Showing papers on "Cognitivism (psychology) published in 2010"

The Psychology of memory, extended cognition, and socially distributed remembering

Abstract: This paper introduces a new, expanded range of relevant cognitive psychological research on collaborative recall and social memory to the philosophical debate on extended and distributed cognition. We start by examining the case for extended cognition based on the complementarity of inner and outer resources, by which neural, bodily, social, and environmental resources with disparate but complementary properties are integrated into hybrid cognitive systems, transforming or augmenting the nature of remembering or decision-making. Adams and Aizawa, noting this distinctive complementarity argument, say that they agree with it completely: but they describe it as “a non-revolutionary approach” which leaves “the cognitive psychology of memory as the study of processes that take place, essentially without exception, within nervous systems.” In response, we carve out, on distinct conceptual and empirical grounds, a rich middle ground between internalist forms of cognitivism and radical anti-cognitivism. Drawing both on extended cognition literature and on Sterelny’s account of the “scaffolded mind” (this issue), we develop a multidimensional framework for understanding varying relations between agents and external resources, both technological and social. On this basis we argue that, independent of any more “revolutionary” metaphysical claims about the partial constitution of cognitive processes by external resources, a thesis of scaffolded or distributed cognition can substantially influence or transform explanatory practice in cognitive science. Critics also cite various empirical results as evidence against the idea that remembering can extend beyond skull and skin. We respond with a more principled, representative survey of the scientific psychology of memory, focussing in particular on robust recent empirical traditions for the study of collaborative recall and transactive social memory. We describe our own empirical research on socially distributed remembering, aimed at identifying conditions for mnemonic emergence in collaborative groups. Philosophical debates about extended, embedded, and distributed cognition can thus make richer, mutually beneficial contact with independently motivated research programs in the cognitive psychology of memory.

Introduction to the special issue on 4E cognition

Abstract: One thing that has become clear in the last 10 to 15 years of research on cognition is that there are many different dimensions of modelling and explanation at work. Homogeneity there is not. One only needs to think of the differences in emphasis and approach that one finds under the often grouped together labels of embodied, embedded, extended and enacted cognition. One reason that the four E’s are grouped together is that they are all held to reject or at least radically reconfigure traditional cognitivism, coupled with a methodological individualism. However, we might ask whether simply lumping, for example, cognitive extension together with enactivism is to miss out on the nuances and sometimes genuine incompatabilities between them. Enactivism, as understood by the likes of Thompson (2007, Thompson and Stapelton 2009) and DiPaulo (2009), is a thesis about the continuity between life and mind. The position appears to be quite incompatible with an extended functionalism, which abstracts away from biological details (Clark and Kiverstein 2009). Phenom Cogn Sci (2010) 9:459–463 DOI 10.1007/s11097-010-9187-6

Foundations of Cognitive Psychology: Core Readings

Abstract: Scientists from many disciplines, including physics, chemistry, biology, and neuroscience, contribute to the study of cognition. Cognitive psychology, the science of the human mind and of how people process information, is at the core of empirical investigations into the nature of mind and thought. This anthology is based on the assumption that cognitive psychology is at heart empirical philosophy. Many of the core questions about thought, language, perception, memory, and knowledge of other people's minds were for centuries the domain of philosophy. The book begins with the philosophical foundations of inquiry into the nature of mind and thought, in particular the writings of Descartes, and then covers the principal topics of cognitive psychology including memory, attention, and decision making. The book organizes a daunting amount of information, underlining the essentials, while also introducing readers to the ambiguities and controversies of research. It is arranged thematically and includes many topics not typically taught in cognition courses, including human factors and ergonomics, evolutionary psychology, music cognition, and experimental design. The contributors include: Daniel Dennett, Daniel Kahneman, Jay McClelland, Donald Norman, Michael Posner, Stephen Palmer, Eleanor Rosch, John Searle, Roger Shepard, and Anne Treisman.

Insights and Blindspots of the Cognitivist Theory of Emotions

Abstract: Philosophical cognitivists have argued for more than four decades that emotions are special types of judgments Anti-cognitivists have provided a series of counterexamples aiming to show th

Who took the cog out of cognitive science?: Mentalism in an era of anti-cognitivism

Abstract: Behaviorism I remember as the doctrine of the black box: stick to the observable input and output of a system, and refrain from theorizing about the system’s internal clockwork of cog wheels (“cog-works” for short) that create the causal connections between observable stimuli and responses The Cognitive Revolution supposedly opened the black box to theory

New Essays on Singular Thought

Abstract: Introduction I THE STRUCTURE OF SINGULAR THOUGHT 1. Getting a Thing Into a Thought 2. Three Perspectives on Quantifying In 3. On Singularity II CONDITIONS ON SINGULAR THOUGHT 4. Singular Thought: Acquaintance, Semantic Instrumentalism, and Cognitivism 5. Singular Thought: In Defense of Acquaintance DEMONSTRATIVE AND COMMUNICATION-BASED REFERENCE AND THOUGHT 6. Demonstrative Reference, the Relational View of Experience, and the Proximality Principle 7. We Are Acquainted With Ordinary Things 8. Millian Externalism IV THINKING OF NOTHING 9. Fictional Singular Imaginings 10. Intentionality Without Exotica Index

Computation vs. Information Processing: Why Their Difference Matters to Cognitive Science

Abstract: Since the cognitive revolution, it’s become commonplace that cognition involves both computation and information processing. Is this one claim or two? Is computation the same as information processing? The two terms are often used interchangeably, but this usage masks important differences. In this paper, we distinguish information processing from computation and examine some of their mutual relations, shedding light on the role each can play in a theory of cognition. We recommend that theorists of cognition be explicit and careful in choosing notions of computation and information and connecting them together. Much confusion can be avoided by doing so.

A Brief Study on the Implication of Constructivism Teaching Theory on Classroom Teaching Reform in Basic Education.

Abstract: Constructivism learning theory is the further development as behaviorism arrives at cognitivism. According to its teaching theory: knowledge is uncertain; the learning process of knowledge is also the construction process of knowledge; students are the main body of learning activity and they construct knowledge on their own initiatives; teachers are the helpers and the drivers for students constructing knowledge. These views generate more implications for China’s teaching reform, what affect the reform of learning theory and teaching theory in a sense and turn into the theoretical base for China’s education reform. This paper tries to probe into the implication of constructivism teaching theory on China’s basic education.

The value of cognitivism in thinking about extended cognition

Abstract: This paper will defend the cognitivist view of cognition against recent challenges from Andy Clark and Richard Menary. It will also indicate the important theoretical role that cognitivism plays in understanding some of the core issues surrounding the hypothesis of extended cognition.

Emotion, the bodily, and the cognitive

Abstract: In both psychology and philosophy, cognitive theories of emotion have met with increasing opposition in recent years. However, this apparent controversy is not so much a gridlock between antithetical stances as a critical debate in which each side is being forced to qualify its position in order to accommodate the other side of the story. Here, I attempt to sort out some of the disagreements between cognitivism and its rivals, adjudicating some disputes while showing that others are merely superficial. Looking at evidence from neuroscience and social psychology, as well as thought experiments and theoretical arguments, I conclude that it is necessary to acknowledge both that emotions have intentional content and that they involve somatic agitation. I also point out some of the more promising directions for future research in this area.

The holy grail of cognitivism: a response to Adams and Aizawa

Abstract: Adams and Aizawa (2010b) define cognitivism as the processing of representations with underived content. In this paper, I respond to their use of this stipulative definition of cognition. I look at the plausibility of Adams and Aizawa’s cognitivism, taking into account that they have no criteria for cognitive representation and no naturalistic theory of content determination. This is a glaring hole in their cognitivism—which requires both a theory of representation and underived content to be successful. I also explain why my own position, cognitive integration, is not susceptible to the supposed causal-coupling fallacy. Finally, I look at the more interesting question of whether the distinction between derived and underived content is important for cognition. Given Adams and Aizawa’s concession that there is no difference in content between derived and underived representations (only a difference in how they get their content) I conclude that the distinction is not important and show that there is empirical research which does not respect the distinction.

Love for a Reason

Abstract: According to Bob Solomon, love is a human emotion, with a complex intentional structure, having its own kind of reasons. I will examine this account, which, in certain respects, tends to mask the deep and important differences between love and other emotions.

Estratégias de pesquisa no estudo da cognição: o caso das falsas lembranças

Abstract: This article intends to present and to discuss two research strategies in the ambit of the studies of the cognition, relating them to the subject of the cognitive experience. As for the first strategy, denominated Representational, we will try to analyze, from the epistemological point of view, as two different traditions in Psychology, the behaviorism and the cognitivism, by standing both in this strategy, they didn't include until very recently in their studies the dimension of the cognitive processes experience. The second strategy, designated Enactive, differs from the first by the understanding that the cognition is a creation act of itself and of world, in other words, a simultaneous emergency of an own world and of the subject who experiments it. Finally, we objectify to demonstrate our analysis through the case study of the phenomenon of false memories.

Embodied Cognition:A New Approach in Cognitive Psychology

Abstract: The embodied cognition approach in cognitive psychology is featured as the emphasis it places on the role the body plays in an organism's cognitive processes.Its central meanings include the following claims:(1) steps in a cognitive process might emerge from the physical attributes of the body;(2) it tries to account for the content of cognition by appeal to the nature of the body;(3) cognitive processes or states might be extended into the environment in which the cognition takes place.At first,the study of embodied cognition is only a kinds of philosophical thinking.But now,It has already extended to the experimental study of cognitive psychology.However,there are still some burning problems before it.

Mind and machine: ethical and epistemological implications for research

Abstract: Technologies are significant in research not only as instruments for gathering data and analyzing information; they also provide a valuable resource for the development of theory—in terms of what has been called the “tools to theory heuristic.” Focusing on the specific example of the fields of educational psychology and instructional technology and design, this paper begins by describing how the workings of the “tools to theory heuristic” are evident in the metaphors and descriptions of behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. In each of these psychological paradigms, the mind is understood in terms of a contemporaneous technological innovation: as rudimentary circuitry, as computerized data processing, and finally, in terms of information representation and visualization. The paper then argues that in applied disciplines like educational technology and human–computer interaction, technology plays two important but conflicting roles. It first operates heuristically to explain complex mental phenomena; it is then designed and developed explicitly as a tool for facilitating and developing these same complex mental processes. This paper concludes by arguing that this dual role represents an ethical dilemma—a kind of epistemological and practical “conflict of interest” in instructional technology and in related fields of systems and interface design.

Embodiment in Cognitive Systems: on the Mutual Dependence of Cognition & Robotics

Abstract: Cognitive systems anticipate, assimilate, and adapt. They develop and learn, predict, explain, and imagine. In this chapter, we look briefly at the two principal paradigms of cognition, cognitivism and emergence, to determine what embodied form each entails, if any. We highlight one specific emergent approach to embodied cognition enaction and discuss the challenges it poses for the advancement of both robotics and cognition.

Exploiting Distributed Cognition to Make Tacit Knowledge Explicating

Abstract: Distributed cognition is a new development trend of cognitivism, and is also a new research field of knowledge manage- ment. The study discusses that tacit knowledge explicating activity is a distributed cognitive activity, whose success depends on interaction of each of these factors in distributed cognitive system and none of the factor could be neglected. Further, the study exploits distributed cognition to explore how to design these factors in the system so that tacit knowledge explicating can be accomplished successfully.

Cognitivism and its implication in the second language learning

Abstract: This paper aims to elaborate cognitivism and its implications to the second language learning. Cognitive theory or approach views the learner as a thinking being and an active processor of information. Thus, learning is a process in which the learner actively tries to analyze the situations where the application of the rule would be appropriate and to make sense of data. In other words, we learn by thinking about and trying to make sense of what we see, hear and feel. In order to get a clear picture of the cognitive theory in relation to second language learning, other related theories were also described briefly from the historical points of view. In general cognitivism can be grouped under the innatist model which is also known as ‘nativist’. ‘mentalism’ (thinking as rule-governed activity), ‘rationalism’. The implications of cognitive theories can be revealed in the basic teaching techniques which cover activities such as problem-based solving activity, discovery learning, cognitive strategies, project-based learning, etc.

Collaborative Learning: Leveraging Concept Mapping and Cognitive Flexibility Theory

Abstract: Collaborative learning (CL) lies at the heart of collective learner-directed learning approaches. It represents a major shift away from teacher-dominated learning approaches to a more egalitarian view of learning. It is a methodological innovation which encourages a co-production of knowledge, a co-determination of meaning, collective problem solving, and multiple perspectives among learners and between learners and teachers. It also enhances cognitive skills and harnesses different learning styles. Above all, CL serves as an antidote to individualistic and competitive winner-takes-all learning tendencies. As such, it fosters a communitarian spirit and a sense of togetherness among learners. Most importantly, it acts as a vehicle for navigating and bridging cultural diversity and linguistic pluralism. It is against this background that both concept mapping (CMing) and cognitive flexibility theory (CFT) come into the picture. For example, CMing is used to generate ideas, design complex structures, communicate complex ideas and evaluate underAbSTRACT

La dimensión moral de la conducta desde una óptica interconductual

Abstract: Morality has been studied by psychology through three different theories: psychoanalysis, cognitivism and behaviorism. Each one has focused on separate issues that are only features of the problem. Thus, psychoanalysis investigates disciplinal)' techniques that parents use to teach children moral behavior, concluding that the best are those which arouse internal controlling responses as guilt or self criticism Cognitive theory studies the way children develop moral judgments, and the main interest is related to the criteria they use to judge the behavior of other people. Behavior theory focuses mainly on the consequences of moral or in moral responses, so the different parameters of stimuli and their effect to behavior become the purpose of investigations. The three approaches have limitations related, to one hand, to the dualistic basis of their theories, and on the other, to the lacking of principles and concepts that lead to a delimitation of the psychological dimension of a complex behavioral process where social conventions are basic. For these reasons this paper presents an alternative approach to the moral dimension of behavior. This is based on the inter behavioral theory, especially on an inter behavioral applied system for the analysis and change of individual human behavior: cotangential analysis. This system includes two dimensions: the microcontingential system and the macrocontingential system.

L'introduction faussement simple du cognitivisme dans la thérapie comportementale The not-so-simple introduction of cognitivism into behavior therapy

Abstract: The conflictswithin behaviortherapy caused bythe public advent of cognitive behavior therapy in America are examined. The origins of the latter are sought out within the behavioristic heritage itself (classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and social learning theory), as well as in the rest of the psychological and psychotherapeutical environ- ment of the 1960s and 1970s. Two findings go against a simplificatory speech commonly heard in France. Firstly, the acceptance of cognitive frames of reference in the behavior therapy movement wasn't and isn't unanimous, since the Skinnerian radical behaviorists, still active today, dissociated themselves from it. Secondly, thetherapy'scogni- tive-behavioral integration didn't happen with reference to the information processing model, but rather through a disparate process of internal and external borrowings in answer to anthropological questionings on the cognitive control of behavior. To cite this journal: Psychiatr. Sci. Hum. Neurosci. 8 (2010).

Embodied Cognition:An Interdisciplinary Approach to Language Cognition

Abstract: Embodied cognition is a cognitive style after the rising of the second generation of cognitive science.Cognitive research on languages from the perspectives of philosophical epistemology,cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics is just the manifestation of embodied cognition,which brings out the great value,expands interdisciplinary research and provides us with a great deal of inspiration on the studies of cognitive theory,cognitive linguistics,applied linguistics or English teaching for language cognition.

Expressing suffering: phenomenology, cognitivism, pragmatics Decir el sufrimiento: fenomenología, cognitivismo, pragmática

Abstract: Existential experiences involve a subjective aspect and cannot accommodate an expression that makes them integrally communicable. But this does not mean the acceptance of the solipsism implied by philosophies of consciousness, such as Husserl’s and Sartre’s phenomenology. If cognitivism indicates that, in subjective experience, there is a supplement that cannot be rendered objective, hermeneutics shows how it is possible, through narrative language, to conceive some communicability, although semantically limited, of subjective states. On the other hand, with basis on the theory of categories and the idea of learning, cognitive psychology points out a partial universal, making possible some communication of emotions. However, it is only in common

Reflections on Moral Disagreement, Relativism, and Skepticism About Rules

Abstract: Part 1 of this paper discusses some uses of arguments from radical moral disagreement—in particular, as directed against absolutist cognitivism—and surveys some semantic issues thus made salient. It may be argued that parties to such a disagreement cannot be using the relevant moral claims with exactly the same absolutist cognitive content. That challenges the absolutist element of absolutist cognitivism, which, combined with the intractable nature of radical moral disagreement, in turn challenges the viability of a purely cognitivist account of moral judgments. Such a conclusion could be staved off if it could be held that a sufficient condition for commonality of cognitive content in moral judgments could consist, despite the presence of radical moral disagreement, in the parties’ acceptance of a common set of fundamental moral principles. Part 1 begins, and Part 2 further develops, a destructive critique of that idea, leading thereby to a skeptical appraisal of the important role sometimes assigned, in metaethical theorizing, to moral rules. Inter alia the paper is intended to suggest the possibility of overlap between relativist and particularist agendas.