MedWorm.com provides a medical RSS filtering service. Over 6000 RSS medical sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest items from the 'Cognitive Science' source. Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:05:41 +0100 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5621584&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22256956%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Fedorenko E, Piantadosi S, Gibson E Abstract Results from two self-paced reading experiments in English are reported in which subject- and object-extracted relative clauses (SRCs and ORCs, respectively) were presented in contexts that support both types of relative clauses (RCs). Object-extracted versions were read more slowly than subject-extracted versions across both experiments. These results are not consistent with a decay-based working memory account of dependency formation where the amount of decay is a function of the number of new discourse referents that intervene between the dependents (Gibson, 1998; Warren & Gibson, 2002). Rather, these results support interference-based accounts and decay-based accounts where the amount of decay depends on the number of wo... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5621584 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5621584 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5621583&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22257004%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Suanda SH, Namy LL Abstract Recent research has demonstrated that word learners can determine word-referent mappings by tracking co-occurrences across multiple ambiguous naming events. The current study addresses the mechanisms underlying this capacity to learn words cross-situationally. This replication and extension of Yu and Smith (2007) investigates the factors influencing both successful cross-situational word learning and mis-mappings. Item analysis and error patterns revealed that the co-occurrence structure of the learning environment as well as the context of the testing environment jointly affected learning across observations. Learners also adopted an exclusion strategy, which contributed conjointly with statistical tracking to performance. Implications for our ... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5621583 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5621583 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5621582&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22257064%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Frank TD, Blau JJ, Turvey MT Abstract The effect of prism adaptation on movement is typically reduced when the movement at test (prisms off) differs on some dimension from the movement at training (prisms on). Some adaptation is latent, however, and only revealed through further testing in which the movement at training is fully reinstated. Applying a nonlinear attractor dynamic model (Frank, Blau, & Turvey, 2009) to available data (Blau, Stephen, Carello, & Turvey, 2009), we provide evidence for a causal link between the latent (or secondary) aftereffect and an additive force term that is known to account for symmetry breaking. The evidence is discussed in respect to the hypothesis that recalibration aftereffects reflect memory principles (encoding specificity, tr... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5621582 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5621582 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5621581&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22257087%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Lakusta L, Landau B Abstract When people describe motion events, their path expressions are biased toward inclusion of goal paths (e.g., into the house) and omission of source paths (e.g., out of the house). In this paper, we explored whether this asymmetry has its origins in people's non-linguistic representations of events. In three experiments, 4-year-old children and adults described or remembered manner of motion events that represented animate/intentional and physical events. The results suggest that the linguistic asymmetry between goals and sources is not fully rooted in non-linguistic event representations: linguistic descriptions showed the goal bias for both kinds of events, whereas non-linguistic memory for events showed the goal bias only for events involving ... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5621581 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5621581 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5621580&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22257112%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Hawkins G, Brown SD, Steyvers M, Wagenmakers EJ Abstract For decisions between many alternatives, the benchmark result is Hick's Law: that response time increases log-linearly with the number of choice alternatives. Even when Hick's Law is observed for response times, divergent results have been observed for error rates-sometimes error rates increase with the number of choice alternatives, and sometimes they are constant. We provide evidence from two experiments that error rates are mostly independent of the number of choice alternatives, unless context effects induce participants to trade speed for accuracy across conditions. Error rate data have previously been used to discriminate between competing theoretical accounts of Hick's Law, and our results question the validit... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5621580 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5621580 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5621579&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22257174%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Janssen CP, Gray WD Abstract Reinforcement learning approaches to cognitive modeling represent task acquisition as learning to choose the sequence of steps that accomplishes the task while maximizing a reward. However, an apparently unrecognized problem for modelers is choosing when, what, and how much to reward; that is, when (the moment: end of trial, subtask, or some other interval of task performance), what (the objective function: e.g., performance time or performance accuracy), and how much (the magnitude: with binary, categorical, or continuous values). In this article, we explore the problem space of these three parameters in the context of a task whose completion entails some combination of 36 state-action pairs, where all intermediate states (i.e., after the init... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5621579 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5621579 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5493258&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22141440%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Navarro DJ, Dry MJ, Lee MD Abstract Inductive generalization, where people go beyond the data provided, is a basic cognitive capability, and it underpins theoretical accounts of learning, categorization, and decision making. To complete the inductive leap needed for generalization, people must make a key ''sampling'' assumption about how the available data were generated. Previous models have considered two extreme possibilities, known as strong and weak sampling. In strong sampling, data are assumed to have been deliberately generated as positive examples of a concept, whereas in weak sampling, data are assumed to have been generated without any restrictions. We develop a more general account of sampling that allows for an intermediate mixture of these two extremes, and w... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5493258 Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5493258 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5493257&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22141462%26dopt%3DAbstract This article discusses how sequential sampling models can be integrated in a cognitive architecture. The new theory Retrieval by Accumulating Evidence in an Architecture (RACE/A) combines the level of detail typically provided by sequential sampling models with the level of task complexity typically provided by cognitive architectures. We will use RACE/A to model data from two variants of a picture-word interference task in a psychological refractory period design. These models will demonstrate how RACE/A enables interactions between sequential sampling and long-term declarative learning, and between sequential sampling and task control. In a traditional sequential sampling model, the onset of the process within the task is unclear, as is the number of sampling processes. RACE/A provides a... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5493257 Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5493257 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5493256&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22141588%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: O'Reilly RC, Bhattacharyya R, Howard MD, Ketz N Abstract This paper reviews the fate of the central ideas behind the complementary learning systems (CLS) framework as originally articulated in McClelland, McNaughton, and O'Reilly (1995). This framework explains why the brain requires two differentially specialized learning and memory systems, and it nicely specifies their central properties (i.e., the hippocampus as a sparse, pattern-separated system for rapidly learning episodic memories, and the neocortex as a distributed, overlapping system for gradually integrating across episodes to extract latent semantic structure). We review the application of the CLS framework to a range of important topics, including the following: the basic neural processes of hippocampal memory... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5493256 Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5493256 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5493255&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22141746%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Verschoor S, Biro S Abstract It has been shown that, when observing an action, infants can rely on either outcome selection information (i.e., actions that express a choice between potential outcomes) or means selection information (i.e., actions that are causally efficient toward the outcome) in their goal attribution. However, no research has investigated the relationship between these two types of information when they are present simultaneously. In an experiment that addressed this question directly, we found that when outcome selection information could disambiguate the goal of the action (e.g., the action is directed toward one of two potential targets), but means selection information could not (i.e., the action is not efficiently adjusted to the situational constra... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5493255 Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5493255 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5493254&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22141921%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Yildirim I, Jacobs RA Abstract How do people learn multisensory, or amodal, representations, and what consequences do these representations have for perceptual performance? We address this question by performing a rational analysis of the problem of learning multisensory representations. This analysis makes use of a Bayesian nonparametric model that acquires latent multisensory features that optimally explain the unisensory features arising in individual sensory modalities. The model qualitatively accounts for several important aspects of multisensory perception: (a) it integrates information from multiple sensory sources in such a way that it leads to superior performances in, for example, categorization tasks; (b) its performances suggest that multisensory training leads... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5493254 Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5493254 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5379710&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22049931%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Paxton JM, Ungar L, Greene JD Abstract While there is much evidence for the influence of automatic emotional responses on moral judgment, the roles of reflection and reasoning remain uncertain. In Experiment 1, we induced subjects to be more reflective by completing the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) prior to responding to moral dilemmas. This manipulation increased utilitarian responding, as individuals who reflected more on the CRT made more utilitarian judgments. A follow-up study suggested that trait reflectiveness is also associated with increased utilitarian judgment. In Experiment 2, subjects considered a scenario involving incest between consenting adult siblings, a scenario known for eliciting emotionally driven condemnation that resists reasoned persuasion. Here... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5379710 Thu, 03 Nov 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5379710 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5379709&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22050005%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Ettlinger M, Finn AS, Hudson Kam CL Abstract It has been well documented how language-specific cues may be used for word segmentation. Here, we investigate what role a language-independent phonological universal, the sonority sequencing principle (SSP), may also play. Participants were presented with an unsegmented speech stream with non-English word onsets that juxtaposed adherence to the SSP with transitional probabilities. Participants favored using the SSP in assessing word-hood, suggesting that the SSP represents a potentially powerful cue for word segmentation. To ensure the SSP influenced the segmentation process (i.e., during learning), we presented two additional groups of participants with either (a) no exposure to the stimuli prior to testing or (b) the same sti... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5379709 Thu, 03 Nov 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5379709 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5379708&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22050726%26dopt%3DAbstract This article presents a fine-grained characterization of each type of Schema, our instructional intervention, the successes we have achieved, and the lessons we have learned. PMID: 22050726 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Science) Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5379708 Thu, 03 Nov 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5379708 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5379707&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22050775%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Frosch CA, McCormack T, Lagnado DA, Burns P Abstract The application of the formal framework of causal Bayesian Networks to children's causal learning provides the motivation to examine the link between judgments about the causal structure of a system, and the ability to make inferences about interventions on components of the system. Three experiments examined whether children are able to make correct inferences about interventions on different causal structures. The first two experiments examined whether children's causal structure and intervention judgments were consistent with one another. In Experiment 1, children aged between 4 and 8 years made causal structure judgments on a three-component causal system followed by counterfactual intervention judgments. In Experi... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5379707 Thu, 03 Nov 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5379707 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5379706&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22050792%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study, we re-tested the Pirahãs' performance in the crucial one-to-one matching task utilized in the two previous studies on their numerical cognition, as well as in control tasks requiring recall and mental transposition. We also conducted a novel quantity recognition task. Speakers were unable to consistently match quantities > 3, even when no recall or transposition was involved. We provide a plausible motivation for the disparate results previously obtained among the Pirahã. Our findings are consistent with the suggestion that the exact recognition of quantities > 3 requires number terminology. PMID: 22050792 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Science) Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5379706 Thu, 03 Nov 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5379706 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5379712&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22039917%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Creel SC, Tumlin MA Abstract Three experiments explored online recognition in a nonspeech domain, using a novel experimental paradigm. Adults learned to associate abstract shapes with particular melodies, and at test they identified a played melody's associated shape. To implicitly measure recognition, visual fixations to the associated shape versus a distractor shape were measured as the melody played. Degree of similarity between associated melodies was varied to assess what types of pitch information adults use in recognition. Fixation and error data suggest that adults naturally recognize music, like language, incrementally, computing matches to representations before melody offset, despite the fact that music, unlike language, provides no pressure to execute recogniti... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5379712 Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5379712 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5379711&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22040610%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Deemter KV, Gatt A, Sluis IV, Power R Abstract A substantial amount of recent work in natural language generation has focused on the generation of ''one-shot'' referring expressions whose only aim is to identify a target referent. Dale and Reiter's Incremental Algorithm (IA) is often thought to be the best algorithm for maximizing the similarity to referring expressions produced by people. We test this hypothesis by eliciting referring expressions from human subjects and computing the similarity between the expressions elicited and the ones generated by algorithms. It turns out that the success of the IA depends substantially on the ''preference order'' (PO) employed by the IA, particularly in complex domains. While some POs cause the IA to produce referring expressions th... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5379711 Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5379711 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5361189&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21981829%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Connors MH, Burns BD, Campitelli G Abstract One of the most influential studies in all expertise research is de Groot's (1946) study of chess players, which suggested that pattern recognition, rather than search, was the key determinant of expertise. Many changes have occurred in the chess world since de Groot's study, leading some authors to argue that the cognitive mechanisms underlying expertise have also changed. We decided to replicate de Groot's study to empirically test these claims and to examine whether the trends in the data have changed over time. Six Grandmasters, five International Masters, six Experts, and five Class A players completed the think-aloud procedure for two chess positions. Findings indicate that Grandmasters and International Masters search more... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5361189 Fri, 07 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5361189 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5297156&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21972797%26dopt%3DAbstract This study investigated the relative contribution of perception/cognition and language-specific semantics in nonverbal categorization of spatial relations. English and Korean speakers completed a video-based similarity judgment task involving containment, support, tight fit, and loose fit. Both perception/cognition and language served as resources for categorization, and allocation between the two depended on the target relation and the features contrasted in the choices. Whereas perceptual/cognitive salience for containment and tight-fit features guided categorization in many contexts, language-specific semantics influenced categorization where the two features competed for similarity judgment and when the target relation was tight support, a domain where spatial relations are perceptuall... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5297156 Tue, 04 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5297156 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5297155&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21972849%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Magliano JP, Zacks JM Abstract Filmmakers use continuity editing to engender a sense of situational continuity or discontinuity at editing boundaries. The goal of this study was to assess the impact of continuity editing on how people perceive the structure of events in a narrative film and to identify brain networks that are associated with the processing of different types of continuity editing boundaries. Participants viewed a commercially produced film and segmented it into meaningful events, while brain activity was recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We identified three degrees of continuity that can occur at editing locations: edits that are continuous in space, time, and action; edits that are discontinuous in space or time but continuous in ... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5297155 Tue, 04 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5297155 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5297154&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21972897%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Griffiths TL, Sobel DM, Tenenbaum JB, Gopnik A Abstract People are adept at inferring novel causal relations, even from only a few observations. Prior knowledge about the probability of encountering causal relations of various types and the nature of the mechanisms relating causes and effects plays a crucial role in these inferences. We test a formal account of how this knowledge can be used and acquired, based on analyzing causal induction as Bayesian inference. Five studies explored the predictions of this account with adults and 4-year-olds, using tasks in which participants learned about the causal properties of a set of objects. The studies varied the two factors that our Bayesian approach predicted should be relevant to causal induction: the prior probability with wh... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5297154 Tue, 04 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5297154 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5297153&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21972923%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Martin JB, Griffiths TL, Sanborn AN Abstract Exploring how people represent natural categories is a key step toward developing a better understanding of how people learn, form memories, and make decisions. Much research on categorization has focused on artificial categories that are created in the laboratory, since studying natural categories defined on high-dimensional stimuli such as images is methodologically challenging. Recent work has produced methods for identifying these representations from observed behavior, such as reverse correlation (RC). We compare RC against an alternative method for inferring the structure of natural categories called Markov chain Monte Carlo with People (MCMCP). Based on an algorithm used in computer science and statistics, MCMCP provides ... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5297153 Tue, 04 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5297153 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5297152&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21974775%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Arciuli J, Simpson IC Abstract There is little empirical evidence showing a direct link between a capacity for statistical learning (SL) and proficiency with natural language. Moreover, discussion of the role of SL in language acquisition has seldom focused on literacy development. Our study addressed these issues by investigating the relationship between SL and reading ability in typically developing children and healthy adults. We tested SL using visually presented stimuli within a triplet learning paradigm and examined reading ability by administering the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT-4; Wilkinson & Robertson, 2006). A total of 38 typically developing children (mean age of 9;5 years, range 6;4-12;5) and 37 healthy adults (mean age of 21 years, range 18-34) wer... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5297152 Tue, 04 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5297152 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5280179&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21951058%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Trueblood JS, Busemeyer JR Abstract Order of information plays a crucial role in the process of updating beliefs across time. In fact, the presence of order effects makes a classical or Bayesian approach to inference difficult. As a result, the existing models of inference, such as the belief-adjustment model, merely provide an ad hoc explanation for these effects. We postulate a quantum inference model for order effects based on the axiomatic principles of quantum probability theory. The quantum inference model explains order effects by transforming a state vector with different sequences of operators for different orderings of information. We demonstrate this process by fitting the quantum model to data collected in a medical diagnostic task and a jury decision-making ta... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5280179 Mon, 26 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5280179 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5246975&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21929664%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Sanderson YB Abstract Color charts, or grids of evenly spaced multicolored dots or squares, appear in the work of modern artists and designers. Often the artist/designer distributes the many colors in a way that could be described as "random," that is, without an obvious pattern. We conduct a statistical analysis of 125 "random-looking" art and design color charts and show that they differ significantly from truly random color charts in the average distance between adjacent colors. We argue that this attribute generalizes results in subjective randomness in a black/white setting and gives further evidence supporting a connection between subjective randomness and what is esthetically pleasing. PMID: 21929664 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Science... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5246975 Mon, 19 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5246975 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5246974&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21929665%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Wolff P, Gentner D Abstract Metaphor has a double life. It can be described as a directional process in which a stable, familiar base domain provides inferential structure to a less clearly specified target. But metaphor is also described as a process of finding commonalities, an inherently symmetric process. In this second view, both concepts may be altered by the metaphorical comparison. Whereas most theories of metaphor capture one of these aspects, we offer a model based on structure-mapping that captures both sides of metaphor processing. This predicts (a) an initial processing stage of symmetric alignment; and (b) a later directional phase in which inferences are projected to the target. To test these claims, we collected comprehensibility judgments for forward (e.g.... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5246974 Mon, 19 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5246974 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5246973&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21929666%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Stafford T, Ingram L, Gurney KN Abstract Piéron's Law describes the relationship between stimulus intensity and reaction time. Previously (Stafford & Gurney, 2004), we have shown that Piéron's Law is a necessary consequence of rise-to-threshold decision making and thus will arise from optimal simple decision-making algorithms (e.g., Bogacz, Brown, Moehlis, Holmes, & Cohen, 2006). Here, we manipulate the color saturation of a Stroop stimulus. Our results show that Piéron's Law holds for color intensity and color-naming reaction time, extending the domain of this law, in line with our suggestion of the generality of the processes that can give rise to Piéron's Law. In addition, we find that Stroop condition does not interact with the effect of color saturation; S... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5246973 Mon, 19 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5246973 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5230831&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21916951%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Casasanto D, Henetz T Abstract Can children's handedness influence how they represent abstract concepts like kindness and intelligence? Here we show that from an early age, right-handers associate rightward space more strongly with positive ideas and leftward space with negative ideas, but the opposite is true for left-handers. In one experiment, children indicated where on a diagram a preferred toy and a dispreferred toy should go. Right-handers tended to assign the preferred toy to a box on the right and the dispreferred toy to a box on the left. Left-handers showed the opposite pattern. In a second experiment, children judged which of two cartoon animals looked smarter (or dumber) or nicer (or meaner). Right-handers attributed more positive qualities to animals on the r... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5230831 Wed, 14 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5230831 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5192951&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21884221%26dopt%3DAbstract We report the results of a cross-cultural investigation of person-body reasoning in the United Kingdom and northern Brazilian Amazon (Marajó Island). The study provides evidence that directly bears upon divergent theoretical claims in cognitive psychology and anthropology, respectively, on the cognitive origins and cross-cultural incidence of mind-body dualism. In a novel reasoning task, we found that participants across the two sample populations parsed a wide range of capacities similarly in terms of the capacities' perceived anchoring to bodily function. Patterns of reasoning concerning the respective roles of physical and biological properties in sustaining various capacities did vary between sample populations, however. Further, the data challenge prior ad-hoc categorizations in the ... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5192951 Wed, 31 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5192951 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5192950&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21884222%26dopt%3DAbstract We present results from two tasks comparing English and Mandarin speakers' temporal reasoning. The tasks measure how people spatialize time in three-dimensional space, including the sagittal (front/back), transverse (left/right), and vertical (up/down) axes. Results of Experiment 1 show that people automatically create spatial representations in the course of temporal reasoning, and these implicit spatializations differ in accordance with patterns in language, even in a non-linguistic task. Both groups showed evidence of a left-to-right representation of time, in accordance with writing direction, but only Mandarin speakers showed a vertical top-to-bottom pattern for time (congruent with vertical spatiotemporal metaphors in Mandarin). Results of Experiment 2 confirm and extend these findin... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5192950 Wed, 31 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5192950 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5141364&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21827532%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Laakso A, Calvo P Abstract Some empirical evidence in the artificial language acquisition literature has been taken to suggest that statistical learning mechanisms are insufficient for extracting structural information from an artificial language. According to the more than one mechanism (MOM) hypothesis, at least two mechanisms are required in order to acquire language from speech: (a) a statistical mechanism for speech segmentation; and (b) an additional rule-following mechanism in order to induce grammatical regularities. In this article, we present a set of neural network studies demonstrating that a single statistical mechanism can mimic the apparent discovery of structural regularities, beyond the segmentation of speech. We argue that our results undermine one argume... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5141364 Mon, 08 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5141364 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5141363&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21827533%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Lim SJ, Holt LL Abstract Although speech categories are defined by multiple acoustic dimensions, some are perceptually weighted more than others and there are residual effects of native-language weightings in non-native speech perception. Recent research on nonlinguistic sound category learning suggests that the distribution characteristics of experienced sounds influence perceptual cue weights: Increasing variability across a dimension leads listeners to rely upon it less in subsequent category learning (Holt & Lotto, 2006). The present experiment investigated the implications of this among native Japanese learning English /r/-/l/ categories. Training was accomplished using a videogame paradigm that emphasizes associations among sound categories, visual information, a... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5141363 Mon, 08 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5141363 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5141367&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21824175%26dopt%3DAbstract We present theoretical justifications for this approach together with results of an experiment in which participants, exposed to meaningless symbols, have been implicitly encouraged to create high-level concepts by grouping them. Results show that the designed model, called hereafter MDLChunker, makes precise quantitative predictions both on the kind of chunks created by the participants and also on the moment at which these creations occur. They suggest that the simplicity principle used to design MDLChunker is particularly efficient to model chunking mechanisms. The main interest of this model over existing ones is that it does not require any adjustable parameter. PMID: 21824175 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Science) Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5141367 Sun, 07 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5141367 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5141366&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21824178%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Berwick RC, Pietroski P, Yankama B, Chomsky N Abstract A central goal of modern generative grammar has been to discover invariant properties of human languages that reflect "the innate schematism of mind that is applied to the data of experience" and that "might reasonably be attributed to the organism itself as its contribution to the task of the acquisition of knowledge" (Chomsky, 1971). Candidates for such invariances include the structure dependence of grammatical rules, and in particular, certain constraints on question formation. Various "poverty of stimulus" (POS) arguments suggest that these invariances reflect an innate human endowment, as opposed to common experience: Such experience warrants selection of the grammars acquired only if humans assume, a priori, tha... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5141366 Sun, 07 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5141366 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5141365&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21824179%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Varma S Abstract Cognitive architectures are unified theories of cognition that take the form of computational formalisms. They support computational models that collectively account for large numbers of empirical regularities using small numbers of computational mechanisms. Empirical coverage and parsimony are the most prominent criteria by which architectures are designed and evaluated, but they are not the only ones. This paper considers three additional criteria that have been comparatively undertheorized. (a) Successful architectures possess subjective and intersubjective meaning, making cognition comprehensible to individual cognitive scientists and organizing groups of like-minded cognitive scientists into genuine communities. (b) Successful architectures provide id... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5141365 Sun, 07 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5141365 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5103141&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21790743%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Cushman F, Young L Ordinary people often make moral judgments that are consistent with philosophical principles and legal distinctions. For example, they judge killing as worse than letting die, and harm caused as a necessary means to a greater good as worse than harm caused as a side-effect (Cushman, Young, & Hauser, 2006). Are these patterns of judgment produced by mechanisms specific to the moral domain, or do they derive from other psychological domains? We show that the action/omission and means/side-effect distinctions affect nonmoral representations and provide evidence that their role in moral judgment is mediated by these nonmoral psychological representations. Specifically, the action/omission distinction affects moral judgment primarily via causal attribution, w... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5103141 Sun, 31 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5103141 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5103140&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21790744%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Brogaard B David Milner and Melvyn Goodale's dissociation hypothesis is commonly taken to state that there are two functionally specialized cortical streams of visual processing originating in striate (V1) cortex: a dorsal, action-related "unconscious" stream and a ventral, perception-related "conscious" stream. As Milner and Goodale acknowledge, findings from blindsight studies suggest a more sophisticated picture that replaces the distinction between unconscious vision for action and conscious vision for perception with a tripartite division between unconscious vision for action, conscious vision for perception, and unconscious vision for perception. The combination excluded by the tripartite division is the possibility of conscious vision for action. But are there good grou... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5103140 Sun, 31 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5103140 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5103139&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21790745%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Cretenet J, Dru V To examine the influence of bilateral motor behaviors on flexibility performance, two studies were conducted. Previous research has shown that when performing unilateral motor behavior that activates the affective and motivational systems of approach versus avoidance (arm flexion vs. extension), it is the congruence between laterality and motor activation that determines flexibility-rigidity functioning (Cretenet & Dru, 2009). When bilateral motor behaviors were performed, a mechanism of embodiment was revealed. It showed that the flexibility scores were determined by the match between the respective qualities of congruence of each of the unilateral motor behaviors performed. These results bring to light an overall embodied mechanism associated with the c... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5103139 Sun, 31 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5103139 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5103138&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21790746%26dopt%3DAbstract "Frequent frames" in german child-directed speech: a limited cue to grammatical categories. Cogn Sci. 2011 Aug;35(6):1190-205 Authors: Stumper B, Bannard C, Lieven E, Tomasello M Mintz (2003) found that in English child-directed speech, frequently occurring frames formed by linking the preceding (A) and succeeding (B) word (A_x_B) could accurately predict the syntactic category of the intervening word (x). This has been successfully extended to French (Chemla, Mintz, Bernal, & Christophe, 2009). In this paper, we show that, as for Dutch (Erkelens, 2009), frequent frames in German do not enable such accurate lexical categorization. This can be explained by the characteristics of German including a less restricted word order compared to English or French and the frequent use ... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5103138 Sun, 31 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5103138 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5056065&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21736603%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Fu WT A dynamic context model of interactive behavior was developed to explain results from two experiments that tested the effects of interaction costs on encoding strategies, cognitive representations, and response selection processes in a decision-making and a judgment task. The model assumes that the dynamic context defined by the mixes of internal and external representations and processes are sensitive to the interaction cost imposed by the task environment. The model predicts that changes in the dynamic context may lead to systematic biases in cognitive representations and processes that eventually influence decision-making and judgment outcomes. Consistent with the predictions by the model, results from the experiments showed that as interaction costs increased, encodi... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5056065 Thu, 30 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5056065 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4961227&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21668826%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Le Guen O In previous analyses of the influence of language on cognition, speech has been the main channel examined. In studies conducted among Yucatec Mayas, efforts to determine the preferred frame of reference in use in this community have failed to reach an agreement (Bohnemeyer & Stolz, 2006; Levinson, 2003 vs. Le Guen, 2006, 2009). This paper argues for a multimodal analysis of language that encompasses gesture as well as speech, and shows that the preferred frame of reference in Yucatec Maya is only detectable through the analysis of co-speech gesture and not through speech alone. A series of experiments compares knowledge of the semantics of spatial terms, performance on nonlinguistic tasks and gestures produced by men and women. The results show a striking gender ... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4961227 Sun, 12 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4961227 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4961230&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21658099%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Moscoso Del Prado Martín F The finding of fractal scaling (FS) in behavioral sequences has raised a debate on whether FS is a pervasive property of the cognitive system or is the result of specific processes. Inferences about the origins of properties in time sequences are causal. That is, as opposed to correlational inferences reflecting instantaneous symmetrical relations, causal inferences concern asymmetric relations lagged in time. Here, I integrate Granger-causality with inferences about FS. Four simulations illustrate that causal analyses can isolate distinct FS sources, whereas correlational techniques cannot. I then analyze three simultaneous sequences of responses from a database of word-naming trials. I find that two, or perhaps three, distinct sources account for ... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4961230 Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4961230 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4961229&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21658100%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Kello C PMID: 21658100 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Science) Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4961229 Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4961229 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4961228&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21658101%26dopt%3DAbstract We present the first large-scale, quantitative examination of mind and body concepts in a set of historical sources by measuring the predictions of folk mind-body dualism against the surviving textual corpus of pre-Qin (pre-221 BCE) China. Our textual analysis found clear patterns in the historically evolving reference of the word xin (heart/heart-mind): It alone of the organs was regularly contrasted with the physical body, and during the Warring States period it became less associated with emotions and increasingly portrayed as the unique locus of "higher" cognitive abilities. We interpret this as a semantic shift toward a shared cognitive bias in response to a vast and rapid expansion of literacy. Our study helps test the proposed universality of folk dualism, adds a new quantitative ap... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4961228 Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4961228 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4863853&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21609354%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Hagmayer Y, Meder B, von Sydow M, Waldmann MR The goal of the present set of studies is to explore the boundary conditions of category transfer in causal learning. Previous research has shown that people are capable of inducing categories based on causal learning input, and they often transfer these categories to new causal learning tasks. However, occasionally learners abandon the learned categories and induce new ones. Whereas previously it has been argued that transfer is only observed with essentialist categories in which the hidden properties are causally relevant for the target effect in the transfer relation, we here propose an alternative explanation, the unbroken mechanism hypothesis. This hypothesis claims that categories are transferred from a previously learned cau... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4863853 Mon, 23 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4863853 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4863852&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21609355%26dopt%3DAbstract We present Impulse Processing, a dynamical systems approach to incremental eye movements in the visual world that suggests a framework for integrating language, vision, and action generally. Our approach assumes that impulses driven by the language and the visual context impinge minutely on a dynamical landscape of attractors corresponding to the potential eye-movement behaviors of the system. We test three unique predictions of our approach in an empirical study in the VWP, and describe an implementation in an artificial neural network. We discuss the Impulse Processing framework in relation to other models of the VWP. PMID: 21609355 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Science) Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4863852 Mon, 23 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4863852 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4863848&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21609356%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Apfelbaum KS, McMurray B At 14 months, children appear to struggle to apply their fairly well-developed speech perception abilities to learning similar sounding words (e.g., bih/dih; Stager & Werker, 1997). However, variability in nonphonetic aspects of the training stimuli seems to aid word learning at this age. Extant theories of early word learning cannot account for this benefit of variability. We offer a simple explanation for this range of effects based on associative learning. Simulations suggest that if infants encode both noncontrastive information (e.g., cues to speaker voice) and meaningful linguistic cues (e.g., place of articulation or voicing), then associative learning mechanisms predict these variability effects in early word learning. Crucially, this mea... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4863848 Mon, 23 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4863848 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4863845&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21609357%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Kwisthout J, Wareham T, van Rooij I Bayesian models are often criticized for postulating computations that are computationally intractable (e.g., NP-hard) and therefore implausibly performed by our resource-bounded minds/brains. Our letter is motivated by the observation that Bayesian modelers have been claiming that they can counter this charge of "intractability" by proposing that Bayesian computations can be tractably approximated. We would like to make the cognitive science community aware of the problematic nature of such claims. We cite mathematical proofs from the computer science literature that show intractable Bayesian computations, such as postulated in existing Bayesian models, cannot be tractably approximated. This does not mean that human brains do not (or cannot... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4863845 Mon, 23 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4863845 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4810036&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21545486%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Noble CH, Rowland CF, Pine JM Research using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm (IPLP) has consistently shown that English-learning children aged 2 can associate transitive argument structure with causal events. However, studies using the same methodology investigating 2-year-old children's knowledge of the conjoined agent intransitive and semantic role assignment have reported inconsistent findings. The aim of the present study was to establish at what age English-learning children have verb-general knowledge of both transitive and intransitive argument structure using a new method: the forced-choice pointing paradigm. The results suggest that young 2-year-olds can associate transitive structures with causal (or externally caused) events and can use transitive struc... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4810036 Tue, 03 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4810036 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4810035&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21545487%26dopt%3DAbstract We report the results of an experiment in which human subjects were trained to perform a perceptual matching task. Subjects were asked to manipulate comparison objects until they matched target objects using the fewest manipulations possible. An unusual feature of the experimental task is that efficient performance requires an understanding of the hidden or latent causal structure governing the relationships between actions and perceptual outcomes. We use two benchmarks to evaluate the quality of subjects' learning. One benchmark is based on optimal performance as calculated by a dynamic programming procedure. The other is based on an adaptive computational agent that uses a reinforcement-learning method known as Q-learning to learn to perform the task. Our analyses suggest that subjects w... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4810035 Tue, 03 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4810035 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4810034&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21545488%26dopt%3DAbstract We present and test CONCAT, a connectionist model that simultaneously learns to categorize objects and contexts. The model contains two hierarchically organized CALM modules (Murre, Phaf, & Wolters, 1992). The first module, the Object Module, forms object representations based on co-occurrences between features. These representations are used as input for the second module, the Context Module, which categorizes contexts based on object co-occurrences. Feedback connections from the Context Module to the Object Module send activation from the active context to those objects that frequently occur within this context. We demonstrate that context feedback contributes to the successful categorization of objects, especially when bottom-up feature information is degraded or ambiguous. PMID... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4810034 Tue, 03 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4810034 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643402&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21428999%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Dutilh G, Wagenmakers EJ, Visser I, van der Maas HL Most models of response time (RT) in elementary cognitive tasks implicitly assume that the speed-accuracy trade-off is continuous: When payoffs or instructions gradually increase the level of speed stress, people are assumed to gradually sacrifice response accuracy in exchange for gradual increases in response speed. This trade-off presumably operates over the entire range from accurate but slow responding to fast but chance-level responding (i.e., guessing). In this article, we challenge the assumption of continuity and propose a phase transition model for RTs and accuracy. Analogous to the fast guess model (Ollman, 1966), our model postulates two modes of processing: a guess mode and a stimulus-controlled mode. From catastr... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643402 Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643402 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643401&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21429000%26dopt%3DAbstract This article attempts to answer the question regarding which views are plausible by using cognitive modeling and computer simulation based on a semantic space model. In the simulation experiment, categorization and comparison processes are modeled in a semantic space constructed by latent semantic analysis. These two models receive word vectors for the constituent words of a metaphor and compute a vector for the metaphorical meaning. The resulting vectors can be evaluated according to the degree to which they mimic the human interpretation of the same metaphor; the maximum likelihood estimation determines which of the two models better explains the human interpretation. The result of the model selection is then predicted by three metaphor properties (i.e., vehicle conventionality, aptness,... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643401 Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643401 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643400&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21429001%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Laeng B, Okubo M, Saneyoshi A, Michimata C Neuropsychological studies suggest the existence of lateralized networks that represent categorical and coordinate types of spatial information. In addition, studies with neural networks have shown that they encode more effectively categorical spatial judgments or coordinate spatial judgments, if their input is based, respectively, on units with relatively small, nonoverlapping receptive fields, as opposed to units with relatively large, overlapping receptive fields. These findings leave open the question of whether interactive processes between spatial detectors and types of spatial relations can be modulated by spatial attention. We hypothesized that spreading the attention window to encompass an area that includes two objects promo... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643400 Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643400 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643399&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21429002%26dopt%3DAbstract This study explores the effect of individuation training on the acquisition of race-specific expertise. First, we investigated whether practice individuating other-race faces yields improvement in perceptual discrimination for novel faces of that race. Second, we asked whether there was similar improvement for novel faces of a different race for which participants received equal practice, but in an orthogonal task that did not require individuation. Caucasian participants were trained to individuate faces of one race (African American or Hispanic) and to make difficult eye-luminance judgments on faces of the other race. By equating these tasks we are able to rule out raw experience, visual attention, or performance/success-induced positivity as the critical factors that produce race-specif... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643399 Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643399 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643398&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21429003%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Skoruppa K, Peperkamp S This paper examines whether adults can adapt to novel accents of their native language that contain unfamiliar context-dependent phonological alternations. In two experiments, French participants listen to short stories read in accented speech. Their knowledge of the accents is then tested in a forced-choice identification task. In Experiment 1, two groups of listeners are exposed to newly created French accents in which certain vowels harmonize or disharmonize, respectively, to the rounding of the preceding vowel. Despite the cross-linguistic predominance of vowel harmony over disharmony, the two groups adapt equally well to both accents, suggesting that this typological difference is not reflected in perceptual learning. Experiment 2 further explores ... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643398 Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643398 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643397&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21429004%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Fitneva SA, Christiansen MH Previous research on lexical development has aimed to identify the factors that enable accurate initial word-referent mappings based on the assumption that the accuracy of initial word-referent associations is critical for word learning. The present study challenges this assumption. Adult English speakers learned an artificial language within a cross-situational learning paradigm. Visual fixation data were used to assess the direction of visual attention. Participants whose longest fixations in the initial trials fell more often on distracter images performed significantly better at test than participants whose longest fixations fell more often on referent images. Thus, inaccurate initial word-referent mappings may actually benefit learning. PMI... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643397 Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643397 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643396&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21429005%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Louwerse M, Connell L Previous studies have shown that object properties are processed faster when they follow properties from the same perceptual modality than properties from different modalities. These findings suggest that language activates sensorimotor processes, which, according to those studies, can only be explained by a modal account of cognition. The current paper shows how a statistical linguistic approach of word co-occurrences can also reliably predict the category of perceptual modality a word belongs to (auditory, olfactory-gustatory, visual-haptic), even though the statistical linguistic approach is less precise than the modal approach (auditory, gustatory, haptic, olfactory, visual). Moreover, the statistical linguistic approach is compared with the modal emb... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643396 Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643396 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643410&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21428991%26dopt%3DAbstract We describe computer simulations that show the feasibility of using convolution to produce emergent patterns of neural activity that can support cognitive and emotional processes underlying human creativity. PMID: 21428991 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Cognitive Science) Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643410 Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643410 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643409&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21428992%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Vousden JI, Ellefson MR, Solity J, Chater N Debates concerning the types of representations that aid reading acquisition have often been influenced by the relationship between measures of early phonological awareness (the ability to process speech sounds) and later reading ability. Here, a complementary approach is explored, analyzing how the functional utility of different representational units, such as whole words, bodies (letters representing the vowel and final consonants of a syllable), and graphemes (letters representing a phoneme) may change as the number of words that can be read gradually increases. Utility is measured by applying a Simplicity Principle to the problem of mapping from print to sound; that is, assuming that the "best" representational units for reading... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643409 Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643409 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643408&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21428993%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Hannagan T, Dupoux E, Christophe A In this article, we apply a special case of holographic representations to letter position coding. We translate different well-known schemes into this format, which uses distributed representations and supports constituent structure. We show that in addition to these brain-like characteristics, performances on a standard benchmark of behavioral effects are improved in the holographic format relative to the standard localist one. This notably occurs because of emerging properties in holographic codes, like transposition and edge effects, for which we give formal demonstrations. Finally, we outline the limits of the approach as well as its possible future extensions. PMID: 21428993 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Cognitive Science) Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643408 Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643408 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643407&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21428994%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Daland R, Pierrehumbert JB This paper reconsiders the diphone-based word segmentation model of Cairns, Shillcock, Chater, and Levy (1997) and Hockema (2006), previously thought to be unlearnable. A statistically principled learning model is developed using Bayes' theorem and reasonable assumptions about infants' implicit knowledge. The ability to recover phrase-medial word boundaries is tested using phonetic corpora derived from spontaneous interactions with children and adults. The (unsupervised and semi-supervised) learning models are shown to exhibit several crucial properties. First, only a small amount of language exposure is required to achieve the model's ceiling performance, equivalent to between 1 day and 1 month of caregiver input. Second, the models are robust t... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643407 Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643407 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643406&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21428995%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Goldwater MB, Tomlinson MT, Echols CH, Love BC What mechanisms underlie children's language production? Structural priming-the repetition of sentence structure across utterances-is an important measure of the developing production system. We propose its mechanism in children is the same as may underlie analogical reasoning: structure-mapping. Under this view, structural priming is the result of making an analogy between utterances, such that children map semantic and syntactic structure from previous to future utterances. Because the ability to map relationally complex structures develops with age, younger children are less successful than older children at mapping both semantic and syntactic relations. Consistent with this account, 4-year-old children showed priming only of s... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643406 Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643406 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643405&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21428996%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Yap DF, So WC, Melvin Yap JM, Tan YQ, Teoh RL Using a cross-modal semantic priming paradigm, both experiments of the present study investigated the link between the mental representations of iconic gestures and words. Two groups of the participants performed a primed lexical decision task where they had to discriminate between visually presented words and nonwords (e.g., flirp). Word targets (e.g., bird) were preceded by video clips depicting either semantically related (e.g., pair of hands flapping) or semantically unrelated (e.g., drawing a square with both hands) gestures. The duration of gestures was on average 3,500 ms in Experiment 1 but only 1,000 ms in Experiment 2. Significant priming effects were observed in both experiments, with faster response latencies for re... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643405 Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643405 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643404&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21428997%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Mitterer H, Chen Y, Zhou X There is a growing consensus that the mental lexicon contains both abstract and word-specific acoustic information. To investigate their relative importance for word recognition, we tested to what extent perceptual learning is word specific or generalizable to other words. In an exposure phase, participants were divided into two groups; each group was semantically biased to interpret an ambiguous Mandarin tone contour as either tone1 or tone2. In a subsequent test phase, the perception of ambiguous contours was dependent on the exposure phase: Participants who heard ambiguous contours as tone1 during exposure were more likely to perceive ambiguous contours as tone1 than participants who heard ambiguous contours as tone2 during exposure. This learning... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643404 Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643404 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4643403&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21428998%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Paivio A, Sadoski M Elman (2009) proposed that the traditional role of the mental lexicon in language processing can largely be replaced by a theoretical model of schematic event knowledge founded on dynamic context-dependent variables. We evaluate Elman's approach and propose an alternative view, based on dual coding theory and evidence that modality-specific cognitive representations contribute strongly to word meaning and language performance across diverse contexts which also have effects predictable from dual coding theory. PMID: 21428998 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Cognitive Science) Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4643403 Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4643403 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4220632&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21116475%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Cimpian A, Brandone AC, Gelman SA Generic statements (e.g., "Birds lay eggs") express generalizations about categories. In this paper, we hypothesized that there is a paradoxical asymmetry at the core of generic meaning, such that these sentences have extremely strong implications but require little evidence to be judged true. Four experiments confirmed the hypothesized asymmetry: Participants interpreted novel generics such as "Lorches have purple feathers" as referring to nearly all lorches, but they judged the same novel generics to be true given a wide range of prevalence levels (e.g., even when only 10% or 30% of lorches had purple feathers). A second hypothesis, also confirmed by the results, was that novel generic sentences about dangerous or distinctive properties woul... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4220632 Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4220632 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4220634&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21116438%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Smith LB, Colunga E, Yoshida H Learning depends on attention. The processes that cue attention in the moment dynamically integrate learned regularities and immediate contextual cues. This paper reviews the extensive literature on cued attention and attentional learning in the adult literature and proposes that these fundamental processes are likely significant mechanisms of change in cognitive development. The value of this idea is illustrated using phenomena in children novel word learning. PMID: 21116438 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognitive Science) Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4220634 Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4220634 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4220633&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21116440%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Johnson SP The visual world of adults consists of objects at various distances, partly occluding one another, substantial and stable across space and time. The visual world of young infants, in contrast, is often fragmented and unstable, consisting not of coherent objects but rather surfaces that move in unpredictable ways. Evidence from computational modeling and from experiments with human infants highlights three kinds of learning that contribute to infants' knowledge of the visual world: learning via association, learning via active assembly, and learning via visual-manual exploration. Infants acquire knowledge by observing objects move in and out of sight, forming associations of these different views. In addition, the infant's own self-produced behavior-oculomotor patter... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4220633 Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4220633 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4220631&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21116483%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Sloutsky VM People are remarkably smart: they use language, possess complex motor skills, make non-trivial inferences, develop and use scientific theories, make laws, and adapt to complex dynamic environments. Much of this knowledge requires concepts and this paper focuses on how people acquire concepts. It is argued that conceptual development progresses from simple perceptual grouping to highly abstract scientific concepts. This proposal of conceptual development has four parts. First, it is argued that categories in the world have different structure. Second, there might be different learning systems (sub-served by different brain mechanisms) that evolved to learn categories of differing structures. Third, these systems exhibit differential maturational course, which affect... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4220631 Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4220631 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3900482&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20729982%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Papafragou A Recent research has demonstrated an asymmetry between the origins and endpoints of motion events, with preferential attention given to endpoints rather than beginnings of motion in both language and memory. Two experiments explore this asymmetry further and test its implications for language production and comprehension. Experiment 1 shows that both adults and 4-year-old children detect fewer within-category changes in source than goal objects when tested for memory of motion events; furthermore, these groups produce fewer references to source than goal objects when describing the same motion events. Experiment 2 asks whether the specificity of encoding source/goal relations differs in both spatial memory and the comprehension of novel spatial vocabulary. Results ... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3900482 Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3900482 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3750647&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20625445%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Spelke E, Lee SA, Izard V For many centuries, philosophers and scientists have pondered the origins and nature of human intuitions about the properties of points, lines, and figures on the Euclidean plane, with most hypothesizing that a system of Euclidean concepts either is innate or is assembled by general learning processes. Recent research from cognitive and developmental psychology, cognitive anthropology, animal cognition, and cognitive neuroscience suggests a different view. Knowledge of geometry may be founded on at least two distinct, evolutionarily ancient, core cognitive systems for representing the shapes of large-scale, navigable surface layouts and of small-scale, movable forms and objects. Each of these systems applies to some but not all perceptible arrays and ... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3750647 Fri, 30 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3750647 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3750646&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20625446%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Keil FC If folk science means individuals having well worked out mechanistic theories of the workings of the world, then it is not feasible. Lay people's explanatory understandings are remarkably coarse, full of gaps and often full of inconsistencies. Even worse, most people underestimate their own understandings. Yet, recent views suggest that formal scientists may not be so different. In spite of these limitations, science somehow works and its success offers hope for the feasibility of folk science as well. The success of science arises from the ways in which scientists learn to leverage understandings in other minds and to outsource explanatory work through sophisticated methods of deference and simplification of complex systems. Three studies ask whether analogous process... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3750646 Fri, 30 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3750646 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3480714&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20396653%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Gureckis TM, Love BC We evaluate two broad classes of cognitive mechanisms that might support the learning of sequential patterns. According to the first, learning is based on the gradual accumulation of direct associations between events based on simple conditioning principles. The other view describes learning as the process of inducing the transformational structure that defines the material. Each of these learning mechanisms predict differences in the rate of acquisition for differently organized sequences. Across a set of empirical studies, we compare the predictions of each class of model with the behavior of human subjects. We find that learning mechanisms based on transformations of an internal state, such as recurrent network architectures (e.g., Elman, 1990), have di... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3480714 Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:04:02 +0100 3480714 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3374511&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20228968%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Lee MD, Sarnecka BW We develop and evaluate a model of behavior on the Give-N task, a commonly-used measure of young children's number knowledge. Our model uses the knower-level theory of how children represent numbers. To produce behavior on the Give-N task, the model assumes children start out with a base-rate that make some answers more likely a priori than others, but is updated on each experimental trial in a way that depends on the interaction between the experimenter's request and the child's knower-level. We formalize this process as a generative graphical model, so that the parameters-including the base-rate distribution and each child's knower-level-can be inferred from data using Bayesian methods. Using this approach, we evaluate the model on previously published da... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3374511 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3374511 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3225095&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20111668%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Hespos S, Gredebäck G, von Hofsten C, Spelke ES Infants can anticipate the future location of a moving object and execute a predictive reach to intercept the object. When a moving object is temporarily hidden by darkness or occlusion, 6-month-old infants' reaching is perturbed but performance on darkness trials is significantly better than occlusion trials. How does this reaching behavior change over development? Experiment 1 tested predictive reaching of 6- and 9-month-old infants. While there was an increase in the overall number of reaches with increasing age, there were significantly fewer predictive reaches during the occlusion compared to visible trials and no age-related changes in this pattern. The decrease in performance found in Experiment 1 is likely to apply n... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3225095 Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3225095 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2682602&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19662108%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Elman JL Although for many years a sharp distinction has been made in language research between rules and words-with primary interest on rules-this distinction is now blurred in many theories. If anything, the focus of attention has shifted in recent years in favor of words. Results from many different areas of language research suggest that the lexicon is representationally rich, that it is the source of much productive behavior, and that lexically-specific information plays a critical and early role in the interpretation of grammatical structure. But how much information can or should be placed in the lexicon? This is the question I address here. I review a set of studies whose results indicate that event knowledge plays a significant role in early stages of sentence process... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2682602 Sun, 09 Aug 2009 02:34:02 +0100 2682602 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2525389&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19543434%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: O'Connor CM, Cree GS, McRae K The structure of people's conceptual knowledge of concrete nouns has traditionally been viewed as hierarchical (Collins & Quillian, 1969). For example, superordinate concepts (vegetable) are assumed to reside at a higher level than basic-level concepts (carrot). A feature-based attractor network with a single layer of semantic features developed representations of both basic-level and superordinate concepts. No hierarchical structure was built into the network. In Experiment and Simulation 1, the graded structure of categories (typicality ratings) is accounted for by the flat attractor-network. Experiment and Simulation 2 show that, as with basic-level concepts, such a network predicts feature verification latencies for superordinate concepts ... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2525389 Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:05:03 +0100 2525389 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1817683&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18509503%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Mirman D, McClelland JL, Holt LL, Magnuson JS The effects of lexical context on phonological processing are pervasive and there have been indications that such effects may be modulated by attention. However, attentional modulation in speech processing is neither well-documented nor well-understood. Experiment 1 demonstrated attentional modulation of lexical facilitation of speech sound recognition when task and critical stimuli were identical across attention conditions. We propose modulation of lexical activation as a neurophysiologically-plausible computational mechanism that can account for this type of modulation. Contrary to the claims of critics, this mechanism can account for attentional modulation without violating the principle of interactive processing. Simulations o... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1817683 Sat, 01 Mar 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1817683 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1817682&cid=s_38094_168_f&fid=38094&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18797511%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Tse PU Change blindness provides a new technique for mapping visual attention with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. Change blindness can occur when a brief full-field blank interferes with the detection of changes in a scene that occur during the blank. This interference can be overcome by attending to the location of a change. Because changes are detected at attended locations, but not at unattended locations, detection accuracy provides an indirect measure of the distribution of visual attention. The likelihood of detecting a new element in a scene provides a measure of the occurrence of attention at that element's location. Potential new directions, advantages, and problems with this method are considered. PMID: 18797511 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]... Cognitive Science journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1817682 Thu, 01 Jan 2004 05:00:00 +0100 1817682