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Although a number of papers have already discussed the relevance of brain research for education, the fundamental concepts and discoveries connecting education and the brain have not been systematically reviewed yet. In this paper, four of these concepts are presented and evidence concerning each one is reviewed. First, the concept of neuroplasticity is proposed as a "sine qua non" for linking education and the brain. Then, the concepts of neuronal recycling and inhibition are presented as two fundamental mechanisms of school learning that emphasize the importance of knowing the initial brain structure of learners and, finally, the concept of attention is discussed as a central concept for linking teaching and the brain.

This paper examines the characteristics of the thinking skill we call "melioration" i.e., the competence to borrow a concept from a field of knowledge supposedly far removed from his or her domain, and adapt it to a pressing challenge in an area of personal knowledge or interest. The skill has its source in conscious personal meaning-making, not in the process of deduction. In the unplanned operation of connection and association, one creates a new concept generating a new insight into a phenomenon, which hitherto had not been described in such a way. This paper relates melioration to existing theories of intelligence, taking the position that human cognitive/intellectual functioning is in part the ability to learn or think in the framework of familiar systemic concepts, and in part the ability to learn or think with new systemic concepts that are then available for future application.

How can current findings in neuroscience help educators identify particular cognitive strengths in students? In this commentary on Immordino-Yang's research regarding Nico and Brooke, I make 3 primary assertions: (a) the cognitive science community needs to develop an accessible language and mode of communicating applicable research to educators, (b) educators need proper professional development in order to understand and relate current research findings to practice in the classroom, and (c) the specific research on Nico and Brooke clearly suggests that educators need to rethink the classroom as a place not of problem solving but rather problem design in order to further understand and use the cognitive strengths of each individual student.

Schizophrenia and high functioning autism-spectrum disorders (ASD) are neurodevelopmental conditions that mainly impair social competence, while general intelligence (IQ) is spared. Both disorders have a strong ancillary role in theoretical research on social cognition. Recently the debate has started to be inflected by embodied and phenomenological approaches, which claim that the standard portrayal of all social understanding as so-called "mindreading", i.e. the attribution of mental states to others in the service of explaining and predicting their behavior, is misguided. Instead it is emphasized that we normally perceive others directly as conscious and goal-directed persons, without requiring any theorizing and/or simulation. This paper evaluates some of the implications of abnormal experiences reported by people with schizophrenia and ASD for the current debate in cognitive science. For these people the practice of explicit mindreading seems to be a compensatory strategy that ultimately fails to compensate for--and may even exacerbate--their impairment of intuitive and interactive social understanding. Phenomenological psychopathology thereby supports the emerging view that "mindreading" is not the principal form of normal social understanding. (Contains 1 table.)

The aim of this research is to search the effect of the cluster method on the creative writing skill of 6th grade students. In this paper, the students of 6-A, studying at Ulas Primary School in 2010-2011 academic year, were divided into two groups as experiment and control. Taking into consideration the various variants, pre-test and last-test were applied at the beginning and at the final process. These tests were compared according to the number of the words in written texts, actual and figurative usage of words, the usage of proverb-idiom, slip in spelling and the relation with the context. At the end of the search, the group which used the cluster method in creative writing studies was more successful than control group on academic success in writing skill. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

Background: Deficits in autism have been characterised as a bias towards local over global processing. This paper examines whether there is a deficit in gestalt grouping in autism. Method: Twenty-five low-functioning children with autism and 25 controls who were matched for chronological age and verbal mental age took part in the study. Results: The autism group utilised gestalt grouping principles (proximity, similarity, closure) significantly less than the controls. Calculating an overall index of gestalt grouping, the autism group performed at chance level. There was also a deficit in identifying certain impossible figures. This pattern was not reflected in a drawing task, in which the autism sample conformed more to gestalt grouping principles than controls (non-significantly). Conclusions: The results are discussed in terms of a failure in autism to process inter-element relationships that would allow for the appreciation of larger perceptually coherent units that comprise of multiple elements and, consequently, context. The processes are argued to be preattentive.

To introduce our special issue How Minds Work: The Collective in the Individual, we propose "radical CI," a form of collective intelligence, as a new paradigm for cognitive science. Radical CI posits that the representations and processes necessary to perform the cognitive functions that humans perform are collective entities, not encapsulated by any individual. To explain cognitive performance, it appeals to the distribution of cognitive labor on the assumption that the human project runs on countless interactions between locally acting individuals with specialized skills that each retain a small part of the relevant information. Some of the papers in the special issue appeal to radical CI to account for a variety of cognitive phenomena including memory performance, metacognition, belief updating, reasoning, and problem‐solving. Other papers focus on the cultural and institutional practices that make radical CI possible. The notion that cognition is collective has a long pedigree but is enjoying considerable attention in the cognitive sciences as multiple fields of study deliver evidence for the central role of community and culture in cognition. To introduce the special issue of topiCS surveying this groundswell, we propose the concept of "radical collective intelligence," the view that some of the key representations and processes necessary to perform the cognitive functions that humans perform are collective entities, not encapsulated by any individual. This concept clarifies how the volume's contributions either rethink long‐studied cognitive processes (memory, metacognition, reasoning) or contemplate how radical CI can arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the journal "Topics in Cognitive Science" (topiCS) of the Cognitive Science Society. The journal aims to present a growth in the range and scope of cognitive science by a forum of three categories of work which are New and Emerging, Integrative and Reflective, and Great Debates. The role of the publication's Associate Editor includes defining a topic for the journal, looking for strong papers, and managing the process of reviews. The journal also indicates policy for the acceptance of paper to be published.

Several contemporary philosophers have been articulating tenets in pragmatism (broadly construed) to motivate this view as an alternative philosophical foundation for a comprehensive understanding of cognition, opposed to a far-reaching representationalist tradition. After criticizing standard representational accounts of numerical cognition for their lack of explanatory power, he argues that a non-representational approach that is inspired by radical enactivism offers the best hope for developing a genuine naturalistic explanatory account for these cognitive capacities. This long-established representationalist tradition in philosophy of mind and cognitive science defends that cognition is fundamentally content-involving. [Extracted from the article]

A humanoid robot is a particular form of embodied agent. The form that an agent takes has a major impact on how that agent interacts with its environment and how it develops an understanding of that environment through its interactions. In this paper, we explore the importance of humanoid embodiment and we argue that humanoids occupy a special niche in the spectrum of robot forms. In doing so, we highlight the implications for the way a humanoid robot can interact with its environment, including humans, for the manner in which humans interact with humanoid robots, and for a humanoid robot's capacity to develop cognitive abilities. We also consider the degree to which humanoid robots should approximate humans, addressing robot morphology, appearance, and movement. We emphasize the dual role of humanoid robots as engineering artifacts that can provide services for humans, and as platforms for scientific enquiry into the nature of human cognition. We conclude by highlighting some key research challenges for the discipline of humanoid robotics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intellectualism is the claim that practical knowledge or 'know-how' is a kind of propositional knowledge. The debate over intellectualism has appealed to two different kinds of evidence, semantic and scientific. This paper concerns the relationship between intellectualist arguments based on truth-conditional semantics of practical knowledge ascriptions and anti-intellectualist arguments based on cognitive science and propositional representation. The first half of the paper argues that the anti-intellectualist argument from cognitive science rests on a naturalistic approach to metaphysics: Its proponents assume that findings from cognitive science provide evidence about the nature of mental states. We demonstrate that this fact has been overlooked in the ensuing debate, resulting in inconsistency and confusion. Defenders of the semantic approach to intellectualism engage with the argument from cognitive science in a way that implicitly endorses this naturalistic metaphysics, and they even rely on it to claim that cognitive science supports intellectualism. In the course of their arguments, however, they also reject that scientific findings can have metaphysical import. We argue that this situation is preventing productive debate about intellectualism, which would benefit from both sides being more transparent about their metaphilosophical assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The call for a new notion of personhood that goes beyond one's cognitive functions and a new account of human agency has gained interest with the impact of contemporary research in cognitive science over the last few decades. This paper aims to show that examining Beckett's female subject formation allows us to map out not only our changed perception of self, but also the changing patterns of reception of his works over time in relation to the issue of female agency. While Beckett's male subjects in his early novels are often preoccupied with their own journey to find a solipsistic world in their quest for their authentic self, his drama concerns his characters' affective experience, namely how they live to go on. This paper, thus, will show that what Beckett perceives as gender difference plays a crucial role in his portrayal of personhood that is closely interconnected with other people and external artefacts, as well as his theatricality as a mode of perception that brackets moments of action and our affective experience of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sometimes we learn through the use of imagination. The epistemology of imagination asks how this is possible. One barrier to progress on this question has been a lack of agreement on how to characterize imagination; for example, is imagination a mental state, ability, character trait, or cognitive process? This paper argues that we should characterize imagination as a cognitive ability, exercises of which are cognitive processes. Following dual process theories of cognition developed in cognitive science, the set of imaginative processes is then divided into two kinds: one that is unconscious, uncontrolled, and effortless, and another that is conscious, controlled, and effortful. This paper outlines the different epistemological strengths and weaknesses of the two kinds of imaginative process, and argues that a dual process model of imagination helpfully resolves or clarifies issues in the epistemology of imagination and the closely related epistemology of thought experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive niche construction is the process whereby organisms create and maintain cause–effect models of their niche as guides for fitness influencing behavior. Extended mind theory claims that cognitive processes extend beyond the brain to include predictable states of the world. Active inference and predictive processing in cognitive science assume that organisms embody predictive (i.e., generative) models of the world optimized by standard cognitive functions (e.g., perception, action, learning). This paper presents an active inference formulation that views cognitive niche construction as a cognitive function aimed at optimizing organisms' generative models. We call that process of optimization extended active inference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a broad overview of the last 40 years of research on cognitive architectures. To date, the number of existing architectures has reached several hundred, but most of the existing surveys do not reflect this growth and instead focus on a handful of well-established architectures. In this survey we aim to provide a more inclusive and high-level overview of the research on cognitive architectures. Our final set of 84 architectures includes 49 that are still actively developed, and borrow from a diverse set of disciplines, spanning areas from psychoanalysis to neuroscience. To keep the length of this paper within reasonable limits we discuss only the core cognitive abilities, such as perception, attention mechanisms, action selection, memory, learning, reasoning and metareasoning. In order to assess the breadth of practical applications of cognitive architectures we present information on over 900 practical projects implemented using the cognitive architectures in our list. We use various visualization techniques to highlight the overall trends in the development of the field. In addition to summarizing the current state-of-the-art in the cognitive architecture research, this survey describes a variety of methods and ideas that have been tried and their relative success in modeling human cognitive abilities, as well as which aspects of cognitive behavior need more research with respect to their mechanistic counterparts and thus can further inform how cognitive science might progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we provide a complete framework for the design of genetically evolved cognitive tracking controller based on interval type‐2 (IT2) fuzzy cognitive map (FCM). We construct the cognitive controller based on a nonlinear controller by transforming its representation into a FCM. This representation gives the opportunity to prove the stability of the cognitive controller in the framework of nonlinear control theory. Moreover, with the deployment of IT2‐fuzzy sets which are known to be capable to handle high level of uncertainty, the proposed cognitive controller has the ability to deal with uncertainty that are encountered in real‐time world applications. To accomplish the design of the cognitive controller, we present a systematic approach based on genetic algorithm to optimize its parameters and learn fuzzy rules by extracting them from model space (e.g., a set of rules). Within the paper, all steps in constructing and designing the IT2‐ FCM‐based cognitive controller are presented. We first show the performance improvements of the proposed IT2‐FCM‐based tracking controller with extensive and comparative simulation results and then with experimental results that were collected on real‐world mobile robot. The results clearly show the superiority of proposed cognitive control systems when compared to its conventional and fuzzy controller counterparts. We believe that the proposed genetically evolved design approach of the IT2‐FCM‐based cognitive controller will provide a bridge between the well‐developed cognitive sciences and control theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In clinical neuropsychology the cognitive abilities of neurological patients are commonly estimated using well-established paper-based tests. Typically, scores on some tests remain relatively well preserved, whilst others exhibit a significant and disproportionate decline. Scores on those tests that measure preserved cognitive functions (so-called ‘hold’ tests) may be used to estimate premorbid abilities, including scores in non-hold tests that would have been expected prior to the onset of cognitive impairment. Many hold tests entail word reading, with each word being graded as correctly or incorrectly pronounced. Inevitably, such tests are likely to contain words that provide little or no diagnostic power (i.e., can be eliminated without negatively affecting prediction accuracy). In this paper, a genetic algorithm is developed and demonstrated, using n = 92 neurologically healthy participants, to identify optimal word subsets from the National Adult Reading Test that minimize the mean error in predicting the most widely used clinical measure of IQ and cognitive ability, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale Fourth Edition IQ. In addition to requiring only 17–20 of the original 50 words (suggesting that this test could be revised to be up to 66% shorter) and minimizing mean prediction error, the algorithm increases the proportion of the variance in the predicted variable explained in comparison to using all words (from r2 = 0.46 to r2 = 0.61). In a clinical setting this would improve estimates of premorbid cognitive function and, if an abbreviated revision to this test were to be adopted, reduce the arduousness of the test for patients. The proposed method is evaluated with jackknifing and leave one out cross validation. The general approach may be used to optimize the relationship between any two psychological tests by finding the question subset in one test that minimizes the prediction error in a second test by training the genetic algorithm using data collected from participants upon whom both tests have been administered. This approach may also be used to develop new predictive tests, since it provides a method to identify an optimal subset of a set of candidate questions (for which empirical data have been collected) that maximizes prediction accuracy and the proportion of variance in the predicted variable that can be explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes to contribute to our understanding of the fundamental cognitive processes essential to designing by exploring the experiences of people who have different information processing behaviors to those found in most people. In particular, we focus on people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) because they are known to have information processing behaviors that are both maladaptive and exceptional. Central to our study is the question: what can we learn from people with ASC about cognitive processes essential to designing? The scholarship on cognitive behaviors associated with the autism spectrum and narratives on the experiences with design practice by individuals with ASC are discussed in relation to cognitive processes associated with designing. In turn, the individuals commented upon the analysis of cognitive processes associated with designing in light of their personal experiences with design practice. We conclude that the weak central coherence theory of autism provides a useful prediction of the cognitive processes necessary for expertise in design, and that both the framework for expertise in design and the way it is studied may require updating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their work McCulloch and Pitts describe an idea of representing all of nervous activity in terms of propositional logic. This idea was quickly challenged. One of reasons for this challenge was rising believe that logic is unable to describe most of human cognitive processes. In this paper we will analyse premises of original McCulloch and Pitts proposition. Following that, we will ask about ability of symbolic (logical) systems to represent human cognition. We will finish by analysing relation between symbolic and subsymbolic computing, in hope of bridging the gap between the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the modial and discoursal functions of the simple past temporal auxiliary -ta with the temporal auxiliary -te iru. Aspectually, -ta denotes ' point-like' (i.e. instantaneous) aspect, which -te while -te expresses perceptual information or information spontaneously delivered in response to stimuli. In contrast, te ire encodes inferential/hearsay information or information contemplated and worked on. As a discourse marked, -ta describes foreground events or background events perceptually by the protagonist. On the other hand, te ire describes background information expressing the protagonist's thought. This paper argues that a seemingly diverse aspectual/model/discoursal characterization for each temporal auxiliary can be united if we view the penetrating features for -ta and -te iru as what was see vs. what we think. This difference is often referred to as the perception/cognition distinction in cognitive psychology, which is regarded by some psychologist as the major types of information processing. By pointing out the correlation between the linguistic dichotomy and the cognitive psychological dichotomy, this paper aims to link both disciplines by viewing each in the other's mirror. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that it is possible to combine enactivism and ecological psychology in a single post-cognitivist research framework if we highlight the common pragmatist assumptions of both approaches. These pragmatist assumptions or starting points are shared by ecological psychology and the enactive approach independently of being historically related to pragmatism, and they are based on the idea of organic coordination, which states that the evolution and development of the cognitive abilities of an organism are explained by appealing to the history of interactions of that organism with its environment. It is argued that the idea of behavioral or organic coordination within the enactive approach gives rise to the sensorimotor abilities of the organism, while the ecological approach emphasizes the coordination at a higher-level between organism and environment through the agent's exploratory behavior for perceiving affordances. As such, these two different processes of organic coordination can be integrated in a post-cognitivist research framework, which will be based on two levels of analysis: the subpersonal one (the neural dynamics of the sensorimotor contingencies and the emergence of enactive agency) and the personal one (the dynamics that emerges from the organism-environment interaction in ecological terms). If this proposal is on the right track, this may be a promising first step for offering a systematized and consistent post-cognitivist approach to cognition that retain the full potential of both enactivism and ecological psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex systems approach (CSA) to characterizing cognitive function is purported to underlie a conceptual and methodological revolution by its proponents. I examine one central claim from each of the contributed papers and argue that the provided examples do not justify calls for radical change in how we do cognitive science. Instead, I note how currently available approaches in ''standard'' cognitive science are adequate (or even more appropriate) for understanding the CSA provided examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human intelligence is constituted by a multitude of cognitive functions activated either directly or indirectly by external stimuli of various kinds. Computational approaches to the cognitive sciences and to neuroscience are partly premised on the idea that computational simulations of such cognitive functions and brain operations suspected to correspond to them can help to further uncover knowledge about those functions and operations, specifically, how they might work together. These approaches are also partly premised on the idea that empirical neuroscience research, whether following on from such a simulation (as indeed simulation and empirical research are complementary) or otherwise, could help us build better artificially intelligent systems. This is based on the assumption that principles by which the brain seemingly operate, to the extent that it can be understood as computational, should at least be tested as principles for the operation of artificial systems. This paper explores some of the principles of the brain that seem to be responsible for its autonomous, problem-adaptive nature. The brain operating system (BrainOS) explicated here is an introduction to ongoing work aiming to create a robust, integrated model, combining the connectionist paradigm underlying neural networks and the symbolic paradigm underlying much else of AI. BrainOS is an automatic approach that selects the most appropriate model based on the (a) input at hand, (b) prior experience (a history of results of prior problem solving attempts), and (c) world knowledge (represented in the symbolic way and used as a means to explain its approach). It is able to accept diverse and mixed input data types, process histories and objectives, extract knowledge and infer a situational context. BrainOS is designed to be efficient through its ability to not only choose the most suitable learning model but to effectively calibrate it based on the task at hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores which demographic characteristics substantially bias self-reported physical and cognitive health status of older Europeans. The analysis utilises micro-data for 19 European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe to compare performance-tested outcomes of mobility and memory with their self-reported equivalents. Relative importance analysis based on multinomial logistic regressions shows that the bias in self-reported health is mostly due to reporting heterogeneities between countries and age groups, whereas gender contributes little to the discrepancy. Concordance of mobility and cognition measures is highly related; however, differences in reporting behaviour due to education and cultural background have a larger impact on self-assessed memory than on self-assessed mobility. Southern as well as Central and Eastern Europeans are much more likely to misreport their physical and cognitive abilities than Northern and Western Europeans. Overall, our results suggest that comparisons of self-reported health between countries and age groups are prone to significant biases, whereas comparisons between genders are credible for most European countries. These findings are crucial given that self-assessed data are often the only information available to researchers and policymakers when asking health-related questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One sign of the current crisis in the humanities is the cognitive turn within humanistic disciplines. The study of narrative, traditionally regarded as a branch of literary studies, is a case in point. This paper suggests that, seeking to bridge what they think of as an unfortunate gap between the human and the natural sciences, cognitive narratologists risk conflating important distinctions between different kinds of research acts, offering explanations instead of interpretation. Discussing competing interpretations of Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," the paper argues that this conflation results in a distorted picture of the kind of selfunderstanding and self-knowledge literary narratives may give rise to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adequate provision of safe water, basic sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) facilities and behavior change can reduce pupil absence and infectious disease. Increased drinking water quantity may also improve educational outcomes through the effect of hydration on attention, concentration, and short-term memory. A pilot study was conducted to adapt field measures of short-term cognitive performance and hydration, to evaluate levels of hydration, and to investigate the impact of providing supplementary drinking water on the cognitive performance of pupils attending water-scarce schools in rural Mali. Using a cross-over trial design, data were collected under normal school conditions (control condition) on one visit day; on the other, participants were given a bottle of water that was refilled throughout the day (water condition). Morning and afternoon hydration was assessed using specific gravity and urine color. Cognitive performance was evaluated using six paper-based tests. Three percent of pupils were dehydrated on the morning of each visit. The prevalence of dehydration increased in the afternoon, but was lower under the water condition. Although there was a trend indicating drinking water may improve cognitive test performance, as has been shown in studies in other settings, results were not statistically significant and were masked by a “practice effect.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This multidisciplinary work presents synopsis of theories in the search for common field-like fundamental principles of self-organisation and communication existing on quantum, cellular, and even social levels. Based on these fundamental principles, we formulate conceptually novel social neuroscience paradigm (OSIMAS), which envisages social systems emerging from the coherent neurodynamical processes taking place in the individual mind-fields. In this way, societies are understood as global processes emerging from the superposition of the conscious and subconscious mind-fields of individual members of society. For the experimental validation of the biologically inspired OSIMAS paradigm, we have designed a framework of EEG-based experiments. Initial baseline individual tests of spectral cross-correlations of EEG-recorded brainwave patterns for some mental states have been provided in this paper. Preliminary experimental results do not refute the main OSIMAS postulates. This paper also provides some insights for the construction of OSIMAS-based simulation models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention maps have been fused in the VggNet structure (EAC-Net) [] and have shown significant improvement compared to that of the VggNet structure. However, in [], E-Net was designed based on the facial action unit (AU) center and for facial AU detection only. Thus, for the use of attention maps in every image type, this paper proposed a new convolutional neural network (CNN) structure, P_VggNet, comprising the following parts: P_Net and VggNet with 16 layers (VggNet-16). The generation approach of P_Net was designed, and the P_VggNet structure was proposed. To prove the efficiency of P_VggNet, we designed two experiments, which indicated that P_VggNet could more efficiently extract image features than VggNet-16. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aging is accompanied by cognitive decline, although recent research indicates that the rate of decline depends on multiple lifestyle factors. One of such factors is musical practice, an activity that involves several sensory and motor systems and a wide range of high-level cognitive processes. This paper describes the first systematic review and meta-analysis, to our knowledge, of the impact of musical practice on healthy neurocognitive aging. The inclusion criteria for the review required that studies were empirical works in English or Spanish that they explored the effects of musical practice on older people; they included an assessment of cognitive functions and/or an assessment of brain status; and they included a sample of participants aged 59 years or older with no cognitive impairment or brain damage. This review led to the selection of 13 studies: 9 correlational studies involving older musicians and non-musicians and 4 experimental studies involving short-term musical training programs. The results of the meta-analysis showed cognitive and cerebral benefits of musical practice, both in domain-specific functions (auditory perception) and in other rather domain-general functions. Moreover, these benefits seem to protect cognitive domains that usually decline with aging and boost other domains that do not decline with aging. The origin of these benefits may reside, simultaneously, in the specific training of many of these cognitive functions during musical practice (specific training mechanism), in the improvement of compensatory cognitive processes (specific compensatory mechanism), and in the preservation of general functions with a global influence on others, such as perceptual capacity, processing speed, inhibition and attention (general compensatory mechanism). Therefore, musical practice seems to be a promising tool to reduce the impact of cognitive problems associated to aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the interplay between affective and cognitive processes of decision making within the bounded rationality perspective, in particular for the debate on adaptive decision making and strategy selection. This gap in the knowledge is particularly important as affect and deliberation may direct preferences in opposite directions. How do decision makers solve such dissonance? In this paper, we address this question by exploring the use of integral affect as a choice heuristic in comparison with and in conjunction to “take the best,” and weighted addition of attributes (WADD). We operationalize theories of reliance on affect in choice through a "Take the emotionally best" algorithm. Its predictive power is experimentally tested against other models, including mixed-sequential cognitive/affective procedures. We find that individual decisions are better predicted by a sequential combination of "Take the emotionally best" and "Take the best" with a slight dominance of the former. Conditions of cognitive/affective ambivalence, low discrimination ability and high complexity provide the cognitive architecture where such blended choice strategies predict decisions more precisely. This implies that reliance on integral affect may precede the use of cognitive cues following an ecological rationality perspective rather than supporting a kind of competition between affect and cognition as implied in current literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EFs are a set of processes that supports many cognitive domains as goal setting, monitoring, planning, and cognitive-behavioural flexible control. Currently, many standardized paper-and-pencil tests or scales are used to assess EFs. These tests are easy to administer, score, and interpret but present some limitations in terms of generalizability of behaviours in real life. More recently, Information and Communication Technology has provided a higher ecological validity in the EFs assessment. In order to increase the ecological validity, we have developed a serious game (SG), named EXPANSE, which aim was to compare the participants’ game performance (latency times, and correct answers) with the results obtained in the traditional tasks and scales. 354 healthy subjects participated to the study and the findings showed significant correlations among standard tasks and the serious game. The exploratory nature of the present study, on one hand, highlighted that SG could be an additional behavioral tool to assess EFs and, on the other, we need further investigations, including clinical populations, for better defining the game sensitivity toward EF components. Finally, the results show that serious games are a promising technology for the evaluation of real cognitive behavior along with traditional evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smartphones and other mobile devices have fundamentally changed patterns of Internet use in everyday life by making online access constantly available. The present paper offers a theoretical explication and empirical assessment of the concept of online vigilance, referring to users’ permanent cognitive orientation towards online content and communication as well as their disposition to exploit these options constantly. Based on four studies, a validated and reliable self-report measure of online vigilance was developed. In combination, the results suggest that the Online Vigilance Scale (OVS) shows a stable factor structure in various contexts and user populations and provides future work in communication, psychology, and other social sciences with a new measure of the individual cognitive orientation towards ubiquitous online communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South African Middle Stone Age (MSA) has in recent years become increasingly important for our understanding of the emergence of ‘modern human behaviours’. Several key innovations appeared in this context for the first time, significantly pre-dating their re-invention in the European Upper Palaeolithic. One of these innovations was heat treatment of stone to improve its quality for the production of stone tools. Heat treatment may even be the oldest well-documented technique used to intentionally alter the properties of materials in general. It is commonly thought of as requiring the skilled use of fire, a high degree of planning depth and complex cognitive abilities. However, to work on these fundamental concepts we need to analyse the techniques and procedures used to heat-treat and we need to understand what they imply. In this paper, we present a direct and expedient comparison between the technical complexities of four alternative heat treatment procedures by coding the behaviours required for their set-up in so-called cognigrams, a relatively new method for understanding complexity based on the problem-solution distance. Our results show that although the techniques significantly differ in complexity, the techniques used in the MSA fall within the range of complexities known from other MSA techniques. Heat treatment in above-ground fires, as it was practised during this period in South Africa, was even one of the most complex techniques at the time of its invention. Early heat treatment can therefore be considered an important behavioural proxy that may shed light on the behaviour and socioeconomic structure of past groups. The implications of this are highlighted by the ongoing debate about ‘modernity’, ‘behavioural flexibility’ and ‘complex cognition’ of early anatomically modern humans in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Remote Associates Test (RAT) has been used to measure creativity, however few repositories or standardizations of test items exist, like the normative data on 144 items provided by Bowden and Jung-Beeman. comRAT is a computational solver which has been used to solve the compound RAT in linguistic and visual forms, showing correlation to human performance over the normative data provided by Bowden and Jung-Beeman. This paper describes using a variant of comRAT, comRAT-G, to generate and construct a repository of compound RAT items for use in the cognitive psychology and cognitive modeling community. Around 17 million compound Remote Associates Test items are created from nouns alone, aiming to provide control over (i) frequency of occurrence of query items, (ii) answer items, (iii) the probability of coming up with an answer, (iv) keeping one or more query items constant and (v) keeping the answer constant. Queries produced by comRAT-G are evaluated in a study in comparison with queries from the normative dataset of Bowden and Jung-Beeman, showing that comRAT-G queries are similar to the established query set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific writing, particularly quantitative writing, is difficult to master. To help undergraduate students write more clearly about data, we sought to deconstruct writing into discrete, specific elements. We focused on statements typically used to describe data found in the results sections of research articles (quantitative comparative statements, QC). In this paper, we define the essential components of a QC statement and the rules that govern those components. Clearly defined rules allowed us to quantify writing quality of QC statements (4C scoring). Using 4C scoring, we measured student writing gains in a post-test at the end of the term compared to a pre-test (37% improvement). In addition to overall score, 4C scoring provided insight into common writing mistakes by measuring presence/absence of each essential component. Student writing quality in lab reports improved when they practiced writing isolated QC statements. Although we observed a significant increase in writing quality in lab reports describing a simple experiment, we noted a decrease in writing quality when the complexity of the experimental system increased. Our data suggest a negative correlation of writing quality with complexity. We discuss how our data aligns with existing cognitive theories of writing and how science instructors might improve the scientific writing of their students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem Solving (PS) skills allow students to handle problems within an educational context. PS is a core competence of Computer Science education and affects programming success. In this vein, this paper aims to investigate PS ability performance in primary school pupils of a computer course, implemented according to the Neo-Piagetian theory of cognitive development. The study included 945 Slovenian pupils, ranging from fourth to sixth grade. The effects of gender, age and consecutive years of attending the course were examined on pupils’ PS ability at the pre-operational and concrete operational stages. Pupils completed a survey questionnaire with four types of tasks (a series of statements, if-statements, loops and variables) at both stages. The analysis revealed three findings: the performance of PS ability in all tasks was, at the pre-operational stage, associated positively with performance at the concrete operational stage; there were no gender differences in PS performance at both stages, and both the grade and consecutive year of taking the computer course had an effect on PS ability performance at both stages. Those in the lowest grade and those taking the course for the first year reported lower performances than their older counterparts. These findings may help curriculum designers across the world develop efficient approaches to teaching computer courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reliable and objective assessment of intelligence and personality has been a topic of increasing interest of contemporary neuroscience and psychology. It is known that intelligence can be measured by estimating the mental speed or velocity of information processing. This is usually measured as a reaction time during elementary cognitive task processing, while personality is often assessed by means of questionnaires. On the other hand, human personality affects the way a subject accomplishes elementary cognitive tasks and, therefore, some personality features can define intelligence. It is expected that these features, as well as mental abilities in performing cognitive tasks are associated with the brain’s electrical neural activity. Although several studies reported correlation between event-related potentials, mental ability and intelligence, there is a lack of information about time-frequency and spatio-temporal structures of neural activity which characterize this relation. In the present work, we analyzed human electroencephalograms (EEG) recorded during the performance of elementary cognitive tasks using the Schulte test, which is a paper-pencil based instrument for assessing elementary cognitive ability or mental speed. According to particular features found of the EEG structure, we divided the subjects into three groups. For subjects in each group, we applied the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) to assess the their personality traits. We demonstrated that each group exhibited a different score on the personality scale, such as warmth, reasoning, emotional stability and dominance. Summing up, we found a link between EEG features, mental abilities and personality traits. The obtained results can be of great interest for testing human personality to create automatized intelligent programs which combine simple tests and EEG measurements for real estimation of human personality traits and mental abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and objective: The presence of executive deficits in patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis is well established, even if standardized measures are difficult to obtain due to progressive physical disability of the patients. We present clinical data concerning a newly developed measure of cognitive flexibility, administered by means of Eye-Tracking (ET) technology in order to bypass verbal-motor limitations. Methods: 21 ALS patients and 21 age-and education-matched healthy subjects participated in an ET-based cognitive assessment, including a newly developed test of cognitive flexibility (Arrows and Colors Cognitive Test–ACCT) and other oculomotor-driven measures of cognitive functions. A standard screening of frontal and working memory abilities and global cognitive efficiency was administered to all subjects, in addition to a psychological self-rated assessment. For ALS patients, a clinical examination was also performed. Results: ACCT successfully discriminated between patients and healthy controls, mainly concerning execution times obtained at different subtests. A qualitative analysis performed on error distributions in patients highlighted a lower prevalence of perseverative errors, with respect to other type of errors. Correlations between ACCT and other ET-based frontal-executive measures were significant and involved different frontal sub-domains. Limited correlations were observed between ACCT and standard ‘paper and pencil’ cognitive tests. Conclusions: The newly developed ET-based measure of cognitive flexibility could be a useful tool to detect slight frontal impairments in non-demented ALS patients by bypassing verbal-motor limitations through the oculomotor-driven administration. The findings reported in the present study represent the first contribution towards the development of a full verbal-motor free executive test for ALS patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When multiple strategies can be used to solve a type of problem, the observed response time distributions are often mixtures of multiple underlying base distributions each representing one of these strategies. For the case of two possible strategies, the observed response time distributions obey the fixed-point property. That is, there exists one reaction time that has the same probability of being observed irrespective of the actual mixture proportion of each strategy. In this paper we discuss how to compute this fixed-point, and how to statistically assess the probability that indeed the observed response times are generated by two competing strategies. Accompanying this paper is a free R package that can be used to compute and test the presence or absence of the fixed-point property in response time data, allowing for easy to use tests of strategic behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores an approach for autonomous generation of symbolic representations from an agent's subsymbolic activities within the agent-environment interaction. The paper describes a psychologically plausible general framework and its various methods for autonomously creating symbolic representations. The symbol generation is accomplished within, and is intrinsic to, a generic and comprehensive cognitive architecture for capturing a wide variety of psychological processes (namely, CLARION). This work points to ways of obtaining more psychologically/cognitively realistic symbolic and subsymbolic representations within the framework of a cognitive architecture, and accentuates the relevance of such an approach to cognitive science and psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Depression after stroke is common and is associated with poorer recovery. Risk factors such as gender, age and stroke severity are established, but it is unclear whether factors from earlier in life might also contribute. Methods: We searched MEDLINE, PsycINFO, EMBASE and meta-analysed all available evidence on childhood (premorbid) IQ, socioeconomic status (SES), education and stroke in adulthood. We included all studies reporting data on >50 patients, calculating overall odds ratios (OR), mean difference, correlation, 95% confidence intervals (CI) and 95% predictive intervals (PI) using random effects methods. We quality assessed all studies, performed sensitivity analyses, assessed heterogeneity and publication bias. Results: We identified 33 studies including 2,664 participants with post-stroke depression and 5,460 without (314 participants not classified). Low education (< = 8 years) was associated with post-stroke depression in studies which defined depression as score of mild and above on a depression rating scale (OR 1.47 95% CI 1.10–1.97, p<0.01) but not in studies where depression was defined as severe depressive symptoms or a clinical diagnosis of major depression (OR 1.04 95% CI 0.90–1.31, p = 0.60). Low education was not associated with an increased risk for post-stroke depression in studies that adjusted for age and sex (OR 0.86 95% CI 0.50–1.48 p = 0.58). Those with post-stroke depression had fewer years of education than those without post-stroke depression (MD 0.68 95% CI 0.05–1.31 p = 0.04). Few studies adjusted for vascular risk factors or stroke severity. Heterogeneity between studies was moderate and was partly explained by severity of depression. In the one study identified premorbid IQ did not differ between those with post-stroke depression (mean IQ 10.1.8 SD 9.8) vs those without (mean IQ 104 SD 10.1). There were no studies that examined childhood socioeconomic status and risk of post-stroke depression. Conclusions: Having less education is associated with an increased risk of post-stroke depressive symptoms but with large confidence intervals and heterogeneity. Future studies should explore the relationship between early and late life risk factors to improve risk identification and to target prevention and treatment strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant assumption about the causal architecture of the mind is, that it is composed of a stable set of components that contribute independently to relevant observables that are employed to measure cognitive activity. This view has been called component-dominant dynamics. An alternative has been proposed, according to which the different components are not independent, but fundamentally interdependent, and are not stable basic properties of the mind, but rather an emergent feature of the mind given a particular task context. This view has been called interaction-dominant dynamics. In this paper, we review evidence for interaction-dominant dynamics as the causal architecture of the mind. We point out, that such an architecture is consistent with problems of convergence in research on the level of results and theorizing. Moreover, we point out that if interaction-dominant dynamics as the causal architecture of the mind were to be true, this would naturally lead to (some degree of) problems with generalization and replicability in sciences of the mind and brain, and would probably warrant changes in the scientific practice with regard to study-design and data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive niche theories consist in a theoretical framework that is proving extremely profitable in bridging evolutionary biology, philosophy, cognitive science, and anthropology by offering an inter-disciplinary ground, laden with novel approaches and debates. At the same time, cognitive niche theories are multiple, and differently related to niche theories in theoretical and evolutionary biology. The aim of this paper is to clarify the theoretical and epistemological relationships between cognitive and ecological niche theories. Also, by adopting a constructionist approach (namely by referring principally to ecological and cognitive niche construction theories) we will try to explain the shift from ecological to cognitive niches and their actual and theoretical overlaps. In order to do so, we will take two concepts expressing loose forms of causation in the interaction between organisms and their environment: the biological notion of 'enablement' and the psycho-cognitive one of 'affordance'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ovarian hormones fluctuate during the menstrual cycle in women. Such fluctuation of sex hormones, in particular estrogen, is believed to affect the central conduction time in auditory function as well as the language lateralization in cognitive function. However, findings are inconsistent. The underlying mechanisms are also unclear. This paper examined if there was any relation between the central conduction time and the language lateralization at different times during the menstrual cycle. Twenty young women with normal menstrual cycle were tested four times (5 to 7 days apart) across the menstrual cycle. The test battery included the electrophysiological measurement of auditory evoked response in brainstem and the speech performance in dichotic listening with monosyllables as stimulus pairs. The dichotic listening task was conducted under the non-forced, forced-right and forced-left attention. The central conduction time was defined by the time elapsed between two auditory elicited responses along the auditory pathway. The language lateralization in dichotic listening was expressed in ear advantage, which was the right-ear score minus the left-ear score. The results showed that the effects of test time were significant on both the central conduction time and the ear advantage under the forced-left attention. Overall, the interaural difference in the central conduction time correlates with the ear advantage (non-forced attention) at the beginning of the menstrual cycle. The change in central conduction time between two test times correlates significantly with the change in ear advantage under the non-forced and forced-left attention. Conclusively, the central conduction time depends on the time during the menstrual cycle, which in turn may affect the performance in dichotic listening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agentive awareness is one's awareness of oneself as presently acting. Dominant accounts in cognitive science consider agentive awareness to be grounded in the states and processes underlying sensorimotor control. In this paper, I raise concerns for this approach and develop an alternative. Broadly, in the approach I defend, one is agentively aware in the virtue of intending to act. I further argue that agentive awareness is not constituted by intentions themselves but rather first-personal thoughts that are formed on the basis of them. I develop this proposal, highlight some of its theoretical advantages, and show how it successfully meets various challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotions play a significant role in internal regulatory processes. In this paper, we advocate four key ideas. First, novelty detection can be grounded in the sensorimotor experience and allow higher order appraisal. Second, cognitive processes, such as those involved in self-assessment, influence emotional states by eliciting affects like boredom and frustration. Third, emotional processes such as those triggered by self-assessment influence attentional processes. Last, close emotion-cognition interactions implement an efficient feedback loop for the purpose of top-down behavior regulation. The latter is what we call ‘Emotional Metacontrol’. We introduce a model based on artificial neural networks. This architecture is used to control a robotic system in a visual search task. The emotional metacontrol intervenes to bias the robot visual attention during active object recognition. Through a behavioral and statistical analysis, we show that this mechanism increases the robot performance and fosters the exploratory behavior to avoid deadlocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the King-Devick (K-D) test has been used frequently in assessing sports related concussion early after injury, its characteristics over time after injury and in patients with prolonged persistent symptoms are unknown. The purpose of this paper was to: evaluate the ability of the K-D Test to distinguish patients seen early after concussion from those with symptoms persisting more than 3 months compared to controls, assess changes in the K-D test times over time after concussion, and determine the relationship of K-D times to the Stroop Color and Word Test scores. We performed cross-sectional comparisons of patients with recent concussive brain injury (acute group) and those with symptoms persisting more than 3 months to healthy controls on the K-D test, the Sports Concussion Assessment Tool 3 (SCAT3), and the Stroop Color and Word Test. Longitudinal comparisons of the acute group over time within the first month after injury were also made. Post-concussive syndrome (PCS) patients had significantly higher K-D times compared to controls (p = 0.01), while the acute group did not differ from controls(p = 0.33). K-D times at the second visit for the acute group were similar to those of controls (54.7 vs. 49.6, p = 0.31). While SCAT3 scores improved over time in the acute group, the K-D scores did not change between the first and second visit (55.2 vs. 54.7, p = 0.94). K-D scores correlated significantly with the Stroop scores for all three participant groups. The K-D test is likely useful very early after concussion in conjunction with baseline scores, and while scores in PCS patients remain elevated, they can be confounded by factors such as pre-morbid depression and medication use. High correlations with Stroop scores also suggest that performance on the K-D test can by proxy provide additional insight about cognitive function and predict performance on more cognitively demanding tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no more central issue to education than thinking and reasoning. Certainly, such an emphasis chimes with the rationalist and cognitive deep structure of the Western educational tradition. The contemporary tendency reinforced by cognitive science is to treat thinking ahistorically and aculturally as though physiology, brain structure and human evolution are all there is to say about thinking that is worthwhile or educationally significant. The movement of critical thinking also tends to treat thinking ahistorically, focusing on universal processes of logic and reasoning. Against this trend and against the scientific spirit of the age this paper presents a historical and philosophical picture of thinking. By contrast with dominant cognitive and logical models the paper emphasizes kinds of thinking and styles of reasoning . The paper grows out of interests primarily in the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, and in the extension and development of their work in Critical Theory and French poststructuralist philosophy. The paper draws directly on some of this work to argue for the recognition of different kinds of thinking , which are explored by reference to Heidegger, and also the significance of styles of reasoning , which are explored by reference to Wittgenstein and to Ian Hacking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metacognition is one of the foremost cardinal factors of achievement in the 21st century. Despite extensive research, there is still the need to build a unique model based on multidisciplinary research illuminating questions as regards the real nature of metacognition and the methods to develop metacognitive abilities. The current study presents a new layered model of metacognition based on well-established theories derived from cognitive science, psychology, physical and computer sciences, environmental and other sciences, even from philosophy. We describe in detail the cognitive and metacognitive processes involved at each layer, while particular emphasis is placed on the relation between the control processes as well as the special role of attention. According to our model, each layer of metacognition describes a higher-order control system which operates under the rule of a series of attention processes at an ever more refined, abstract and united level. The same applies to the cognitive processes and abilities such as attention, memory, perception, pattern recognition. At each higher level, they display more advanced attributes and functions responding to the necessity of creating more abstract mental representations and upper class motivations, thoughts and emotions. In addition, we recommend a number of strategies that support the metacognitive development at each level of the hierarchy. The multi-layered model of metacognition targets at enriching our understanding of how metacognition evolves and it has the potential to guide the development of more effective strategies in educational system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]