Mental Module Research Articles

Gaze and Arrows: Does the Gaze-Following Patch in the Posterior Temporal Cortex Differentiate Social and Symbolic Spatial Cues?

The gaze-following patch (GFP) is located in the posterior temporal cortex and has been described as a cortical module dedicated to processing other people's gaze-direction in a domain-specific manner. Thus, it appears to be the neural correlate of Baron-Cohen's eye direction detector (EDD) which is one of the core modules in his mindreading system-a neurocognitive model for the theory of mind concept. Inspired by Jerry Fodor's ideas on the modularity of the mind, Baron-Cohen proposed that, among other things, the individual modules are domain specific. In the case of the EDD, this means that it exclusively processes eye-like stimuli to extract gaze-direction and that other stimuli, which may carry directional information as well, are processed elsewhere. If the GFP is indeed EDD's neural correlate, it must meet this expectation. To test this, we compared the GFP's BOLD activity during gaze-direction following with the activity during arrow-direction following in the present human fMRI study. Contrary to the expectation based on the assumption of domain specificity, we did not find a differentiation between gaze- and arrow-direction following. In fact, we were not able to reproduce the GFP as presented in the previous studies. A possible explanation is that in the present study-unlike the previous work-the gaze stimuli did not contain an obvious change of direction that represented a visual motion. Hence, the critical stimulus component responsible for the identification of the GFP in the previous experiments might have been visual motion.

Chomsky’s Theory of Mind: Concepts and Contents

Nowadays, it is very debatable among philosophers, psychologists, linguists and artificial intelligence scientists that what mind actually is, where it exists and how it works? Chomsky, the great philosopher and the main exponent of cognitive revolution tries to sketch the description of mind, its nature, mental processes, its structure as well as its relation with its other cognitive modules. It also examines innate and acquired knowledge of mind. In this paper, I shall argue about the capacities of the mind, why Chomsky called mind capacity as different from its ability and other faculties. This paper also describes the theories that are connected with the field of mind i.e, mind and language, linguistic mentalism, Modular mind, Cartesian mind, mind-body problem, Philosophical grammar, and thought processes like reasoning and perceptions. Firstly, I shall argue about, does Chomsky consider mind different from brain, consciousness and thought? Secondly, does Chomsky consider mind as a separate concept or he regards it as the constituent of language only? And thirdly, how Chomsky responds to rationalists and empiricists?

Evolving Concepts of Functional Localization

AbstractFunctional localization is a central aim of cognitive neuroscience. But the nature and extent of functional localization in the human brain have been subjects of fierce theoretical debate since the 19thCentury. In this essay, I first examine how concepts of functional localization have changed over time. I then analyze contemporary challenges to functional localization drawing from research on neural reuse, neural degeneracy, and the context‐dependence of neural functions. I explore the consequences of these challenges for topics in philosophy of science and philosophy of mind including localizationist versus anti‐localizationist approaches to cognitive neuroscience, multiple realizability, reverse inference in functional neuroimaging, and the modularity of mind.

Translanguaging in the analysis of narrative techniques and discourse styles in selected Philippine short novels

This research undertook an innovative approach to the language-literature interface by means of adopting a modified model of translanguaging in the analysis of the narrative techniques and discourse styles of three selected Philippine short novels: Getting Better by Tara F. Sering, What Things Mean by Sophia N. Lee, and Salingkit by Cyan Abad-Jugo. Theories on language and thought and the modularity of the mind were reviewed in the reconfiguration of the translanguaging model assisted by CDA and the protocol of discourse analysis particularly in the gathering and treatment of data. Results of the study indicated the effectiveness of translanguaging strategies emanating from the aesthetic translanguaging space and the imaginative translanguaging instinct of the authors which helped in the appealing narrative techniques and creative discourse styles of the works. It is recommended that translanguaging as practice and theory be explored further in ESL/ELT/EMI and the disciplines to optimize its potentialities as a decolonizing stance as well as a relevant and helpful paradigm in resolving pressing language-related problems and challenges of the times.

Book review of the adaptable mind: What neuroplasticity and neural reuse tells us about language and cognition.

From the works of Noam Chomsky to Jerry Fodor, the modularity of mind has been deeply rooted in cognitive science. From the "modular" perspective, cognition consists of functionally and anatomically isolable subsystems. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume a language module or a hardwired language organ that is functionally and anatomically different from the other cognitive modules (e.g., vision, olfaction, motor). However, evidence from neuroscience casts doubt on this modular hypothesis. It has been shown that many brain regions are likely to be reused and recycled by various neural communities in order to serve various cognitive functions. If this is the case, language and other cognitive faculties should not be considered modules, since they cannot be realized in special-purpose, special-structure regions. Therefore, it is time to change our understanding of our brains.

Contribution of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence in the Simulation of the Complex Human Mind

The research incorporated encircles the interdisciplinary theory of cognitive science in the branch of artificial intelligence. It has always been the end goal that better understanding of the idea can be guaranteed. Besides, a portion of the real-time uses of cognitive science artificial intelligence have been taken into consideration as the establishment for more enhancements. Before going into the scopes of future, there are many complexities that occur in real-time which have been uncovered. Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the brain and its procedures. It inspects the nature, the activities, and the elements of cognition. Cognitive researchers study intelligence and behavior, with an emphasis on how sensory systems speak to, process, and change data. Intellectual capacities of concern to cognitive researchers incorporate recognition, language, memory, alertness, thinking, and feeling; to comprehend these resources, cognitive researchers acquire from fields, for example, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, semantics, and anthropology. The analytic study of cognitive science ranges numerous degrees of association, from learning and choice to logic and planning; from neural hardware to modular mind organization. The crucial idea of cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."

Context Effect on L2 Word Recognition: Visual Versus Auditory Modalities.

This study tested the effect of constraining sentence context on word recognition time (RT) in the first and second language. Native (L1) and nonnative (L2) speakers of English performed self-paced reading and listening tasks to see whether a semantically-rich preceding context would lead to the activation of a probable upcoming word prior to encountering it. The pre-access prediction model (e.g., Altmann and Kamide in Cognition 73(3):247-264, 1999; McClelland and Rumelhart in Psychol Rev 88:375-407, 1981) posits that when the preceding context is semantically high-constraining, the perceptual system anticipates a probable upcoming word prior to encountering it. In contrast, the post-access model (e.g., Fodor in The modularity of mind, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1983; Forster in Q J Exp Psychol Sect A 33(4):465-495, 1981; Traxler et al. in J Psycholinguist Res 29(6):581-595, 2000; Van Petten and Luka in Int J Psychophysiol 83(2): 176-190, 2012) suggests that it is only after a word is encountered that a subsequent process integrates it into the preceding context. The integration process is easier and faster when the word is more congruent with the preceding context. In line with these two models of visual word recognition, auditory word recognition is modeled by the TRACE model (McClelland and Elman in Cogn Psychol 18(1):1-86, 1986), which suggests that a spoken word is influenced by the preceding sentence context, whereas models such as the cohort model (Marslen-Wilson in Cognition 25(1-2):71-102, 1987) support a post-access integration process. Some studies observe a facilitative effect of sentence context on L2 word recognition (e.g., Kamide et al. in J Mem Lang 49(1):133-156, 2003), while others find no effect of sentence context in L2 (e.g., Ito et al. in Lang Cogn Neurosci 32(8):954-965, 2017; Martin et al. in J Mem Lang 69(4):574-588, 2013). In the present experiments, the RTs of native English speakers (L1) and non-native English speakers (L2) were collected in both visual and auditory word recognition in semantically high-constraint sentences and semantically low-constraint sentences. A linear, mixed-effects model shows that both groups of participants are faster to recognize a word when it is preceded by a semantically high-constraining context. This result is observed in both the visual and the auditory modalities, lending some support for a mechanism facilitating the access of target words based on sentence context in both L1 and L2.

Challenging evolutionary psychology with the eternalist view of the world

Evolutionary psychology conceives the human mind as massively modularly organized. I propose here that the eternalist view of time, on which the world is a four-dimensional block comprised of an innumerable amount of time-slices, poses a challenge to this view. After presenting these two positions – along which it becomes clear that the question ‘How does a massively modular mind handle such a world?’ should not be dismissed as trivial –, I explore one possible answer: that our mind counts on a module for processing temporal parts of events. A computational explanation of this mechanism is outlined. In short, it performs three sequential steps: it tracks the present, it links temporal parts that were already present and, based just on the pattern of motion that grouping manifests, it predicts forthcoming temporal parts of the target event (i.e., temporal parts that may be present shortly). Drawing on empirical studies, I suggest that such a module could be seen as maximizing fitness by (i) assigning intentionality to events that present motion with biological timing, and (ii) processing events from the framework of a third person.

The compatibility within a modular framework of emergent and dynamical processes in mind and brain

Abstract In the light of the continuing controversy over evidence supporting emergentist and non-emergentist accounts of cognitive and brain development, this commentary compares the proposals for a neuroemergentist framework for studying cognition and the brain (Hernandez et al., in press) and compares it with the Modular Cognition Framework (MCF) also known as Modular Online Growth and Use of Language (Truscott & Sharwood Smith, 2004). Both approaches are intended to optimise the exploration of relationships between mind and brain. The purpose of this comparison is to show that evidence that suggests emergentist and dynamical traits in development and processing can equally be seen as the product of a modular mind with a stable set of independent systems each with its own properties and mode of operation, all basically in place at birth. The fluid dynamical character of performance and the flexible adaptive responses of the mind to a constantly shifting environment can, in other words, also be explained by the way modular systems collaborate and generally interact to solve a continuing flow of tasks. Some key aspects of the MCF are introduced to elaborate on this claim including the way in which structures of different types, created in different modular systems. are associated and used in different combinations to solve tasks during processing as also the effect of shifting resting levels of activation. The discussion concludes with an MCF perspective on bilingual development and behaviour with special reference to how more than one language can coexist in one mind and the cognitive advantages of bilingualism.

Neural Reuse and the Modularity of Mind: Where to Next for Modularity?

The leading hypothesis concerning the “reuse” or “recycling” of neural circuits builds on the assumption that evolution might prefer the redeployment of established circuits over the development of new ones. What conception of cognitive architecture can survive the evidence for this hypothesis? In particular, what sorts of “modules” are compatible with this evidence? I argue that the only likely candidates will, in effect, be the columns which Vernon Mountcastle originally hypothesized some 60 years ago, and which form part of the well-known columnar hypothesis in neuroscience—systems that cannot handle gross cognitive functions (vision, olfaction, language, etc.) as distinct from strictly exiguous subfunctions (such as aspects of edge detection, depth discrimination, etc.). This is in stark contrast to the modules postulated by much of cognitive psychology, cognitive neuropsychology, and evolutionary psychology. And yet the fate of this revised notion is unclear. The main issue confronting it is the effect of the neural network context on local function. At some point the effects of context are so strong that the degree of specialization required for modularity is not able to be met. Still, despite indications from neuroimaging that peripheral and central systems deploy shared circuitry, some skills clearly do seem to display modularization and autonomy. This article: (1) provides an in-depth analytical and historical review of the fortunes of modular thinking in cognitive science; (2) offers a systematic calibration of brain regions in terms of degrees of functional specificity and robustness; and (3) suggests another way of accounting for the partially encapsulated character of expertise and other highly practiced skills without having to resort to domain-specific modules.

Warfare, Ethics, Ethology

The aim of this article is to set a macro-historical narrative concerning the emergence of warfare and social ethics as symplesiomorphic features in the lineage of Homo sapiens. This means that these two behavioral aspects, representative of a very selected branch in the phylogenetic tree of the Primate order, are shared by the two lineages of great African apes that diverged from a common ancestor around six million years in the past, leading to extant humans and chimpanzees. Therefore, this article proposes an ethological understanding of warfare and social ethics, as both are innate to the social high-specialized modular mind present in the species of genera Pan and Homo. However behavioral restraints to intersocietal coalitionary violence seems to be an exclusive aspect of the transdominial modular cognition that characterizes modern humans. Thus, if in the evolutionary long duree, warfare and restrictions to intrasocial violence both appear to be ethologically common to humans and chimpanzees to a certain extent, an ethics of warfare - and, of course, the cognitive capability for intersocietal peace - seems to be distinctly human.

Modularity, working memory, and second language acquisition: A research program

Considerable reason exists to view the mind, and language within it, as modular, and this view has an important place in research and theory in second language acquisition (SLA) and beyond. But it has had very little impact on the study of working memory and its role in SLA. This article considers the need for modular study of working memory, looking at the state of common approaches to the subject and the evidence for modularity, and then considering what working memory should look like in a modular mind. It then sketches a research program to explore working memory within a modular mind and particularly its role in SLA. This is followed by a brief look at the way that the Modular Online Growth and Use of Language (MOGUL) approach can serve as a framework for such a program.

Against the “system” module

Modularity is a fundamental doctrine in the cognitive sciences. It holds a preeminent position in cognitive psychology and generative linguistics, as well as a long history in neurophysiology, with roots going all the way back to the early nineteenth century. But a mature field of neuroscience is a comparatively recent phenomenon and has challenged orthodox conceptions of the modular mind. One way of accommodating modularity within the new framework suggested by these developments is to go for increasingly soft versions of modularity. One such version, which I call the “system” view, is so soft that it promises to meet practically any challenge neuroscience can throw at it. In this paper, I reconsider afresh what we ought to regard as the sine qua non of modularity and offer a few arguments against the view that an insipid “system” module could be the legitimate successor of the traditional notion.

Adaptive Psychopathy: Empathy and Psychopathy are Not Mutually Exclusive

This work tests one assumption of the Adaptive Psychopathy hypothesis, namely that empathy and psychopathy are not mutually exclusive for normal-range psychopathy. In earlier work, a Directional Vector was operationalized, testing the core assumption of new theory. Experimental participants were 34 university students studying psychology (38% were male, M=22.08, SD=2.53 years and 62% were female, M=25.33 years, SD=8.33) who were presented with an ideographic nomothetic scenario designed to rouse a survival threat. This exposure elicited elevations in participants' state psychopathy levels, for targets (termed moral deviants) with no change in psychopathy levels for the control group. Hypothesis testing using the Moral Inversion Method, confirmed the retention of empathy for individuals, outside the quarantined zone, not affected by moral inversion. Consistent with hypotheses, empathy was sacrificed for quarantined moral deviant targets, and elevations in state psychopathy emerged, directionally, for moral deviants. Findings of the current research are summarized with the new theoretical term, the Directional Empathy hypothesis. This work extends findings of prior research by testing the theoretical tenet that empathy and psychopathy are not mutually exclusive for normal-range psychopathy. It furthers prior work that formulated the foundations of two heuristics termed the Adaptive Psychopathy Hypothesis, and its theoretical basis for the State-Psychopathy Hypothesis. Both terms deploy the Moral Inversion Method to derive empirical support in tests of the assumptions of new theory about psychopathy and its posited adaptive basis. Bates et al. established the basis of the State Psychopathy Hypothesis. Earlier work references the Directional Vector hypothesis, which tested the mechanistic features of new theory, and the basis upon which to elicit elevations in psychopathy levels for normal populations. A selective review of the empathy literature follows, which precedes the adaptation of new theory, in order to test the relationship between empathy and psychopathy expression for people with normal-range psychopathy. The experimental work extends the Directional Vector hypothesis, by defining empathy levels for targets both inside and outside the quarantined zone of the psychopathic modular mind.

Architecture of Human Language from the Perspective of a Case of Childhood Aphasia — Landau–Kleffner Syndrome

This paper addresses Landau–Kleffner syndrome (LKS), a childhood aphasia, from the perspective of I-language and the critical period for first language acquisition. LKS involves a language disorder and behavioral disturbances resembling autistic spectrum disorders due to electroencephalographic abnormalities with continuous spike-and-waves during sleep over the temporal regions. Comparing LKS with other childhood syndromes, the architecture of language is explored through elucidating the linguistic mechanisms behind the language disorder in LKS on the basis of Hickok & Poeppel’s (2007) dual-stream model of speech processing. It is claimed that early onset LKS provides further support for the critical period for first language acquisition and modularity of mind (the faculty of language), and that verbal auditory input during the critical period is most crucial for language recovery and development in LKS. Considering that electroencephalographic abnormalities affect cognitive/motor functions, ameliorating neural dysfunction in the affected brain areas with proper application of trans-cranial direct current stimulation is recommended.

Modularity of Mind

This article evaluates the idea of the modularity of mind and domain specificity. This concept has penetrated the behavioral disciplines, and in the case of some of these—for example, the cognitive study of religion—has even formed their foundation. Although the theoretical debate relating to the idea of modularity is ongoing, this debate has not been reflected in the use of modularity in behavioral research. The idea of domain specificity or modularity of mind is not without its controversies, and there is no consensus regarding its acceptance. Many neuroscientists, as well as several evolutionary psychologists and philosophers, have raised a number of objections that cannot remain overlooked. I will show the areas in which the idea is problematic, what attempts have been made to preserve it, and how social scientific research can move beyond post-Fodorian modularity without losing any valuable insights.

MODULARIDAD, EVOLUCIÓN Y ONTOLOGÍA RELIGIOSA

<p>En este trabajo sostengo otra manera de comprender el fenómeno religioso desde la ontología religiosa que no excluye la ciencia, particularmente las Ciencias Cognitivas. La teoría de la modularidad de la mente y la psicología evolutiva arrojan luz sobre el origen del dualismo y la teleología que subyace a la manera en que las mentes hospedaron algunas de las creencias religiosas. Sostengo, desde el naturalismo de Dennett, Boyer y Dawkins, que el fenómeno religioso no es una adaptación biológica de nuestros cerebros, en términos psicológicos, sino que es un subproducto de estos que en interacción con el entorno ha sido diseñado para otras actividades, principalmente aquellas que tienen que ver con la predicción de nuestra la conducta, la de otros seres vivientes y fenómenos naturales, en dirección a la supervivencia de nuestra especie.</p>

Editorial: Evolutionary Theory: Fringe or Central to Psychological Science.

Editorial: Evolutionary Theory: Fringe or Central to Psychological Science.

On the neural implausibility of the modular mind: Evidence for distributed construction dissolves boundaries between perception, cognition, and emotion.

Firestone & Scholl (F&S) rely on three problematic assumptions about the mind (modularity, reflexiveness, and context-insensitivity) to argue cognition does not fundamentally influence perception. We highlight evidence indicating that perception, cognition, and emotion are constructed through overlapping, distributed brain networks characterized by top-down activity and context-sensitivity. This evidence undermines F&S's ability to generalize from case studies to the nature of perception.

Inner speech, natural language, and the modularity of the mind

Inner speech, natural language, and the modularity of the mind