cognitive capacities for absent reference do not depend on language and are shared by humans and their closest living relatives.

Atenção em velejadores: conceitos e aplicações

The sail demands from the athlete vast knowledge of hydrodynamic, meteorology, rules and tactics, beyond physical and psychological demands as concentration and attention. The aim of this study was, through a literature review, to investigate the attention and your implication in the practice of sail. Attention is a variable of great importance in the context of competitive sail, considered the necessary ability to a best performance. For the athlete to reach and maintain good levels of attention it is necessary that he establishes performance goals, mental routines and use “trigger words”. The attention is intimately linked with the characteristics of sail, and could be considered a basic cognitive capacity for sailors.

Effect of mental abacus training on working memory for children

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of mental abacus training on children's working memory. To accomplish this, the role played by the visuo-spatial sketchpad and phonological loop with regard to the working memory task in three experiments, and three distraction tasks were manipulated to investigate it. The results of experiments 1–3 suggest that training to perform mental arithmetic calculations and digit span enhances participants’ ability to retain visuo-spatial and phonological loop information. Additionally, children who had not received mental abacus training depended on the phonological loop to retain numerical information. We speculate that these children may execute mental calculations using their visuo-spatial sketchpad to form mental imagery. These findings demonstrate that mental abacus training may improve basic cognitive capacities and possess utility for learning and education.

Five Principles for Studying People’s Use of Heuristics

The fast and frugal heuristics framework assumes that people rely on an adaptive toolbox of simple decision strategies—called heuristics—to make inferences, choices, estimations, and other decisions. Each of these heuristics is tuned to regularities in the structure of the task environment and each is capable of exploiting the ways in which basic cognitive capacities work. In doing so, heuristics enable adaptive behavior. In this article, we give an overview of the framework and formulate five principles that should guide the study of people's adaptive toolbox. We emphasize that models of heuristics should be (i) precisely defined; (ii) tested comparatively; (iii) studied in line with theories of strategy selection; (iv) evaluated by how well they predict new data; and (vi) tested in the real world in addition to the laboratory.

Correlation between white matter alterations and cognitive function decline in early Alzheimer's disease

Objective To investigate the effects of early stage Alzheimer's disease(AD)on white matter(WM)integrity using diffusion tensor imaging(DTI)and its relationship with cognitive function decline.Methods DTI was performed in 32 subjects,including 14 early AD patients and 18 elder controls(ON)with a 1.5 T MR scanner. Fractional anisotropy(FA)and mean diffusivity(-D)values were computed and compared for 9 regions of interest(ROI).Eight standard neuropsychological tests were performed and compared between AD and ON to evaluate basic cognitive capacities of AD.Correlation analysis was applied between FA,(-D) values and scores of neuropsychological tests for all subjects.Results FA significantly decreased in splenium of the corpus callosum and the posterior parietal-temporal region(S2),and D significantly increased in the splenium in AD patients(P＜0.05).AD patients showed lower scores compared with ON in all neuropsychological tests(P＜0.05).FA of the splenium and S2 positively correlated with several tests scores,while (-D) of multiple ROIs negatively correlated with several tests scores (P＜0.05).Conclusions In the early stage of AD,neuropathology has effect not only on cognitive function,but also on white matter structure,and they have strong relationship.AD patients show white matter changes in specific regions,which reflect loss in cortico-cortical connections. Key words: Alzheimer disease; Magnetic resonance imaging; Cognition disorders

The slow process: A hypothetical cognitive adaptation for distributed cognitive networks

Human cognitive evolution is characterized by two special features that are truly novel in the primate line. The first is the emergence of “mindsharing” cultures that perform cooperative cognitive work, and serve as distributed cognitive networks. The second is the emergence of a brain that is specifically adapted for functioning within those distributed networks, and cannot realize its design potential without them.This paper proposes a hypothetical neural process at the core of this brain adaptation, called the “slow process”. It enables the human brain to comprehend social events of much longer duration and complexity than those that characterize primate social life. It runs in the background of human cognitive life, with the faster moving sensorimotor interface running in the foreground. Most mammals can integrate events in the shorter time zone that corresponds to working memory. However, very few can comprehend complex events that extend over several hours (for example, a game or conversation) in what may be called the “intermediate” time zone. Adult humans typically live, plan, and imagine their lives in this time range, which seems to exceed the capabilities of our closest relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees.In summary, human cognition has both an individual and a collective dimension. Individual brains and minds function within cognitive-cultural networks, or CCNs, that store and transmit knowledge. The human brain relies on cultural input even to develop the basic cognitive capacities needed to gain access to that knowledge in the first place. The postulated slow process is a top-down executive capacity that evolved specifically to manage the cultural connection, and handle the cognitive demands imposed by increasingly complex distributed systems.

Changes of cognitive function after open heart surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass: study of 50 cases

To investigate the effects of different factors associated with open heart surgery under cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) on neurocognitive function. The cognitive capacity of 50 patients undergoing open heart surgery under CPB were studied on the day before operation and the 14th day postoperatively with Basic Cognitive Capacity Test battery, including 7 subtest: Digit Discrimination, Mental Arithmetic, Chinese Character Rotation, Digit Working Memory, Dual-word recognition, Tri-digit Recognition, and Meaningless Figure Recognition. The correlation between the postoperative cognitive decline and the factors associated with CPB was analyzed. The total score of the Basic Cognitive Capacity Test 14 days postoperatively in 31 out of the 50 patients (62%) was 50 +/- 13, significantly lower than the preoperative score (54 +/- 10, P < 0.01), the decline being especially marked in Digit Discrimination, Digit Working Memory, and Dual-word Recognition (all P < 0.01). The postoperative decrease in cognitive function was correlated with age (P < 0.05), CPB time (P < 0.01), rewarming rate (P < 0.01), and the highest PaCO(2) (P < 0.05). The incidence of cognitive dysfunction is higher in patients undergoing open heart surgery with CPB during the early postoperative period. Shortening CPB time, slowing rewarming, and appropriately increasing the level of PaCO2 will help to degrade the possibility of cognitive dysfunction after open heart surgery.

Study of chitosan-phospholipid complex on treatment to basic cognitive capacity of the senile citizen

目的 研究壳聚糖磷脂复合物(CPC)对老年认知功能障碍患者认知水平的影响,并初步探讨其作用机制.方法 32例老年认知功能障碍者随机分为2组,分别予固定剂量的安慰剂、CPC 2个月,采用中科院心理研究所的基本认知能力测验软件测定患者服药前后基本认知能力的改变.结果老年认知功能障碍者服用CPC 2月后,基本认知能力中的数字鉴别、心算、汉字旋转、心算答案回忆、双字词再认、三位数再认六项分测验分值分别由服药前的5.30、8.66、7.34、3.76、5.16、4.76提高至12.79、14.86、13.26、10.04、13.02、12.57,与对照组相比有显著性差异(P <0.01).无意义图形再认分值也由9.20提高至17.09,与对照组相比有统计学差异(P <0.05).结论 CPC能显著改善老年认知功能障碍者的认知水平。

Searching for the memory trace in a mini-brain, the honeybee.

To determine general or species-specific properties in neural systems, it is necessary to use comparative data in evaluating experimental findings. Presented here are data on associative learning and memory formation in honeybees, emphasizing a comparative approach. We focus on four aspects: (1) the role of an identified neuron, VUM(mx1), as a neural substrate of appetitive reinforcement; (2) the sequences of molecular events as they correlate with five forms of memory stages; (3) the localization of the memory traces following appetitive olfactory learning; and (4) the brief description of several forms of complex learning in bees (configuration in olfactory conditioning, categorization in visual feature learning, delayed matching-to-sample learning, and latent learning in navigation). VUM(mx1) activity following the conditioned stimulus odor is sufficient to replace the unconditioned stimulus, and VUM(mx1) changes its response properties during learning similarly to what is known from dopamine neurons in the basal ganglia of the mammalian brain. The transition from short- to mid- and long-term forms of memory can be related to specific activation of second messenger cascades (involving NOS, PKA, PKC, and PKM) resembling general features of neural plasticity at the cellular level. The particular time course of the various memory traces may be adapted to the behavioral context in which they are used; here, the foraging cycle of the bee. Memory traces for even such a simple form of learning as olfactory conditioning are multiple and distributed, involving first- and second-order sensory neuropils (antennal lobe and mushroom bodies), but with distinctly different properties. The wealth of complex forms of learning in the context of foraging indicates basic cognitive capacities based on rule extraction and context-dependent learning. It is believed that bees might be a useful model for studying cognitive faculties at a middle level of complexity.

Neural coding.

Neural coding.

The A Priori Rules of Rationality

Both these ideas are intuitively plausible: rationality has an external aim, such as forming a true belief or good decision; and the rationality of a belief or decision is determined purely by facts about the thinker's internal mental states. Unlike earlier conceptions, the conception of rationality presented here explains why these ideas are both true. Rational beliefs and decisions, it is argued, are those that are formed through the thinker's following 'rules of rationality'. Some rules count as rules of rationality because it is rational to believe-through following other rules-that those rules are reliable. But there must also be certain basic rules, which are a priori, or 'built into' our basic cognitive capacities. That these rules are a priori is a purely internal matter; and in following these rules the thinker has done all that could reasonably be expected to achieve the external aim of forming a true belief or good decision.

Ageing and word processing competence: compensation or compilation?

Composition and compilation were examined as two alternative hypotheses relating to 'cognitive competence' in older adults. Techniques of molar equivalence-molecular decomposition (ME-MD) and molecular equivalence-molar analysis (ME-MA) were used to investigate performance of experienced (over 100 hours) younger (18-30 years) and older (45-66 years) adults on a word processing task, requiring insertion and deletion of words from passages of text. There was some indication that typing skill may form the basis of a compensatory mechanism. However, differences between 'good' and 'poor' performers in the older sample supported the position that high levels of complex task skill in older adults are associated with the possession (possibly through maintenance) of high levels of basic cognitive capacities, and are not related to the integration of molecular task components.