People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of the self, of others, and of the interdependence of the 2. These construals can influence, and in many cases determine, the very nature of individual experience, including cognition, emotion, and motivation. Many Asian cultures have distinct conceptions of individuality that insist on the fundamental relatedness of individuals to each other. The emphasis is on attending to others, fitting in, and harmonious interdependence with them. American culture neither assumes nor values such an overt connectedness among individuals. In contrast, individuals seek to maintain their independence from others by attending to the self and by discovering and expressing their unique inner attributes. As proposed herein, these construals are even more powerful than previously imagined. Theories of the self from both psychology and anthropology are integrated to define in detail the difference between a construal of the self as independent and a construal of the self as interdependent. Each of these divergent construals should have a set of specific consequences for cognition, emotion, and motivation; these consequences are proposed and relevant empirical literature is reviewed. Focusing on differences in self-construals enables apparently inconsistent empirical findings to be reconciled, and raises questions about what have been thought to be culture-free aspects of cognition, emotion, and motivation.

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Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation.

Prior to the twentieth century, theories of knowledge were inherently perceptual. Since then, developments in logic, statis- tics, and programming languages have inspired amodal theories that rest on principles fundamentally different from those underlying perception. In addition, perceptual approaches have become widely viewed as untenable because they are assumed to implement record- ing systems, not conceptual systems. A perceptual theory of knowledge is developed here in the context of current cognitive science and neuroscience. During perceptual experience, association areas in the brain capture bottom-up patterns of activation in sensory-motor areas. Later, in a top-down manner, association areas partially reactivate sensory-motor areas to implement perceptual symbols. The stor- age and reactivation of perceptual symbols operates at the level of perceptual components - not at the level of holistic perceptual expe- riences. Through the use of selective attention, schematic representations of perceptual components are extracted from experience and stored in memory (e.g., individual memories of green, purr, hot). As memories of the same component become organized around a com- mon frame, they implement a simulator that produces limitless simulations of the component (e.g., simulations of purr). Not only do such simulators develop for aspects of sensory experience, they also develop for aspects of proprioception (e.g., lift, run) and introspec- tion (e.g., compare, memory, happy, hungry). Once established, these simulators implement a basic conceptual system that represents types, supports categorization, and produces categorical inferences. These simulators further support productivity, propositions, and ab- stract concepts, thereby implementing a fully functional conceptual system. Productivity results from integrating simulators combinato- rially and recursively to produce complex simulations. Propositions result from binding simulators to perceived individuals to represent type-token relations. Abstract concepts are grounded in complex simulations of combined physical and introspective events. Thus, a per- ceptual theory of knowledge can implement a fully functional conceptual system while avoiding problems associated with amodal sym- bol systems. Implications for cognition, neuroscience, evolution, development, and artificial intelligence are explored.

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Perceptual symbol systems.

1. Introduction and Overview. 2. Detecting Influential Observations and Outliers. 3. Detecting and Assessing Collinearity. 4. Applications and Remedies. 5. Research Issues and Directions for Extensions. Bibliography. Author Index. Subject Index.

Regression Diagnostics: Identifying Influential Data and Sources of Collinearity

Much research in the last two decades has demon- strated that human responses deviate from the performance deemed normative according to various models of decision mak- ing and rational judgment (e.g., the basic axioms of utility theory). This gap between the normative and the descriptive can be inter- preted as indicating systematic irrationalities in human cognition. However, four alternative interpretations preserve the assumption that human behavior and cognition is largely rational. These posit that the gap is due to (1) performance errors, (2) computational limitations, (3) the wrong norm being applied by the experi- menter, and (4) a different construal of the task by the subject. In the debates about the viability of these alternative explanations, attention has been focused too narrowly on the modal response. In a series of experiments involving most of the classic tasks in the heuristics and biases literature, we have examined the implica- tions of individual differences in performance for each of the four explanations of the normative/descriptive gap. Performance er- rors are a minor factor in the gap; computational limitations un- derlie non-normative responding on several tasks, particularly those that involve some type of cognitive decontextualization. Un- expected patterns of covariance can suggest when the wrong norm is being applied to a task or when an alternative construal of the task should be considered appropriate.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0140525X00003435

Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate?

To account for the large demands on working memory during text comprehension and expert performance, the traditional models of working memory involving temporary storage must be extended to include working memory based on storage in long-term memory. In the proposed theoretical framework cognitive processes are viewed as a sequence of stable states representing end products of processing. In skilled activities, acquired memory skills allow these end products to be stored in long-term memory and kept directly accessible by means of retrieval cues in short-term memory, as proposed by skilled memory theory. These theoretical claims are supported by a review of evidence on memory in text comprehension and expert performance in such domains as mental calculation, medical diagnosis, and chess.

Long-term working memory

Mental Models offers nothing less than a unified theory of the major properties of mind: comprehension, inference, and consciousness. In spirited and graceful prose, Johnson-Laird argues that we apprehend the world by building inner mental replicas of the relations among objects and events that concern us. The mind is essentially a model-building device that can itself be modeled on a digital computer. This book provides both a blueprint for building such a model and numerous important illustrations of how to do it. In several key areas of cognition, Johnson-Laird shows how an explanation based on mental modeling is clearly superior to previous theory. For example, he argues compellingly that deductive reasoning does not take place by tacitly applying the rules of logic, but by mentally manipulating models of the states of affairs from which inferences are drawn. Similarly, linguistic comprehension is best understood not as a matter of applying inference rules to propositions derived from sentences, but rather as the mind's effort to construct and update a model of the situation described by a text or a discourse. Most provocative, perhaps, is Johnson-Laird's theory of consciousness: the mind's necessarily incomplete model of itself allows only a partial control over the many unconscious and parallel processes of cognition. This an extraordinarily rich book, providing a coherent account of much recent experimental work in cognitive psychology, along with lucid explanations of relevant theory in linguistics, computer science, and philosophy Not since Miller, Galanter, and Pribram's classic Plans and the Structure of Behavior has a book in cognitive science combined such sweep, style, and good sense. Like its distinguished predecessor, Mental Models may well serve to fix a point of view for a generation. (http://books.google.fr/books?id=FS3zSKAfLGMC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference, and Consciousness

The present study uses probabilistic models of corpus data in a novel way, to measure and compare the syntactic predictive capacities of speakers of different varieties of the same language. The study finds that speakers' knowledge of probabilistic grammatical choices can vary across different varieties of the same language and can be detected psycholinguistically in the individual. In three pairs of experiments, Australians and Americans responded reliably to corpus model probabilities in rating the naturalness of alternative dative constructions, their lexical-decision latencies during reading varied inversely with the syntactic probabilities of the construction, and they showed subtle covariation in these tasks, which is in line with quantitative differences in the choices of datives produced in the same contexts.

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Predicting syntax: Processing dative constructions in American and Australian varieties of English

Introduction It is becoming increasingly accepted that speakers have richer knowledge of linguistic constructions than the knowledge captured by their categorical judgments of grammaticality. Speakers have reactions to linguistic expressions that are more fine-grained than can be captured by a categorical yes – no response or even by a system allowing responses like good , ?, ??, * and ** (Bard, Robertson and Sorace 1996; Bresnan 2007; Bresnan et al . 2007; Featherston 2007a; Gilquin and Gries 2009; Bresnan and Ford 2010; see Hoffmann, Chapter 5, this volume). Moreover, expressions that linguists have sometimes categorized as ‘ungrammatical’ have been found to be accepted by people (Wasow and Arnold 2005; Bresnan 2007) or found to be used by speakers and to sound good compared to the examples contrived by linguists (Stefanowitsch 2007; Bresnan and Nikitina 2009). Many researchers today thus see the need for placing less emphasis on linguists’ judgments of grammaticality and more emphasis on usage and experimental data, procedures that would be in line with Labov’s (1975) call for the use of convergent evidence and a recognition of the inconsistency of intuitions about constructed examples typically used by linguists (see Rosenbach, Chapter 15, this volume). When judgments along a broad continuum of acceptability are acknowledged, rather than being denied, ignored, or underestimated, a potentially rich set of data about people’s knowledge of language becomes available. Moreover, researchers are not forced to make distinctions that have no firm basis. Clearly, though, embracing people’s fine-grained judgments about language requires new paradigms for collecting and analysing data. This chapter considers some of the methodological issues raised by a move away from a reliance on using categorical judgments to investigate linguistic knowledge. It will focus on one concrete case study, the dative alternation, using Australian and US participants. Speakers may produce a dative expression as a double object, as in showed the woman the ticket , with the recipient ( the woman ) preceding the theme ( the ticket ), or as a prepositional dative, as in showed the ticket to the woman , with the theme now preceding the recipient. Careful analysis of the occurrence of the two types of datives, judgments about datives, people’s processing of datives, and people’s choices in the production of datives, given a context, allows for a rich understanding of the basis for the choice of dative structure.

Using convergent evidence from psycholinguistics and usage

A fluid dispensing anti-burglar device is disclosed in which a chemical irritant such as tear gas is discharged into the area to be protected when an intruder forces entry into an area with which the device is associated. The anti-burglar device employs an element to delay the release of the chemical irritant. It also has provisions for resetting the trigger and recocking the spring associated with the device if the device is accidentally triggered.

The time course of co-indexation during sentence comprehension

Mismatches between grammaticality judgments of linguists and actual usage are surprisingly common, particularly where linguists invoke subtle contrasts such as between different types of dative transfer verbs or between different types of dative communication verbs. For example, as Levin's (1993) compendium of verb classes in the linguistic literature shows, linguists have judged verbs of manner of communication like mutter or whisper as ungrammatical in the double object form in contrast to the prepositional alternative (*whisper John the answer vs. whisper the answer to John), while they have judged verbs of communication by instrument like phone or text grammatical in each of the alternative structures (phone John the answer, phone the answer to John). Similarly, linguists have

Marilyn Ford

Papers

Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference, and Consciousness

Predicting syntax: Processing dative constructions in American and Australian varieties of English

Using convergent evidence from psycholinguistics and usage

The time course of co-indexation during sentence comprehension

"They whispered me the answer" in Australia and the US: A comparative experimental study