17,904 research outputs found
Layers in the Fabric of Mind: A Critical Review of Cognitive Ontogeny
The essay is critically examines the conceptual problems with the influential modularity model of mind. We shall see that one of the essential characters of modules, namely informational encapsulation, is not only inessential, it ties a knot at a crucial place blocking the solution to the problem of understanding the formation of concepts from percepts (nodes of procedural knowledge). Subsequently I propose that concept formation takes place by modulation of modules leading to cross-representations, which were otherwise prevented by encapsulation. It must be noted that the argument is not against modular architecture, but a variety of an architecture that prevents interaction among modules. This is followed by a brief argument demonstrating that module without modularization, i.e. without developmental history, is impossible. Finally the emerging picture of cognitive development is drawn in the form of the layers in the fabric of mind, with a brief statement of the possible implications
Inférences réflexives dans la publicité
Advertisements are so
ubiquitous nowadays that capturing the
addressee’s attention and maintaining it
long enough for them to be fully
processed have become fundamental
objectives for advertisers. Employing
specific strategies in the design of the
advertisement contributes efficiently to
achieving these goals, getting the
audience not only to attend the
stimulus but also to process it in certain
ways favourable for the advertiser. We
argue that Relevance theory, an
approach to communication built on a
massively modular view of cognition,
offers the right tools to explain the
nature of the interpretative processes
in verbal comprehension. Knowledge of
the relevance-based reflexive
inferential procedures involved in
utterance interpretation allows
advertisers to foresee the addressee’s
processing behaviour, giving them the
possibility to control it in a such a way
that the intended interpretative effects
are achieved in the desired way
Are developmental disorders like cases of adult brain damage? Implications from connectionist modelling
It is often assumed that similar domain-specific behavioural impairments found in cases of adult brain damage and developmental disorders correspond to similar underlying causes, and can serve as convergent evidence for the modular structure of the normal adult cognitive system. We argue that this correspondence is contingent on an unsupported assumption that atypical development can produce selective deficits while the rest of the system develops normally (Residual Normality), and that this assumption tends to bias data collection in the field. Based on a review of connectionist models of acquired and developmental disorders in the domains of reading and past tense, as well as on new simulations, we explore the computational viability of Residual Normality and the potential role of development in producing behavioural deficits. Simulations demonstrate that damage to a developmental model can produce very different effects depending on whether it occurs prior to or following the training process. Because developmental disorders typically involve damage prior to learning, we conclude that the developmental process is a key component of the explanation of endstate impairments in such disorders. Further simulations demonstrate that in simple connectionist learning systems, the assumption of Residual Normality is undermined by processes of compensation or alteration elsewhere in the system. We outline the precise computational conditions required for Residual Normality to hold in development, and suggest that in many cases it is an unlikely hypothesis. We conclude that in developmental disorders, inferences from behavioural deficits to underlying structure crucially depend on developmental conditions, and that the process of ontogenetic development cannot be ignored in constructing models of developmental disorders
Models of atypical development must also be models of normal development
Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of developmental disorders and normal cognition that include children are becoming increasingly common and represent part of a newly expanding field of developmental cognitive neuroscience. These studies have illustrated the importance of the process of development in understanding brain mechanisms underlying cognition and including children ill the study of the etiology of developmental disorders
Session 5: Development, Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology
Proceedings of the Pittsburgh Workshop in History and Philosophy of Biology, Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, March 23-24 2001 Session 5: Development, Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psycholog
Neuroplasticity, neural reuse, and the language module
What conception of mental architecture can survive the
evidence of neuroplasticity and neural reuse in the human brain?
In particular, what sorts of modules are compatible with this
evidence? I aim to show how developmental and adult
neuroplasticity, as well as evidence of pervasive neural reuse,
forces us to revise the standard conception of modularity and
spells the end of a hardwired and dedicated language module. I
argue from principles of both neural reuse and neural redundancy
that language is facilitated by a composite of modules (or
module-like entities), few if any of which are likely to be
linguistically special, and that neuroplasticity provides
evidence that (in key respects and to an appreciable extent) few
if any of them ought to be considered developmentally robust,
though their development does seem to be constrained by features
intrinsic to particular regions of cortex (manifesting as
domain-specific predispositions or acquisition biases). In the
course of doing so I articulate a schematically and
neurobiologically precise framework for understanding modules and
their supramodular interactions
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