Showing papers on "Cognitivism (psychology) published in 2015"

Phenomenology: An Introduction

Abstract: * Introduction * Chapter 1. Kant and Wundt: 18th and 19th Century Background * Chapter 2. Edmund Husserl and Transcendental Phenomenology * Chapter 3. Martin Heidegger and Existential Phenomenology * Chapter 4. Gestalt Psychology * Chapter 5. Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Body and Perception * Chapter 6. Jean-Paul Sartre: Phenomenological existentialism * Chapter 7. James J. Gibson and Ecological Psychology * Chapter 8. Hubert Dreyfus and the Phenomenological Critique of Cognitivism * Chapter 9. Phenomenological Cognitive Science * Bibliography

The theory of event coding (TEC) as embodied-cognition framework.

Abstract: The concept of embodied cognition attracts enormous interest but neither is the concept particularly well-defined nor is the related research guided by systematic theorizing. To improve this situation the theory of event coding (TEC) is suggested as a suitable theoretical framework for theorizing about cognitive embodiment-which, however, presupposes giving up the anti-cognitivistic attitude inherent in many embodiment approaches. The article discusses the embodiment-related potential of TEC, and the way and degree to which it addresses Wilson's (2002) six meanings of the embodiment concept. In particular, it is discussed how TEC considers human cognition to be situated, distributed, and body-based, how it deals with time pressure, how it delegates work to the environment, and in which sense it subserves action.

Embodied Social Cognition

Abstract: This book clarifies the role and relevance of the body in social interaction and cognition from an embodied cognitive science perspective. Theories of embodied cognition have during the last decades offered a radical shift in explanations of the human mind, from traditional computationalism, to emphasizing the way cognition is shaped by the body and its sensorimotor interaction with the surrounding social and material world. This book presents a theoretical framework for the relational nature of embodied social cognition, which is based on an interdisciplinary approach that ranges historically in time and across different disciplines. It includes work in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, phenomenology, ethology, developmental psychology, neuroscience, social psychology, linguistics, communication and gesture studies. The theoretical framework is illustrated by empirical work that provides some detailed observational fieldwork on embodied actions captured in three different episodes of spontaneous social interaction and cognition in situ. Furthermore, the theoretical contributions and implications of the study of embodied social cognition are discussed and summed up. Finally, the issue what it would take for an artificial system to be socially embodied is addressed and discussed, as well as the practical relevance for applications to artificial intelligence (AI) and socially interactive technology.

Understanding knowledge network, learning and Connectivism

Abstract: Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism and other growing theories such as Actor-Network and Connectivism are circulating in the educational field. For each, there are allies who stand behind research evidence and consistency of observation. Meantime, those existing theories dominate the field until the background is changed or new concrete evidence proves their insufficiencies. Connectivists claim that the background or the general climate has recently changed: a new generation of researchers, connectivists propose a new way of conceiving knowledge. According to them, knowledge is a network and learning is a process of exploring this network. Other researchers find this notion either not clear or not new and probably, with no effect in the education field. This paper addresses a foggy understanding of knowledge defined as a network and the lack of resources talking about this topic. Therefore, it tries to clarify what it means to define knowledge as a network and in what way it can affect teaching and learning.

Discourse Analysis: Examining Language Use in Context

Abstract: Traditionally, Psychologists were deeply immersed in a regimented methodological approach in the production of knowledge in which one variable was experimentally manipulated and its effect on the other variable closely observed and recorded. However, the trend has greatly shifted lately with researchers examining the performative and productive functions of language in contexts. Psychologists' turn to language gained prominence in the 1980s (Willig, 2008) as a challenge to the traditional psychology's reliance on cognitivism (Gergen, 1989). Discursive psychologists argue that people's account and the explanations they provide largely depends on the discursive contexts within which their views are produced (Willig, 2008). This paper discusses knowledge as situated and contingent and thus an explanation or interpretation of people's perception or attitude about a psychological phenomenon should take into account the context or culture and circumstances of social interactions. Discourse is situated sequentially (Potter, 2003), in the sense that the primary context within which social interaction occurs comes first and largely shapes accounts and constructions of participants involved in discourse. It is contingent because of the variability of language use in different cultures and contexts. Discourse analysis provides a different way of theorizing language. It is more concerned with the analysis of texts and/or utterances within specific socio-cultural context and indicates a method of data analysis that can tell researchers about the discursive construction of a phenomenon (Willig, 2008). Discourse analysts transcribe and analyze data gathered through open-ended interviews, focus group discussions, field observations and other means of data collection where talk is unconstrained by research protocols (Potter, 2003). Taylor (2001) loosely defines discourse analysis as "the close study of language in use." (p. 5). Primarily, discourse analysts espouse the principle that people construct versions of their social world through the instrumentality and functionality of language (Potter & Wetherell, 2001). Thus, discourse analysis involves a theoretical way of understanding the nature of psychological phenomena (Billig, 1997). Participants in social interaction strategically deploy discursive devices to demonstrate their keenness and stake in conversations in pursuit of their interpersonal and social objectives (Willig, 2008). Though some have doubted the critical and detailed study of texts by Psychologists (Kendall, 2007), some discourse analysts however believe that a pretty new style of sociopsychological research can be effectively erected on the foundations of "speech act theory" (Potter & Wetherell, 2001, p. 198). Speech-act theory is a concept of essentially linguistic and philosophy of language, which basically describes the performative function of language; that is, the use of language to perform action in a given social context. Thus, natural language and everyday language use in social contexts, for most qualitative researchers, can closely represent the psychological reality of human experiences than the hitherto regimented and formal abstract categories that psychology has adopted over the years (Polkinghorne, 1990). It has been argued in recent times that a new and transformative way of doing social psychology should be established on detailed, concrete and empirically driven analysis of actual discourse (Potter, 2012). Key principles that foreground the production and meaning making process in social interactions are discussed below. Principle of Positioning in Discourse Analysis In all discourse and conversational analyses, the concept of positioning has been an influential frame of thought for conceptualizing context and culture in social interactions. The theory of positioning, though introduced by Davies and Harre' in 1990, was first used by Hollway in the Social Sciences in 1984 to analyze constructions of subjectivities in heterosexual relationships. …

What is this cognition that is supposed to be embodied

Abstract: Many cognitive scientists have recently championed the thesis that cognition is embodied. In principle, explicating this thesis should be relatively simple. There are, essentially, only two concepts involved: cognition and embodiment. After articulating what will here be meant by ‘embodiment’, this paper will draw attention to cases in which some advocates of embodied cognition apparently do not mean by ‘cognition’ what has typically been meant by ‘cognition’. Some advocates apparently mean to use ‘cognition’ not as a term for one, among many, causes of behavior, but for what has more often been called “behavior.” Some consequences for this proposal are considered.

It's Not "All in Your Head": Understanding Religion From an Embodied Cognition Perspective.

Abstract: Theorists and researchers in the psychology of religion have often focused on the mind as the locus of religion. In this article, we suggest an embodied cognition perspective as a new dimension in studies of religion as a complement to previous research and theorizing. In contrast to the Cartesian view of the mind operating distinctly from the body, an embodied cognition framework posits religion as being grounded in an integrated and dynamic sensorimotor complex (which includes the brain). We review relevant but disparate literature in cognitive and social psychology to demonstrate that embodied cognition shapes the way that people represent the divine and other spiritual beings, guides people's moral intuitions, and facilitates bonding within religious groups. Moreover, commitments to a religious worldview are sometimes manifested in the body. We suggest several promising future directions in the study of religion from an embodied cognition perspective.

Rethinking situated and embodied social psychology

Abstract: This article aims to explore the scope of a Situated and Embodied Social Psychology (ESP). At first sight, social cognition seems embodied cognition par excellence. Social cognition is first and fo...

Mishaps, errors, and cognitive experiences: on the conceptualization of perceptual illusions

Abstract: Although a visual illusion is often viewed as an amusing trick, for the vision scientist it is a question that demands an answer, which leads to even more questioning. All researchers hold their own chain of questions, the links of which depend on the very theory they adhere to. Perceptual theories are devoted to answering questions concerning sensation and perception, but in doing so they shape concepts such as reality and representation, which necessarily affect the concept of illusion. Here we consider the macroscopic aspects of such concepts in vision sciences from three classic viewpoints—Ecological, Cognitive, Gestalt approaches—as we see this a starting point to understand in which terms illusions can become a tool in the hand of the neuroscientist. In fact, illusions can be effective tools in studying the brain in reference to perception and also to cognition in a much broader sense. A theoretical debate is, however, mandatory, in particular with regards to concepts such as veridicality and representation. Whether a perceptual outcome is considered as veridical or illusory (and, consequently, whether a class of phenomena should be classified as perceptual illusions or not) depends on the meaning of such concepts.

Culture, Cognition and Embodiment

Abstract: The study of relationship between the cultural and the mental in the social and human sciences stands at crossroads. The classical approach to this issue attempts to derive individual cognition from abstract cultural patterns external to the mind, and conceives of culture as an external, emergent order of symbols organized as ‘systems.’ These internalized ‘symbols of mind’ provide the essential foundation of individual cognition. In contrast to this view, we have a now growing set of perspectives emerging at the intersection of cognitive science, cultural and cognitive anthropology, developmental psychology, robotics, and the philosophy of mind and action. These ‘embodied’ approaches to cognition reject the classical view of cognition as the organization of sense data via recourse to conventional cultural symbols. Instead, cognition is seen as tightly linked to practical action and as inherently ‘grounded’ in the nonarbitrary features of human bodies as they relate to the material environment.

A History of “Behavior” and “Mind”: Use of Behavioral and Cognitive Terms in the 20th Century

Abstract: If we assume that the terms used in a book tend to reflect its orientation, this provides a way to compare the relative trajectories of the influences of cognitivism and behaviorism. In Study 1, we used the search engine Google Ngram to search for the terms behavior and mind in all books printed in English over the period 1900 to 2008. The results for all books tend to support the pattern of standard accounts of the so-called behavioral and cognitive revolutions. In Study 2, we replicated the analysis with a selection of terms specific to behavioral psychology and to cognitive psychology. Again, the results supported the pattern of the so-called behavioral and cognitive revolutions. Neither study showed any indication that cognitivism had replaced behaviorism, although it has in fact overtaken it. The present methodology may open the way for a new quantitative approach to study trends in scientific theories.

Cognitivism, prospect theory, and foreign policy change: a comparative analysis of the politics of counterinsurgency in Malaya and Afghanistan

Abstract: This article investigates the cognitive limitations on policy change in counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts by examining why American decision-makers failed to revise their government strategy substantially while fighting the insurgency in Afghanistan in 2003–2014 and why their British counterparts were more successful in adjusting their policies in the Malayan insurgency in 1948–1954. Unlike most of the COIN literature that concentrates on military strategy and tactics, the analysis of government policy-making in Malaya holds some important political lessons for American leaders today despite differences between the insurgencies in Afghanistan and British Malaya. As a response to the criticism of COIN studies in general that they lack theoretical guidance, this article utilizes an integrated cognitivist-prospect theory framework. It is argued that some of the COIN literature mistakenly suggests that a more difficult strategic situation was primarily responsible for American failure in Afghanistan. Instead, ...

Emotion as patheception

Abstract: Emotions cannot be fully understood in purely cognitive terms. Nor can they be fully understood as mere feelings with no content. But it has not been easy to give an account of the relation of affect and cognition in a way that preserves the perceived unity of emotional experience. Consequently, emotion theories tend to lean either toward cognitivism, or, alternatively, the view that emotions are basically non-cognitive affairs. The aim of this paper is to argue for an account of emotion as a unity of affect and cognition. Emotions, it will be suggested, do not combine, blend, add, or causally relate cognition to affect, or affect to cognition, but are rather original unities which should be viewed as coordinate with, rather than subordinate to, either cognition, perception, feeling, or any other basic mental category.

Against Strong Cognitivism: An Argument from Caring

Abstract: According to ‘strong cognitivism’, all reasons for action are rooted in normative features that the motivated subject (explicitly or implicitly) takes objects to have (or lack) independently of her attitudes towards these objects. My main concern in this paper is to argue against strong cognitivism, that is, to establish the view that conative attitudes do provide subjects with reasons for action. My central argument to this effect is a top-down one that proceeds by an analysis of the complex phenomenon of caring and derives a conclusion regarding the (motivational and normative) nature of more basic mental phenomena—particular desires.

‘Theory is always for someone and for some purpose’: thinking through post-structuralism and cognitivism

Abstract: This essay explores the historical socio-cultural contexts that determine the contending epistemologies of post-structuralism and cognitivism. Debates between these paradigms have focused on a-priori philosophical premises. Synthesis between these premises has not materialised because each paradigm valorises a form of knowledge which its rival cannot match. This essay attempts to position these contested premises within a diachronic background in which theoretical claims can be tested, not merely against fixed deductive positions, but against specific socio-cultural contexts that manifest themselves in epistemology. Post-structuralism and cognitivism can then be thought of as aggregates of thought reflecting broad political, social, philosophical and cultural contexts.

Constructions of Clinical Psychology in Adult Mental Health: A Discursive Thematic Analysis

Abstract: In face of the current economic-political changes facing the UK and its State institutions and of the new evidence about the impact of social inequality on human distress, this study attempts to understand the increasing practice of delivering psychological therapy by the British clinical psychology profession. A review of the critical histories of the profession in the UK identified the need for a more detailed study of the “history of the present” to reveal the discursive operations that construct professional practice. A discursive thematic analysis (DTA) based on the theoretical concepts of the late post-modern scholar Michel Foucault was used to explore public available documents produced by British clinical psychologists between 2010 and 2014. Two dominant professional discursive themes were identified: alternative and leadership. These themes were found to be supported by the discursive sub-themes of applied science, well-being, Cognitivism and therapy which align the aspiration of the profession with those of the State. The tension between the applied scientist and the therapist role - specifically the need to establish simultaneously the profession’s scientific credibility and its therapeutic abilities in order to respond to market pressures – showed recurrences of the conflicts of the early history of professionalization of clinical psychology. The positioning of clinical psychology against the use of functional psychiatric diagnosis and the challenges and opportunities identified by the opening of the NHS market to ‘any willing provider’ revealed how professional discourses operate to maintain the status quo. This study recommends that the socio-historical construction of the profession should be investigated further, in particular through the subjugated discourse identified here

Contributions of Educational Psychology to University Education

Abstract: The scientific article presented here is intended to provide university teachers the theoretical basis for their work in the classroom, considering three principal theoretical learning paradigms: Behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism; and four particular theories that have been labeled like constructivist (psychogenetic theory, meaningful learning theory, theory of strategic learning and the historical-cultural theory). Thus, this theoretical review provides guidelines to act in the university classroom that can lead to the elimination of “teaching without learning”.

Socrates on the emotions

Abstract: In Plato’s Protagoras, Socrates clearly indicates that he is a cognitivist about the emotions—in other words, he believes that emotions are in some way constituted by cognitive states. It is perhaps because of this that some scholars have claimed that Socrates believes that the only way to change how others feel about things is to engage them in rational discourse, since that is the only way, such scholars claim, to change another’s beliefs. But in this paper we show that Socrates is also responsive to, and has various non-rational strategies for dealing with, the many ways in which emotions can cloud our judgment and lead us into poor decision-making. We provide an account of how Socrates can consistently be a cognitivist about emotion and also have more than purely rational strategies for dealing with emotions. http://dx.doi.org/10.14195/2183-4105_15_1

A tale of paradigm clash: Simon, situated cognition and the interpretation of bounded rationality

Abstract: The intellectual figure of Herbert A. Simon is well known for having introduced the influential notion of bounded rationality in economics. Less known, at least from the economists’ point of view, is the figure of Simon as eminent cognitive psychologist, co-founder of so-called cognitivism, a mainstream approach in cognitive psychology until the 80s of the last century. In fact, the two faces of Simon’s intellectual figure, as rationality scholar and as cognitive scientist, are not factorizable at all: according to Simon himself, cognitivism is bounded rationality and bounded rationality is cognitivism. This paper tries to answer a simple research question: has the notion of bounded rationality fully followed the development of cognitive psychology beyond cognitivism in the post-Simonian era? If not, why? To answer such questions, this paper focuses on a very specific historical episode. In 1993, on the pages of the journal Cognitive Science, Simon (with his colleague Alonso Vera) openly confronted the proponents of a new (paradigmatic) view of cognition called situated cognition, a firm challenger of cognitivism, which was going to inspire cognitive psychology from then on. This paper claims that this tough confrontation, typical of a paradigm shift, might have prevented rationality studies in economics from coming fully in touch with the new paradigm in cognitive psychology. A reconstruction of the differences between cognitivism and situated cognition as they emerged in the confrontation is seen here as fundamental in order to assess and explore this hypothesis.

Emotions and Cognition: From Myth and Philosophy to Modern Psychology and Neuroscience

Abstract: In this chapter, we have reviewed some historical landmarks of thinking about emotions. We have seen that emotions, at times reviled as a primitive layer and considered by far inferior to cognition or reason, have been upgraded from a fickle and primitive layer of human and animal nature alike. Instead, owing to Darwin’s path-breaking writing on emotions, scientists now generally acknowledge them as a layer that, though not inherently directed by rational processes, nevertheless express a kind of rationality and intentionality all of their own. Even at the most automatic layers, emotions provide important functions in that they control a wide range of homeostatic processes. In that way, they assure that the exquisitely fine-tuned equilibriums necessary for survival are regulated and maintained by processes that are built into lower brain centers—processes that evolution did not trust to the slower functioning process of rational, cognitive judgment. Nevertheless, we have also seen that recent writers on emotion emphasize that with increasing experience and development, a cooperation of these automatic processes can help to greatly expand the power offered by the more ancient automatic regulation processes. In the chapter to follow, we will discuss how such expansion functions and how it is able to produce more powerful regulation of emotions and social life.

Sport Psychology. Theories and Applications for Performance, Health and Humanity.

Abstract: This congress proceedings volume includes all abstracts submitted to the 14th European Congress of Sport Psychology of the European Federation of Sport Psychology FEPSAC that have been accepted by the scientific evaluation committee. Content: six keynote lectures, Panteleimon ("Paddy") Ekkekakis: Escape from Cognitivism: Exercise as Hedonic Experience; Sergio Lara-Bercial and Cliff Mallett: Serial Winning Coaches – Vision, People and Environment; Kari Fasting: Sexual Harassment and Abuse in Sport – Implications for Sport Psychologists; Claudia Voelcker-Rehage: Benefits of Physical Activity and Fitness for Lifelong Motor and Cognitive Development – Brain and Behaviour; Nancy J. Cooke: Interactive Team Cognition: Focusing on Team Dynamics; Chris Harwood: Doing Sport Psychology? Critical Reflections as a Scientist-Practitioner. Abstracts of 11 invited symposia, 65 submitted symposia, 8 special sessions, and 5 poster sessions.

Consciousness from the standpoint of behaviour analysis

Abstract: Recent developments in neuroscience have greatly increased interest in the study of consciousness, without solving the puzzles about its nature and function. This paper reviews the problem of introspection, the current approach within cognitive psychology, some neuroscientific data on brain activity and the possible neural correlates of consciousness, current philosophical accounts that emphasize the role of qualia, and alternative behavioural account of consciousness. Experimental and conceptual analysis shows that there are flaws both in the traditional view that consciousness is a private event that is causally related to action, and in the cognitive psychological assumptions that consciousness must be an element in a mediating cognitive system that will be shown to be identical with a specific brain location or process. Alternatively, behaviour analysis treats consciousness as verbal behaviour and is developing an account of it through applying and extending the explanatory principles used to ...

Logical foundations and analogies of Anglo-American cognitive science

Abstract: This article is a theoretical study of the relations between logic and Anglo-American cognitive science. It uses temporal, historical, and intentional evidence, and it is based on two consequential assumptions: (a) between the late 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, some logical systems attempted to explain the foundations of mathematics and (b) since the 1940s and 1950s, these same systems became implicit sources of contents and methods of the rising Cognitivism. This study produces an important conclusion: Anglo-American cognitive science partly derives from logic and partly shares many similarities with this science.

Cognitive Development, Educational Theories of

Abstract: Since very early days, the phenomenon of learning by individuals has fascinated both psychologists and philosophers alike. The complexity of the human learning phenomenon gave rise to different theories or schools of thoughts. One of the most influential schools of thought in educational psychology is cognitivism. Cognitive theories explain how behavior changes as a result of people's perception, transformation, processing, storage, and retrieval of information in contrast to behaviorist theories that put emphasis only on observable behavior of individuals. Although the origin of cognitive development theories can be traced back to the early twentieth century, it became known to psychologists and academicians through the work of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget and the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Cognitive development theories provide a rich and descriptive data to enhance learning among pupils and to promote their healthy cognitive and emotional developmental needs.

Ramsey's Cognitivism: Truth, Ethics, and the Meaning of Life

Abstract: Frank Ramsey is usually taken to be an emotivist or an expressivist about the good: he is usually taken to bifurcate inquiry into fact-stating and non-fact-stating domains, ethics falling into the latter. In this paper I argue that whatever the very young Ramsey’s view might have been, towards the end of his short life, he was coming to a through-going and objective pragmatism about all our beliefs, including those about the good, beauty, and even the meaning of life. Ethical beliefs are not mere expressions of emotion, but rather fall under our cognitive scope. They can be assessed as rational or irrational, true or false.

체화된 인지의 개념 지도 :두뇌의 경계를 넘어서

Abstract: Since the advent of cognitive science, it has been dominated by two research programs: symbolism and connectionism. These programs have made possible the understanding of human cognition in a scientific way, but they have also been gradually understood as separating living cognition from the body and its environment by considering cognition as a form of computer program or as a pattern of activities in a massive neural network. Recently, a new research program, the theory of embodied cognition, has been emerging and is being discussed actively in cognitive science. At the present stage, the theory of embodied cognition does not have the systematicity of academic theory but remains only a set of theories, and its elements have different names. It is necessary to draw a conceptual map for those theories of embodied cognition before we have a unified theory. The purpose of this paper is to examine the four theories of embodied cognition as a research program in cognitive science and to draw a conceptual map of the embodied cognition. In section 2, this paper will discuss the background from which theories of embodied cognition have emerged in cognitive science. In section 3, this paper will discuss and compare the so-called “4 E’s,” the four theories of embodied cognition -namely, theoriesof embodied cognition in a narrow sense, extended cognition, embedded cognition, and enactive cognition. In section 4, this paper will suggest a concept map of the embodied cognition that mirrors the previous discussions and also suggest a brief prospect of embodimentism as a research program.

Faculties and Modularity

Abstract: While theorizing about mental faculties had been in decline throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, cognitivism and classical science brought back questions about the architecture of mind. Within this framework, Jerry Fodor developed a functionalist approach to what he called the “modularity of the mind.” While he believes that cognitive science can only explain the lower faculties of the mind, evolutionary psychology seizes on the notion of modularity and transforms it into the radical claim that the mind is modular all the way up. By comparison, recent approaches that take cognition to be embodied and situated have renewed the radical criticism of faculties or modules that was dominant from the nineteenth century onward. The concept of module is a naturalized successor of the traditional concept of faculty, as this chapter shows, and the debate about modules is centrally a debate about the possibility of naturalizing the mind.

Are Moral Judgements Semantically Uniform? A Wittgensteinian Approach to the Cognitivism–Non-Cognitivism Debate

Abstract: Cognitivists and non-cognitivists in contemporary meta-ethics tend to assume that moral judgements are semantically uniform. That is, they share the assumption that either all moral judgements express beliefs, or they all express non-beliefs. But what if some moral judgements express beliefs and others do not? Then moral judgements are not semantically uniform, and the question “Cognitivist or non-cognitivist?” poses a false dilemma. I will question the assumption that moral judgements are semantically uniform. First, I will explain what I mean by the assumption (second section). I will call this assumption SUM, the semantic uniformity of moral judgements. Second, I will provide some examples in order to illustrate that SUM cannot be taken for granted (third section). Third, I will try to understand, using ideas from Wittgenstein, why SUM has nevertheless so often been taken for granted (fourth section). Fourth, I will discuss some authors in contemporary meta-ethics who have noted the false dilemma between cognitivism and non-cognitivism and evaluate the solutions they propose for overcoming it (fifth section). Fifth, I will indicate, again with some help from Wittgenstein, how meta-ethical research about moral judgements is possible without the assumption that morality is semantically uniform (sixth section).