Domain-general Account Research Articles

Both the domain-general and the mentalising processes affect visual perspective taking.

People's attention cannot help being affected by what others are looking at. The dot-perspective task has been often employed to investigate this visual attentional shift. In this task, participants are presented with virtual scenes with a cue facing some targets and must judge how many targets are visible from their own or the cue perspective. Typically, this task shows an interference pattern: Participants record slower reaction times (RTs) and more errors when the cue is facing away from the targets. Interestingly, this occurs also when participants take their own perspective. Two accounts contend the explanation of this interference. The mentalising account focuses on the social relevance of the cue, while the domain-general account focuses on the directional features of the cue. To investigate the relative contribution of the two accounts, we developed a Social_Only cue, a cue having only social features and compared its effects with a Social+Directional cue, which had both social and directional features. Results show that while the Social+Directional cue generates the typical interference pattern, the Social_Only cue does not generate interference in the RTs, only in the error rate. We advance an integration between the mentalising and the domain-general accounts. We suggest that the dot-perspective task requires two processes: an orienting process, elicited by the directional features of the cue and measured by the RTs, and a decisional process elicited by the social features of the cue and measured also by the error rate.

Dynamic interactive theory as a domain-general account of social perception.

The perception of social categories, emotions, and personality traits from others' faces each have been studied extensively but in relative isolation. We synthesize emerging findings suggesting that, in each of these domains of social perception, both a variety of bottom-up facial features and top-down social cognitive processes play a part in driving initial perceptions. Among such top-down processes, social-conceptual knowledge in particular can have a fundamental structuring role in how we perceive others' faces. Extending the Dynamic Interactive framework (Freeman & Ambady, 2011), we outline a perspective whereby the perception of social categories, emotions, and traits from faces can all be conceived as emerging from an integrated system relying on domain-general cognitive properties. Such an account of social perception would envision perceptions to be a rapid, but gradual, process of negotiation between the variety of visual cues inherent to a person and the social cognitive knowledge an individual perceiver brings to the perceptual process. We describe growing evidence in support of this perspective as well as its theoretical implications for social psychology.

Visual illusions help reveal the primitives of number perception.

The human perceptual system is responsive to numerical information within visual and auditory scenes. For example, when shown 2 displays of dots, observers can instantly, albeit approximately, identify the set that is more numerous. Theories in perceptual and cognitive psychology have focused on 2 mechanisms for how vision accomplishes such a feat: Under the domain-specific encoding theory, number is represented as a primary visual feature of perception, much like motion or color, while under the domain-general theory, the visual system represents number indirectly, through a complex combination of features such as the size of the dots, their total cluster, and so forth. Evidence for the latter theory often comes from "congruency effects:" the finding that participants frequently select the side where the dots on the screen are denser, larger, or brighter, rather than the side that is actually more numerous. However, such effects could also stem from response conflicts between otherwise independent dimensions. Here, we test these 2 competing accounts by embedding numerical displays within visual illusions that create large conflicts between number and other non-numeric dimensions-including contour length, convex hull, and density-and contrast participants' performance on a number discrimination task (i.e., "Which side has more dots?") against a number estimation task (i.e., "How many dots are there?"), which should eliminate response conflicts. Across 3 experiments, we find that while contour length illusions only affect number perception in discrimination tasks, the influences of convex hull and density on number perception persist in both discrimination and estimation tasks, supporting a more domain-general account of number encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion Regulation in Achievement Situations: An Integrated Model

Achievement emotions are critical because of their impact on success and failure in important domains such as learning. These emotions may be modified via emotion regulation (ER). The dominant process model of ER (PMER) proposed by J. Gross, however, provides a domain-general account of ER strategies and has not had substantial contact with theories of achievement emotions such as R. Pekrun’s control-value theory (CVT) and the academic achievement literature. Moreover, ER has not been a focal point of major theories related to achievement emotions, such as CVT. We propose an integrated model of ER in achievement situations (ERAS) that integrates propositions about the generation of emotions from CVT with propositions about how emotions are regulated and types of ER strategies from PMER. The ERAS model also offers new propositions regarding how different achievement situations, object foci, and time frames, as well as discrete emotions with different appraisal patterns, impact ER strategies.

Sensory-Biased and Multiple-Demand Processing in Human Lateral Frontal Cortex.

The functionality of much of human lateral frontal cortex (LFC) has been characterized as "multiple demand" (MD) as these regions appear to support a broad range of cognitive tasks. In contrast to this domain-general account, recent evidence indicates that portions of LFC are consistently selective for sensory modality. Michalka et al. (2015) reported two bilateral regions that are biased for visual attention, superior precentral sulcus (sPCS) and inferior precentral sulcus (iPCS), interleaved with two bilateral regions that are biased for auditory attention, transverse gyrus intersecting precentral sulcus (tgPCS) and caudal inferior frontal sulcus (cIFS). In the present study, we use fMRI to examine both the multiple-demand and sensory-bias hypotheses within caudal portions of human LFC (both men and women participated). Using visual and auditory 2-back tasks, we replicate the finding of two bilateral visual-biased and two bilateral auditory-biased LFC regions, corresponding to sPCS and iPCS and to tgPCS and cIFS, and demonstrate high within-subject reliability of these regions over time and across tasks. In addition, we assess MD responsiveness using BOLD signal recruitment and multi-task activation indices. In both, we find that the two visual-biased regions, sPCS and iPCS, exhibit stronger MD responsiveness than do the auditory-biased LFC regions, tgPCS and cIFS; however, neither reaches the degree of MD responsiveness exhibited by dorsal anterior cingulate/presupplemental motor area or by anterior insula. These results reconcile two competing views of LFC by demonstrating the coexistence of sensory specialization and MD functionality, especially in visual-biased LFC structures.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Lateral frontal cortex (LFC) is known to play a number of critical roles in supporting human cognition; however, the functional organization of LFC remains controversial. The "multiple demand" (MD) hypothesis suggests that LFC regions provide domain-general support for cognition. Recent evidence challenges the MD view by demonstrating that a preference for sensory modality, vision or audition, defines four discrete LFC regions. Here, the sensory-biased LFC results are reproduced using a new task, and MD responsiveness of these regions is tested. The two visual-biased regions exhibit MD behavior, whereas the auditory-biased regions have no more than weak MD responses. These findings help to reconcile two competing views of LFC functional organization.

Rethinking relevance: Repetition priming reveals the psychological reality of adaptive specializations for reasoning

Abstract Theories advanced to explain conditional reasoning range from those that invoke inference systems that evolved for specific domains (such as social exchange, precautions, or deontic regulations) to relevance theory, a relatively domain-general account that invokes conversational pragmatics. The present research utilized a novel extension of repetition priming, in conjunction with the Wason selection task (a widely known and used task to test people's conditional reasoning), to evaluate alternative theories of human reasoning. Across five experiments, testing over 600 participants, consistent priming across selection tasks was demonstrated. The pattern of priming effects supports models of human reasoning based on specific evolved reasoning abilities, and was inconsistent with general conditional reasoning models such as relevance theory. These results also converge with neurological and clinical evidence of divided psychological processes for reasoning about relatively specific domains, based on functionally distinct inference systems.

Parallels Between Action-Object Mapping and Word-Object Mapping in Young Children.

Across a series of four experiments with 3- to 4-year-olds we demonstrate how cognitive mechanisms supporting noun learning extend to the mapping of actions to objects. In Experiment 1 (n=61) the demonstration of a novel action led children to select a novel, rather than a familiar object. In Experiment 2 (n=78) children exhibited long-term retention of novel action-object mappings and extended these actions to other category members. In Experiment 3 (n=60) we showed that children formed an accurate sensorimotor record of the novel action. In Experiment 4 (n=54) we demonstrate limits on the types of actions mapped to novel objects. Overall these data suggest that certain aspects of noun mapping share common processing with action mapping and support a domain-general account of word learning.

Understanding the role of mirror neurons in action understanding will require more than a domain-general account.

Cook et al. propose that mirror neurons emerge developmentally through a domain-general associative mechanism. We argue that experience-sensitivity does not rule out an adaptive or genetic argument for mirror neuron function, and that current evidence suggests that mirror neurons are more specialized than the authors' account would predict. We propose that future work integrate behavioral and neurophysiological techniques used with primates to examine the proposed functions of mirror neurons in action understanding.

Patterns of fMRI Activity Dissociate Overlapping Functional Brain Areas that Respond to Biological Motion

Accurate perception of the actions and intentions of other people is essential for successful interactions in a social environment. Several cortical areas that support this process respond selectively in fMRI to static and dynamic displays of human bodies and faces. Here we apply pattern-analysis techniques to arrive at a new understanding of the neural response to biological motion. Functionally defined body-, face-, and motion-selective visual areas all responded significantly to "point-light" human motion. Strikingly, however, only body selectivity was correlated, on a voxel-by-voxel basis, with biological motion selectivity. We conclude that (1) biological motion, through the process of structure-from-motion, engages areas involved in the analysis of the static human form; (2) body-selective regions in posterior fusiform gyrus and posterior inferior temporal sulcus overlap with, but are distinct from, face- and motion-selective regions; (3) the interpretation of region-of-interest findings may be substantially altered when multiple patterns of selectivity are considered.

Language deficits, localization, and grammar: evidence for a distributive model of language breakdown in aphasic patients and neurologically intact individuals.

Selective deficits in aphasic patients' grammatical production and comprehension are often cited as evidence that syntactic processing is modular and localizable in discrete areas of the brain (e.g., Y. Grodzinsky, 2000). The authors review a large body of experimental evidence suggesting that morpho-syntactic deficits can be observed in a number of aphasic and neurologically intact populations. They present new data showing that receptive agrammatism is found not only over a range of aphasic groups, but is also observed in neurologically intact individuals processing under stressful conditions. The authors suggest that these data are most compatible with a domain-general account of language, one that emphasizes the interaction of linguistic distributions with the properties of an associative processor working under normal or suboptimal conditions.

On the insufficiency of evidence for a domain-general account of word learning

One question lies at the heart of our interchange with Bloom and Markson: is word learning the result of domain-speci®c or domain-general abilities? Undoubtedly, we cover a good deal of common ground. We agree (a) that discovering which aspects of language acquisition are speci®c to language, and which are shared more generally with other cognitive tasks, requires careful attention, (b) that the answer to this question may depend upon which aspect of language is under consideration, and (c) that the acquisition of novel words and facts share some important components, including establishing a mapping to a designated individual, and retaining this mapping over time. Yet there is also a clear difference between our positions. Markson and Bloom (1997) argued forcefully for a domain-general account of word learning. We countered, highlighting some crucial distinctions between what it takes to learn a word as compared to a fact. We concluded that there is, as yet, insuf®cient logical or empirical support for a domain-general account of word learning. To recap, Markson and Bloom (1997) demonstrated that children were resoundingly successful at fast-mapping either a novel word (e.g. `This is a koba') or fact (e.g. `My uncle gave this to me'), and retaining these mappings over time. They therefore concluded that fast-mapping is not speci®c to word learning. We agree entirely. However, Markson and Bloom went beyond this evidence, claiming to have uncovered a1⁄4evidence against a dedicated system for word-learning1⁄4o. It is this latter claim ± the claim that became the title of their original paper ± to which we take strong exception. The real problem is that although Bloom and Markson's data pertain to one S.R. Waxman, A.E. Booth / Cognition 78 (2001) 277±279 277