The explanatory role of concepts

Machery (Doing without concepts, Oxford University Press, New York, 2009) and Weiskopf (Synthese 169:145–173, 2009) argue that the kind concept is a natural kind if and only if it plays an explanatory role in cognitive scientific explanations. In this paper, we argue against this explanationist approach to determining the natural kind-hood of concept. We first demonstrate that hybrid, pluralist, and eliminativist theories of concepts afford the kind concept different explanatory roles. Then, we argue that we cannot decide between hybrid, pluralist, and eliminativist theories of concepts, because each endorses a different, but equally viable, specification of the explananda of cognitive science. It follows that an explanationist approach to determining the natural kind-hood of concept fails, because there is no consensus about whether or not concept should be afforded an explanatory role in our best cognitive scientific explanations. We conclude by considering what our critique of explanationism could imply for further discussions about the explanatory role of concepts in cognitive science

Investigating the use of Inclusive Language in Chile

This study explores and documents a variety of inclusive language devices (or gender-neutral language devices) used in contemporary Chilean Spanish, comparing them with the inclusive pan-ethnic term ‘Latinx’ as documented by Salinas (2020) in the United States higher education context. This study aims to uncover and document attitudes towards inclusive language, how these vary in society, and the reasons behind the recent rise in prominence of inclusive language in Chile, at least in certain societal groups. This study analyse s qualitative data gathered through semi-structured interviews in order to (1) discover which inclusive language devices are used in Chile, and (2) explore how individuals understand, interpret, and use a variety of inclusive language devices. Based on the findings of the qualitative data, this study analyses quantitative data gathered from Twitter and blog posts published in Chile using the trend tracking tool, Talk Walker, with the aim of establishing the extent to which the inclusive language devices which involve replacing the final ‘o’ or ‘a’ indicating gender in nouns with either ‘@’, ‘x’ or ‘e’ are used online, in a largely informal and non-academic environment. The study then compares these results from social media to the use of inclusive noun endings in academic writing from the Universidad de Chile’s website, to explore the extent to which different inclusive language devices are used in Chilean academia. Finally, this study discusses the results of the data in relation to Salinas’ (2017) conceptualisation of voces perdidas and voces de poder to determine to what extent the use of inclusive language in Chile is reflective of grass-roots desire for increased linguistic representation, or whether it is a top-down process imposed by an external force. The results of this study indicate that in Chile, inclusive language tends to be used largely by younger generations in informal spaces, however there is some desire to use inclusive language in higher education settings. Individuals do not largely believe that inclusive language has been ‘imposed’ upon Chile and believe that it comes from a desire for inclusivity. Understandings of whether inclusive language aims to include ‘everyone’ without prioritising the masculine grammatical gender or whether it aims to represent non-binary and gender non-conforming people vary

Modelling serial order in behaviour: studies of spelling

Serial order in behaviour remains an interesting problem for computational modelling in psychology, especially for connectionist approaches. The 'Competitive Queuing' (CQ) approach to sequence generation has the advantage of accounting for a number of common features apparent in several different types of serial behaviour. This thesis addresses the general account which the CQ approach can give for constraints on serial errors within sequences by developing models of an acquired disorder of spelling, 'graphemic buffer disorder' (GBD). Two approaches to the development of a simple initial model of GBD into more complex models are demonstrated, and are related to the general problem of accounting for serial category constraints in sequencing. The initial CQ model of GBD is based on an existing model of speech production with minimal spelling-specific changes. A number of shortcomings are identified in the I performance of this model, in particular the inability to distinguish consonant and vowel letters, which prevents a striking feature of GBD errors - the preservation of consonant/vowel status - from being modelled. An analysis of the general problem of adding domain-specific constraints to CQ models suggests two approaches to improving the initial model. Two alternative extended models are thus advanced. The first is a development of the initial model incorporating an external template to specify consonant/vowel information. Simulations with this model demonstrate a much improved fit to :the data. The second model" develops a novel architecture, generalising the CQ approach to multi-layer networks. The model is less detailed but demonstrates the correct general features of the GBD error pattern. The relationship between the models is discussed and possible future research directions are identified

Use your illusion: the flash-lag effect as a tool for psychophysics

The flash-lag effect is an illusion in which a moving object is perceived advanced beyond an aligned flash. The majority of research into the effect has been directed at specifying its source, though a small body of literature simply makes use of flash-lag to answer diverse questions about perception – without necessarily arbitrating between competing accounts of its nature. The current thesis expands on this little-explored potential of the flash-lag effect with the presentation of three papers reporting programmes of research that exploit the phenomenon to address issues unrelated to its cause. In the first paper it is shown that, like in visual flash-lag, a similar motion direction based anisotropy is evident in the motor version of the effect, in which one’s unseen limb is perceived ahead of a flash. Specifically, the effect is greater for motion towards, rather than away from fixation. Furthermore, Paper I also demonstrates for the first time a motor flash-drag effect, in which one’s unseen moving hand ‘drags’ the perceived position of a nearby flash. It is argued that both of these findings are evidence of parallels between vision and action systems. Paper II takes advantage of the explicitly perceptual nature of the flash-lag effect to investigate whether the visuospatial perception of threatening objects is different to that of non-threatening objects. It is ultimately shown that when a moving stimulus is threatening, the flash-lag effect is greater, regardless of its direction of motion. Paper III shows that gamma movement (the apparent contraction of disappearing stimuli) adds to and subtracts from the forward displacement of contracting and expanding stimuli, respectively. Prior to these papers, however, an overview chapter reviews the flash-lag literature, and argues that the effect can be a useful tool for psychophysics, even without a consensus on its origin

STUDENT SENSE-MAKING IN QUANTUM MECHANICS: LESSONS TO TEACHERS FROM STUDIES OF GROUP-WORK AND REPRESENTATION USE

This dissertation covers two distinct threads of research; both threads focus on understanding student-thinking in quantum mechanics and then draw implications for future research and instruction. The primary goal of this collection of work is, in any way possible, to improve instruction and find ways to better support students in their learning. The first thread of research focuses on tension negotiation in collaborative group problem-solving. While group-work has become more commonplace in physics classes, this research provides instructors some means of seeing just how complicated group dynamics can be. In particular, I highlight one interactional pattern through which students resolve tension emerging in group interaction by closing conversations or conversational topics. In doing so, students leave some conceptual line of reasoning unresolved. This work provides important insights into helping instructors understand and respond to group dynamics and conversational closings. The second thread of work focuses on flexible representation use. This thread has two similar lines of research. The first focuses on how particular representations (wavefunction and external potential graphs) associated with the infinite-well and finite-well potentials can be used by students as tools to learn with. Adapting these models to new situations can lead to deeper understandings of both the model being adapted and the new situation. In some cases, the process of adaptation is not impeded by the student lacking a sophisticated understanding of the model being adapted. The second line of research on representation use focuses on the reflexiveness of student inquiry with representations. In reflexive reasoning, the student’s sense-making shapes, and is shaped by, the representations they draw and animate. This form of inquiry stands in contrast with traditional notions of proficiency in using representations which tend to highlight reproducing standard representational forms and then reading-out information from those forms. In this work, I highlight how this non-linear, reflexive sense-making is supported by the development of coherent, coupled systems of representations and attention to particular figural features, leading to the generation of new meaning

Language in and out of society: converging critiques of the Labovian paradigm

In this thesis, I discuss, from a metatheoretical perspective, how variationist sociolinguistics seems to be undergoing a paradigm shift in the Kuhnian sense. Roughly around the turn of the millennium, sociolinguists interested in the study of phonological change have shifted their focus from sociological macro-categories like social class or gender to social performativity and indexical meaningfulness in language variation. While some have theorised this development as a methodological extension of already existent work (Eckert, 2012), I locate here a radical theory change – an ontological breach with important consequences. What seems to be at stake is not the reliance on monolithic social categories but the ‘narrow interface between language and society’ (Labov, 2001, p. 28) from the early days. In other words, the orthodox conception of language change as language-internal factors ‘unfolding’ themselves in a speech community is being overthrown. The main body of this thesis comprises three papers, two of which have already been published (Woschitz, 2019; Woschitz & Yağlı, 2019), one of which is currently under review (Woschitz, under review). In Woschitz and Yağlı (2019), my colleague and I provide a case study of lexical meaning change in the course of the run-up to the Turkish constitutional referendum 2017. We argue that language change, be it lexical or phonological, cannot be separated from the sociocultural surroundings in which it takes place. Woschitz (2019) surveys how Labov himself has quarrelled with this fact in his own work, and how, in an oeuvre that spans 50 years, he has adjusted his theoretical framework to rise to the challenge. Part of the described reorientations have been initiated by so-called third-wave variationism, with Eckert (2012) leading the way, but epistemological tensions in Labov’s treatment of language and society have been present from the start. Third-wave variationism, in turn, is still sorting out the consequences of the radical reorientations it proposes. Woschitz (under review) zooms out for the big picture. In this paper, I draw a parallel between the history of Labovian sociolinguistics and Chomskyan syntax. Even though these two linguistic subdisciplines are rather different in nature, I argue that their theoretical reorientations over the past 60 years share certain philosophical similarities. Here, I turn to the philosophy of science, particularly to the scientific realism debate, to assess whether one can identify in their developments a common denominator that warrants talking about scientific progress in the broad sense. I argue that linguists turning away from Universal Grammar and internal factors in their explanations of language-related phenomena is indicative of a broader trend within linguistics – a reverse trend that problematises linguistic autonomy that was envisaged by linguists in the past 200 years (Joseph, 2002, chapter 3)

Cognitive Mechanisms and Computational Models: Explanation in Cognitive Neuroscience

Cognitive Neuroscience seeks to integrate cognitive psychology and neuroscience. I critique existing analyses of this integration project, and offer my own account of how it ought to be understood given the practices of researchers in these fields. A recent proposal suggests that integration between cognitive psychology and neuroscience can be achieved `seamlessly' via mechanistic explanation. Cognitive models are elliptical mechanism sketches, according to this proposal. This proposal glosses over several difficulties concerning the practice of cognitive psychology and the nature of cognitive models, however. Although psychology's information-processing models superficially resemble mechanism sketches, they in fact systematically include and exclude different kinds of information. I distinguish two kinds of information-processing model, neither of which specifies the entities and activities characteristic of mechanistic models, even sketchily. Furthermore, theory development in psychology does not involve the filling in of these missing details, but rather refinement of the sorts of models they start out as. I contrast the development of psychology's attention filter models with the development of neurobiology's models of sodium channel filtering. I argue that extending the account of mechanisms to include what I define as generic mechanisms provides a more promising route towards integration. Generic mechanisms are the in-the-world counterparts to abstract types. They thus have causal-explanatory powers which are shared by all the tokens that instantiate that type. This not only provides a way for generalizations to factor into mechanistic explanations, which allows for the `upward-looking' explanations needed for integrating cognitive models, but also solves some internal problems in the mechanism literature concerning schemas and explanatory relevance. I illustrate how generic mechanisms are discovered and used with examples from computational cognitive neuroscience. I argue that connectionist models can be understood as approximations to generic brain mechanisms, which resolves a longstanding philosophical puzzle as to their role. Furthermore, I argue that understanding scientific models in general in terms of generic mechanisms allows for a unified account of the types of inferences made in modeling and in experiment

Why not model spoken word recognition instead of phoneme monitoring?

Norris, McQueen & Cutler present a detailed account of the decision stage of the phoneme monitoring task. However, we question whether this contributes to our understanding of the speech recognition process itself, and we fail to see why phonotactic knowledge is playing a role in phoneme recognition.