Developments In Cognitive Science Research Articles

Estimating statistical power for structural equation models in developmental cognitive science: A tutorial in R : Power simulation for SEMs.

Determining the compositional structure and dimensionality of psychological constructs lies at the heart of many research questions in developmental science. Structural equation modeling (SEM) provides a versatile framework for formalizing and estimating the relationships among multiple latent constructs. While the flexibility of SEM can accommodate many complex assumptions on the underlying structure of psychological constructs, it makes a priori estimation of statistical power and required sample size challenging. This difficulty is magnified when comparing non-nested SEMs, which prevents the use of traditional likelihood-ratio tests. Sample size estimates for SEM model fit comparisons typically rely on generic rules of thumb. Such heuristics can be misleading because statistical power in SEM depends on a variety of model properties. Here, we demonstrate a Monte Carlo simulation approach for estimating a priori statistical power for model selection when comparing non-nested models in an SEM framework. We provide a step-by-step guide to this approach based on an example from our memory development research in children.

Visual reflexive attention as a useful measure of development.

Cognitive psychology began over three-quarters of a century ago and we have learned a great deal in that time, including concerning the development of cognitive abilities such as perception, attention, and memory, all of which develop across infancy and childhood. Attention is one aspect of cognition that is vital to success in a variety of life activities and, arguably, the foundation of memory, learning, problem solving, decision making, and other cognitive activities. The cognitive abilities of later childhood and adulthood generally appear to depend on the reflexes, abilities, and skills of infancy. Research in developmental cognitive science can help us understand adult cognition and know when to intervene when cognitive function is at risk. This area of research can be challenging because, even in typical development, the course of cognitive development for a particular child does not always improve monotonically. In addition, the typical trajectory of this development has been understood differently from different historical perspectives. Neither the history of thought that has led to our current understanding of attention (including its various types) nor the importance of developmental aspects of attention are frequently covered in training early career researchers, especially those whose primary area of research in not attention. My goal is to provide a review that will be useful especially to those new to research in the subfield of attention. Sustained attention in adults and children has been well-studied, but a review of the history of thought on the development of reflexive attention with a focus on infancy is overdue. Therefore, I draw primarily on historical and modern literature and clarify confusing terminology as it has been used over time. I conclude with examples of how cognitive development research can contribute to scientific and applied progress.

Rethinking the Actor's Body: Dialogues with Neuroscience by Dick McCaw

Reviewed by: Rethinking the Actor's Body: Dialogues with Neuroscience by Dick McCaw Dan Cullen Rethinking the Actor's Body: Dialogues with Neuroscience. Dick McCaw. London: Methuen, 2020; pp. 274. British acting teacher and theatre practitioner Dick McCaw's Rethinking the Actor's Body: Dialogues with Neuroscience is intended as a companion piece to his 2018 movement training manual, Training the Actor's Body: A Guide. It provides some useful insight into the theories of the body that underlie McCaw's practices and their attempt to bring the training techniques of Stanislavski and Feldenkrais—rooted in an early twentieth-century understanding of behavioral psychology—in line with contemporary understandings of neurological processes. In undertaking such a project, McCaw also places the book in dialogue with other attempts to define the relationship between the actor's work and the physical operation of the human brain such as Rhonda Blair's The Actor, Image, and Action: Acting and Cognitive Neuroscience (2008). Blair argues that there are significant gaps between the techniques actors use to create representations of action onstage and the cognitive processes that actually underlie human behavior. For Blair, those gaps are useful in creating performances that the spectator's brain can easily interpret. Conversely, McCaw contends that these gaps are not so great and that actor training should be working to bridge what remains of them. Rethinking the Actor's Body is divided into two parts. The first part is made up of four chapters in which McCaw defines "the actor's and the everyday body (which are, of course, the same thing)" and explains how he conceives of "the interrelation between brain and body" (10). These chapters rehearse well-trodden critiques from the last several decades that actor training relies on Cartesian verbiage, which incorrectly theorizes the body and mind as separate entities in a hierarchical relationship. Beyond that, McCaw's first chapter explores different possibilities for conceptions of the body and the nuances of considering it alternately as subject and object. From there, his second chapter outlines how the "everyday body" is transformed into the "actor's body" through training. He argues that the leap from the actions of simple organisms like ticks and sea slugs to the precisely rehearsed dramatic actions that actors engage in is much smaller than we might expect on account of their common basis in action with purpose informed by sensory information. Chapter three explains that the creation of the actor's body is never complete, that it is constantly in the process of converting cognitive processes into instinctual or habitual ones through practice. According to McCaw, "The ego … gets in the way of the source of creativity" (85). For McCaw and the neuroscientists, this source of creativity is the subconscious activity of the brain unhampered by cognitive oversight. McCaw suggests that this is what Stanislavski means when he describes proper acting technique as "nature working freely" (85). Readers cannot help but be reminded of similar arguments from the long nineteenth century that positioned naturalism and realism as the ultimate forms of artistic expression due to their supposed scientific accuracy. The argumentative structure of part two is less clear. It is instead more of a series of essays that seeks neurologically informed answers to some of acting theorists' classic questions: what does it mean to be "present" or to have "presence?" Does the body have a true, stable "center," or is the notion of "being centered" merely a useful metaphor? How does our mental image of our bodies correspond to the way we move through space, and can we reconstruct our way of moving by changing that image? By what process do we make emotions legible to other people, especially when so many of the symptoms of emotion (heart rate, pupil dilation, etc.) are outside our conscious control? McCaw concludes by acknowledging that being informed of the latest developments in cognitive science is unlikely to make the actor's job easier, but he hopes that his readers "think again about their own physical resources and potential, and in this act of rethinking to find new ways of doing" (224). Throughout the text, the author refers to his previously published practical guide as a...

The language-of-thought as a working hypothesis for developmental cognitive science.

A science of prelinguistic infant cognition must take seriously the language-of-thought (LoT) hypothesis. I show how the LoT framework enables us to identify the representational and computational capacities of infant minds and the developmental factors that act on these capacities, and explain how Quilty-Dunn et al.'s take on LoT has important upshots for developmental theory-building.

Visual category representations in the infant brain

Visual categorization is a human core cognitive capacity1,2 that depends on the development of visual category representations in the infant brain.3,4,5,6,7 However, the exact nature of infant visual category representations and their relationship to the corresponding adult form remains unknown.8 Our results clarify the nature of visual category representations from electroencephalography (EEG) data in 6- to 8-month-old infants and their developmental trajectory toward adult maturity in the key characteristics of temporal dynamics,2,9 representational format,10,11,12 and spectral properties.13,14 Temporal dynamics change from slowly emerging, developing representations in infants to quickly emerging, complex representations in adults. Despite those differences, infants and adults already partly share visual category representations. The format of infants' representations is visual features of low to intermediate complexity, whereas adults' representations also encode high-complexity features. Theta band activity contributes to visual category representations in infants, and these representations are shifted to the alpha/beta band in adults. Together, we reveal the developmental neural basis of visual categorization in humans, show how information transmission channels change in development, and demonstrate the power of advanced multivariate analysis techniques in infant EEG research for theory building in developmental cognitive science.

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.

Study on Conceptual Metaphor in Chinese Anti-epidemic Discourse from the Cultural Context Perspective

Metaphor widely exists in daily discourse and shines people’s extremely intelligent thinking. With the development of cognitive science, metaphor has become an indispensable cognitive tool. The awards ceremony for fighting against COVID-19 was held in Beijing Great Hall of the people and the speech of general secretary Present Xi at the conference was heartening. The speech contains a large number of metaphorical expressions, carrying the Chinese cultural information that was contained in the process of China’s anti-epidemic. Under the guidance of conceptual metaphor theory and combined with cultural context, interpreting the metaphorical expression in the speech will help to understand the great anti-epidemic spirit of the Chinese nation and the profound connotation of Chinese civilization. Research results showed that war metaphors were widely used in the speech, which carried forward the Chinese people’s brave and aggressive spirit in the process of fighting against COVID-19. The use of travel metaphors showed the confidence of the Chinese people to move forward bravely. The use of examination metaphors reflected the serious attitude and extraordinary wisdom of the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government towards the epidemic.

Suffering and sense of self: The tension between reflection and experience—The case of depression

The tension between reflection and experience has been highlighted by Buddhism as the origin of human suffering, described as an undercurrent and constant feelings of restlessness, grasping, anxiety, and dissatisfaction or disease. This universal suffering experience called Dukkha refers to the failure to find a Self in reflection or the frustrated desire or craving to have or to be something. For Buddhism, not only the desired object is illusory, but so is the desiring self. Further, Varela et al. (1993) integrate these ideas into the development of cognitive sciences and the understanding of human experience from an embodied and selfless mind perspective. The present article attempts to apply the Buddhist notion of suffering or Dukkha along with Varela, Thompson, and Rosch’s contributions to the understanding of the embodied sense of Self that characterizes symptoms of Depression. The expression of the self-grasping suffering experiences and the tension between reflection and experience for depressive patients will be discussed from an enacted and embodied perspective. Further, new research ideas along with possible new psychotherapeutic approaches are discussed.

Development of a New Measure of Cognitive Ability Using Automatic Item Generation and Its Psychometric Properties

In the development of cognitive science understanding human intelligence and mind, measurement of cognitive ability has played a key role. To address the development in data scientific point of views related to cognitive neuroscience, there has been a demand of creating a measurement to capture cognition in short and repeated time periods. This paper introduces an innovative measure of cognitive ability based on automatic item generation approach, which can efficiently and effectively measure cognitive ability over time. We also examine its psychometric properties. Content validity of the assessment was considered based on the Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory, and construct validity via convergent and divergent validities was examined by confirmatory factor analysis. The reliability of the measure examined by internal consistencies as well as test-retest reliabilities of each subdomain of cognitive ability were satisfactory. The psychometric properties found clearly support its potential utilities in both educational and clinical settings, especially in a field requiring repeated measures of cognitive ability.

Measuring Memberships in Collectives in Light of Developments in Cognitive Science and Natural-Language Processing

Which individuals and corporate actors belong in a collective, and who decides? Sociology has not had good analytical tools for addressing these questions. Recent work that adapts probabilistic representations of concepts and probabilistic categorization to sociological research opens opportunities for making progress on the measurement of memberships. It turns out that the probabilistic cognitive-based reformulation reveals unexpected connections to language models and natural-language processing. In particular, the leading probabilistic classifier BERT provides new and powerful ways to measure core concepts.

THE PHENOMENON OF CONSCIOUSNESS FROM AN INTER AND MULTIDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE

Contemporary science, in recent decades, reflects intensely on the phenomenon of consciousness. This fact is due to the accelerated development of cognitive sciences, biological and physical sciences, neuroscience, which have achieved certain successes in researching the problem of mind-body, consciousness. However, what is strictly required is the issue of the possibility of a scientific theory of consciousness, which would apply a new research methodology. The most recent approaches in this direction substantiate the need for research from a phenomenological structural perspective, which explains consciousness as a phenomenon determined by the subquantum level. Structural-phenomenological theory holds that this level is a profound reality regulated by specific principles and laws that make consciousness possible.

Inattention and Uncertainty in the Predictive Brain.

Negative effects of inattention on task performance can be seen in many contexts of society and human behavior, such as traffic, work, and sports. In traffic, inattention is one of the most frequently cited causal factors in accidents. In order to identify inattention and mitigate its negative effects, there is a need for quantifying attentional demands of dynamic tasks, with a credible basis in cognitive modeling and neuroscience. Recent developments in cognitive science have led to theories of cognition suggesting that brains are an advanced prediction engine. The function of this prediction engine is to support perception and action by continuously matching incoming sensory input with top-down predictions of the input, generated by hierarchical models of the statistical regularities and causal relationships in the world. Based on the capacity of this predictive processing framework to explain various mental phenomena and neural data, we suggest it also provides a plausible theoretical and neural basis for modeling attentional demand and attentional capacity "in the wild" in terms of uncertainty and prediction error. We outline a predictive processing approach to the study of attentional demand and inattention in driving, based on neurologically-inspired theories of uncertainty processing and experimental research combining brain imaging, visual occlusion and computational modeling. A proper understanding of uncertainty processing would enable comparison of driver's uncertainty to a normative level of appropriate uncertainty, and thereby improve definition and detection of inattentive driving. This is the necessary first step toward applications such as attention monitoring systems for conventional and semi-automated driving.

Are There Reliable Qualitative Individual Difference in Cognition?

In this paper we propose a new set of questions that focus on the direction of effects. In almost all studies the direction is important. For example, in a Stroop task we expect responses to incongruent items to be slower than those to congruent ones, and this direction implies one theoretical explanation. Yet, if congruent words are slowed down relative to incongruent words we would have a completely different theoretical explanation. We ask a ‘does everybody’ question, such as, ‘does every individual show a Stroop effect in the same direction?’ Or, ‘does every individual respond faster to loud tones than soft tones?’ If all individuals truly have effects in the same direction that implicate a common theory, we term the differences among them as quantitative individual differences. Conversely, if all individuals truly have effects in different directions that implicate different theories, we term the differences among them as qualitative individual differences. Here, we provide a users guide to the question of whether individual differences are qualitative or quantitative. We discuss theoretical issues, methodological advances, new software for assessment, and, most importantly, how the question impacts theory development in cognitive science. Our hope is that this mode of analysis is a productive tool in researchers’ toolkits.

Ситуативно-когнитивный подход в переводоведении: истоки и эвристический потенциал

The article analyzes the explanatory possibilities of the situated cognition approach to translation study on the basis of the theoretical apparatus developed in the Viennese translation school of Professor H. Risku. The relevance of the study is determined by the appeal to the analysis of the specialized translation process in the authentic context of the functioning of the main subject in the modern translation market, i.e. a translation bureau. Incorporating the research techniques from the early stages of cognitive science development (theory of information processing based on symbol manipulation and neural networks analysis within the framework of connectionism), the approach under consideration is based on the modern concept of extended situated embodied cognition, which, as applied to translation studies, provides new arguments in favor of transition from interpretation of the interaction "human – text" to the study of multimedia communication of a subjects group in the translation networks' composition, which have arisen as a result of outsourcing processes in the translation industry. The features of cooperative interaction between a team of translators and experts, as well as artifacts in the process of translation text generation using information technologies, are demonstrated. The practical application of the situated cognition approach to the analysis of the participants' activities in translation cooperative networks (customer company, technical editor, translation bureau, external translation bureau, translator) is especially relevant in the context of glocalization in the emerging Russian translation market.

SYNCHRONOUS RITUALS AND SOCIAL BONDING: REVITALIZING CONCEPTIONS OF INDIVIDUAL PERSONHOOD IN THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION

AbstractThe evolutionary cognitive science of religion rarely strays far from strong individualistic principles despite a deep interest in the adaptive social bonding functions of religion. This raises serious problems for recent Christian theology, which favors concrete relational conceptions of individual personhood. Here, I argue that the wider evolutionary study of religion can mitigate this individualism by embracing recent research suggesting that religion's social bonding functions might be explained as much through energetic, endorphin stimulating, synchronous rituals as through cognitive mechanisms that increase prosocial behavior. The brain opioid theory of social attachment provides a helpful framework for understanding the evolutionary significance of such rituals. A close examination of research into the social effects of synchronous activity, I argue, reveals the need for a theoretically pluralistic explanation of how religion facilitates sociality, the major components of which are readily interpreted in terms that recognize the inherent relationality of individual personhood.

Musical Competence and Second Language Learning

In recent years, we have witnessed a renewal of interest in the language — music relationship due to the development of cognitive science and the advent of brain imaging methods, such as positron emission tomography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, magnetoencephalography, electroencephalography, and event-related brain potentials, which has led to a number of major discoveries. The relationship between music and language has been examined from many different perspectives. Taken together, these findings indicate that musical competence positively influences some aspects of speech processing, from auditory perception to speech production and may benefit second language acquisition. In this review, we focus on the main results of the current research, discuss several interpretations that may account for the influence of musical competence on speech processing in native and foreign languages, and propose new directions for future research.

Getting up to SpEED: Special Education Embodied Design for Sensorially Equitable Inclusion

We present the implications of a novel approach to design-based research, Special Education Embodied Design (SpEED), for inclusive education. SpEED is a new way of thinking about how Special Education students can learn through whole-body participation (Tancredi et al., in press). The goal of SpEED is to update our thinking about special education and inclusion based on the latest developments in cognitive science. We illustrate the utility of embodied design to teaching and research on issues affecting learners in Special Education through examples centering different Special Education populations, including Deaf learners, learners on the autism spectrum, and sensory-seeking learners. Each project focuses on deepening the learning opportunities we offer students by using learners' existing embodied resources. We conclude with a commentary on considerations for implementing SpEED within the Italian educational system.

The Future of Computational Linguistics: On Beyond Alchemy.

Over the decades, fashions in Computational Linguistics have changed again and again, with major shifts in motivations, methods and applications. When digital computers first appeared, linguistic analysis adopted the new methods of information theory, which accorded well with the ideas that dominated psychology and philosophy. Then came formal language theory and the idea of AI as applied logic, in sync with the development of cognitive science. That was followed by a revival of 1950s-style empiricism—AI as applied statistics—which in turn was followed by the age of deep nets. There are signs that the climate is changing again, and we offer some thoughts about paths forward, especially for younger researchers who will soon be the leaders.

О КОГНИТИВНОМ ПОТЕНЦИАЛЕ МЕТАФОРЫ В НАУЧНОМ ДИСКУРСЕ

The article is devoted to metaphor: its definition, classification, and various approaches to its study. The author attempts to analyze metaphor outside the research field of rhetoric (which traditionally interprets it as a tool of efficient communication) and uses a linguo-cognitive approach to consider it. Within the framework of this approach, metaphor is equated with the cat- egory of thinking and is interpreted as a way of exploring the world and one of the most important cognitive mechanisms used by an individual in the process of his spiritual growth. Since the role of metaphor was completely re-estimated from the point of view of cognitive linguistics, metaphor was no longer considered as a factor inhibiting the formation of scientific knowledge. It was discovered as a unify- ing principle, a semantic potential, which eventually revealed in it the signs of anthropometry that, in turn, served as an impetus for the development of cognitive science. Re-estimation of the role and place of metaphor in the post-nonclassical epistemological field presupposes the evolution of its status: from a common linguistic technique to a meaning-making center, a bridge between being and knowing, subject and object, language and world, science and culture.

Life, death, and self: Fundamental questions of primitive cognition viewed through the lens of body plasticity and synthetic organisms

Central to the study of cognition is being able to specify the Subject that is making decisions and owning memories and preferences. However, all real cognitive agents are made of parts (such as brains made of cells). The integration of many active subunits into a coherent Self appearing at a larger scale of organization is one of the fundamental questions of evolutionary cognitive science. Typical biological model systems, whether basal or advanced, have a static anatomical structure which obscures important aspects of the mind-body relationship. Recent advances in bioengineering now make it possible to assemble, disassemble, and recombine biological structures at the cell, organ, and whole organism levels. Regenerative biology and controlled chimerism reveal that studies of cognition in intact, “standard”, evolved animal bodies are just a narrow slice of a much bigger and as-yet largely unexplored reality: the incredible plasticity of dynamic morphogenesis of biological forms that house and support diverse types of cognition. The ability to produce living organisms in novel configurations makes clear that traditional concepts, such as body, organism, genetic lineage, death, and memory are not as well-defined as commonly thought, and need considerable revision to account for the possible spectrum of living entities. Here, I review fascinating examples of experimental biology illustrating that the boundaries demarcating somatic and cognitive Selves are fluid, providing an opportunity to sharpen inquiries about how evolution exploits physical forces for multi-scale cognition. Developmental (pre-neural) bioelectricity contributes a novel perspective on how the dynamic control of growth and form of the body evolved into sophisticated cognitive capabilities. Most importantly, the development of functional biobots – synthetic living machines with behavioral capacity – provides a roadmap for greatly expanding our understanding of the origin and capacities of cognition in all of its possible material implementations, especially those that emerge de novo, with no lengthy evolutionary history of matching behavioral programs to bodyplan. Viewing fundamental questions through the lens of new, constructed living forms will have diverse impacts, not only in basic evolutionary biology and cognitive science, but also in regenerative medicine of the brain and in artificial intelligence.