A psychometric measure of working memory capacity for configured body movement.

Working memory (WM) models have traditionally assumed at least two domain-specific storage systems for verbal and visuo-spatial information. We review data that suggest the existence of an additional slave system devoted to the temporary storage of body movements, and present a novel instrument for its assessment: the movement span task. The movement span task assesses individuals' ability to remember and reproduce meaningless configurations of the body. During the encoding phase of a trial, participants watch short videos of meaningless movements presented in sets varying in size from one to five items. Immediately after encoding, they are prompted to reenact as many items as possible. The movement span task was administered to 90 participants along with standard tests of verbal WM, visuo-spatial WM, and a gesture classification test in which participants judged whether a speaker's gestures were congruent or incongruent with his accompanying speech. Performance on the gesture classification task was not related to standard measures of verbal or visuo-spatial working memory capacity, but was predicted by scores on the movement span task. Results suggest the movement span task can serve as an assessment of individual differences in WM capacity for body-centric information

Can Peanuts Fall in Love with Distributional Semantics?

The context in which a sentence appears can drastically alter our expectations about upcoming words - for example, following a short story involving an anthropomorphic peanut, experimental participants are more likely to expect the sentence 'the peanut was in love' than 'the peanut was salted', as indexed by N400 amplitude (Nieuwland & van Berkum, 2006). This rapid and dynamic updating of comprehenders' expectations about the kind of events that a peanut may take part in based on context has been explained using the construct of Situation Models - updated mental representations of key elements of an event under discussion, in this case, the peanut protagonist. However, recent work showing that N400 amplitude can be predicted based on distributional information alone raises the question whether situation models are in fact necessary for the kinds of contextual effects observed in previous work. To investigate this question, we attempt to model the results of Nieuwland and van Berkum (2006) using six computational language models and three sets of word vectors, none of which have explicit situation models or semantic grounding. We find that the effect found by Nieuwland and van Berkum (2006) can be fully modeled by two language models and two sets of word vectors, with others showing a reduced effect. Thus, at least some processing effects normally explained through situation models may not in fact require explicit situation models

Modality Switching in a Property Verification Task: An ERP Study of What Happens When Candles Flicker after High Heels Click

The perceptual modalities associated with property words, such as flicker or click, have previously been demonstrated to affect subsequent property verification judgments (Pecher et al., 2003). Known as the conceptual modality switch effect, this finding supports the claim that brain systems for perception and action help subserve the representation of concepts. The present study addressed the cognitive and neural substrate of this effect by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) as participants performed a property verification task with visual or auditory properties in key trials. We found that for visual property verifications, modality switching was associated with an increased amplitude N400. For auditory verifications, switching led to a larger late positive complex. Observed ERP effects of modality switching suggest property words access perceptual brain systems. Moreover, the timing and pattern of the effects suggest perceptual systems impact the decision-making stage in the verification of auditory properties, and the semantic stage in the verification of visual properties

Cognitive, neurophysiological, and functional correlates of proverb interpretation abnormalities in schizophrenia.

Abstract A hallmark of schizophrenia is impaired proverb interpretation, which could be due to: (1) aberrant activation of disorganized semantic associations, or (2) working memory (WM) deficits. We assessed 18 schizophrenia patients and 18 normal control participants on proverb interpretation, and evaluated these two hypotheses by examining within patients the correlations of proverb interpretation with disorganized symptoms and auditory WM, respectively. Secondarily, we also explored the relationships between proverb interpretation and a spectrum of cognitive functions including auditory sensory-memory encoding (as indexed by the mismatch negativity (MMN) event-related brain potential (ERP)); executive function; and social0occupational function. As expected, schizophrenia patients produced less accurate and less abstract descriptions of proverbs than did controls. These proverb interpretation difficulties in patients were not significantly correlated with disorganization or other symptom factors, but were significantly correlated ( p , .05) with WM impairment, as well as with impairments in sensory-memory encoding, executive function, and social0occupational function. These results offer no support for disorganized associations in abnormal proverb interpretation in schizophrenia, but implicate WM deficits, perhaps as a part of a syndrome related to generalized frontal cortical dysfunction. (JINS, 2007, 13, 653-663.

Making sense of theory construction: Metaphor and disciplined imagination

This article draws upon Karl Weick’s insights into the nature of theorizing, and extends and refines his conception of theory construction as ‘disciplined imagination’. An essential ingredient in Weick’s ‘disciplined imagination’ involves his assertion that thought trials and theoretical representations typically involve a transfer from one epistemic sphere to another through the creative use of metaphor. The article follows up on this point and draws out how metaphor works, how processes of metaphorical imagination partake in theory construction, and how insightful metaphors and the theoretical representations that result from them can be selected. The paper also includes a discussion of metaphors-in-use (organizational improvisation as jazz and organizational behavior as collective mind) which Weick proposed in his own writings. The whole purpose of this exercise is to theoretically augment and ground the concept of ‘disciplined imagination’, and in particular to refine the nature of thought trials and selection within it. In doing so, we also aim to provide pointers for the use of metaphorical imagination in the process of theory construction