Cognitive Sciences

Murayama and Jach critically evaluate the idea that motivation is a dynamic that determines behavior and propose alternatively that it might be an emergent property that people construe through perceived regularities in experience and action. The critique has value but fails to appreciate the progress that has been made in moving beyond the idea of which the authors are critical.

Integrating the predictive processing framework into our understanding of motivation offers promising avenues for theoretical development, while shedding light on the computational processes underlying motivated behavior. Here we decompose expected free energy into intrinsic value (i.e., epistemic affordance) and extrinsic value (i.e., instrumental affordance) to provide insights into how individuals adapt to and interact with their environment.

Understanding the psychological computations underlying motivation can shed light onto motivational constructs as emergent phenomena. According to Murayama and Jach, reward-learning is a key candidate mechanism. However, there's no such thing as a free lunch: Not only benefits (like reward), but also costs inherent to motivated behaviors (like effort, or uncertainty) are an essential part of the picture.

Although higher-level constructs often fail to explain the mechanisms underlying motivation, we argue that purely mechanistic approaches have limitations. Lower-level neural data help us identify “biologically plausible” mechanisms, while higher-level constructs are critical to formulate measurable behavioral outcomes when constructing computational models. Therefore, we propose that a multi-level, multi-measure approach is required to fully unpack the black box of motivated behavior.

Though we see the potential for benefits from the development of process-oriented approaches, we argue that it falls prey to many of the same critiques raised about the existing construct level of analysis. The construct-level approach will likely dominate motivation research until we develop computational models that are not only accurate, but also broadly usable.

The target article argued that motivation constructs are treated as black boxes and called for work that specifies the mental computational processes underlying motivated behavior. In response to critical commentaries, we clarify our philosophical standpoint, elaborate on the meaning of mental computational processes and why past work was not sufficient, and discuss the opportunities to expand the scope of the framework.

We argue that the target article's computational/reductionistic approach to motivation is insufficient to explain the energization of human behavior, because such explanation requires broad consideration of “what people are trying to do.” We illustrate what is gained by retaining (rather than jettisoning) higher-order motivation constructs and show that the authors’ approach assumes, but fails to name, such constructs.

Some constructs in motivation science are certainly underdeveloped and some motivation researchers may work with underspecified constructs, as suggested by Murayama and Jach (M&J). However, this is not indicative of a general problem in motivation science. Many motivation theories focus on specific mechanisms underlying motivated behavior and thus have already adopted the computational process perspective that M&J call for.

Whole Trait Theory (and other dynamic theories of personality) can illuminate the process by which motivational states become traits. Mental computational processes constitute part of the explanatory mechanisms that drive trait manifestations. Empirical work on Whole Trait Theory may inform future research directions on mental computational processes.

In their proposal for unpacking the black box of motivation, Murayama and Jach (M&J) propose three types of reductions: From high-level to low-level motivational constructs, from motivation to cognition, and from contentful to contentless explanations. Although these reductions come with the promise of parsimony, they carry the risk of losing vital explanatory power.

Murayama and Jach claim that current motivational constructs do not specify causal processes (black-box problem) and that mental computational processes solve this problem. We argue, process-focused research requires theoretical frameworks addressing situational variations, individual differences, and their interaction. Classic achievement motivation theory provides comprehensive models with empirically measurable process-related constructs and predictions. Recent developments build on this, addressing motivation, action, and their socio-cultural and lifespan context. Theory-free mental computational processes cannot do any of that.

The proposed “black-box” problem and its solution are drawn from the same substance-oriented framework. This framework's assumptions have consequences that re-create the black-box problem at a foundational level. Specifically, Murayama and Jach's solution fails to explain novel behavior that emerges through an organism's development. A process-oriented theoretical shift provides an ontological explanation for emergent behavior and eliminates the black-box problem altogether.

Murayama and Jach rightfully aim to conceptualize motivation as an emergent property of a dynamic system of interacting elements. However, they do not embrace the ontological and paradigmatic constraints of the dynamic systems approach. They therefore miss the very process of emergence and how it can be formally modeled and tested by specific types of computer simulation.

Murayama and Jach argue that it is not clearly specified how motivation constructs produce behavior and that this black box should be unpacked. We argue that the authors overlook important classic theory and highlight recent research programs that already started unboxing. We feel that without relying on the mechanisms that such programs uncover, the proposed computational approach will be fruitless.

Although in basic agreement with Murayama and Jach's call for greater attention to the black boxes underlying motivated behavior, we provide examples of our published suggestions regarding how subjective task value (and ability self-concepts) “gets into people's knowledge structures.” We suggest additional mental computational processes to investigate and call for a developmental and situated individual differences approach to this work.

Murayama and Jach offer a thoughtful and timely critique of motivation constructs. We largely concur with their basic premises, but offer additional input and clarification regarding the importance of carefully considering the energization and direction components of motivation, and fully attending to the hierarchical aspect of motivation rather than prioritizing particular levels of analysis.

In their article, Murayama and Jach contend that a mental computational model demonstrates that high-level motivations are emergent properties from underlying cognitive processes rather than instigators of behaviors. Despite points of agreement with the authors' critiques of the motivation literature, I argue that their claim of dismantling the black box of the human mind has been constructed on shaking grounds.

Murayama and Jach point out that we do not sufficiently understand the constructs and mental computations underlying higher-order motivated behaviors. Although this may be generally true, we would like to add and contribute to the discussion by outlining how interdisciplinary research on novelty-evoked exploration has advanced the study of learning and curiosity.

Many motivational constructs are opaque “black boxes,” and should be replaced by an explicit account of the underlying psychological mechanisms. The theory of motivational systems has begun to provide such an account. I recently contributed to this tradition with a general architecture of motivation, which connects “energization” and “direction” through the goal-setting activity of emotions, and serves as an evolutionary grounded map of motivational processes.

Sự chữa lành đích thực bắt đầu từ ý thức trách nhiệm với cộng đồng, xã hội, đất nước và hành tinh này. Đó cũng là nơi khoa học về lòng biết ơn đóng vai trò quan trọng, giúp chúng ta trân trọng những điều nhỏ bé, nuôi dưỡng sự bền bỉ để vượt qua khó khăn, và tìm thấy sự cân bằng. Chữa lành không phải là trốn tránh thực tại, mà là đối mặt với nó bằng tâm thế (...) biết ơn và khao khát đóng góp cho một thế giới, cho một cộng đồng tốt đẹp hơn. (shrink)

Humans and other animals communicate a large quantity of information vocally through nonverbal means. Here, we review the domains of animal vocalizations, human nonverbal vocal communication and computer-mediated communication (CMC), under the common thread of emotion, which, we suggest, connects them as a dimension of all these types of communication. After reviewing the use of emotions across domains, we focus on two concepts that have often been opposed to emotion in the animal versus human communication literature: control and meaning. Non-human (...) vocal communication is commonly described as emotional, preventing either control or meaning; in contrast, the emotional dimension of human nonverbal signals does not prevent them from being perceived as both intentionally produced and meaningful. Amongst others, we disagree with this position, highlighting here that emotions should be integrated across species and modalities such as the written modality. We conclude by delineating ways in which each of these domains can meaningfully influence each other, and debates in their respective fields, and more generally the debate on the evolution of communication. (shrink)

The concept of general arousal has a long history in emotion research. However, the concept is more complex and nuanced than is generally appreciated. In this comment, we note some of the early conceptualizations of arousal and how they might comport with more modern representations of the construct. Importantly, we show how modern conceptualizations which incorporate the physiological complexity of arousal measurement and peripheral-central nervous system interactions might help to provide a more solid framework for the construct moving forward. The (...) authors of the target article are to be commended for addressing this important issue. (shrink)

This article highlights the systematic impact of experienced and implicit affect on the intensity of mental effort. The key argument is that both consciously experienced affect and implicitly activated affect knowledge can influence responses in the cardiovascular system reflecting effort intensity by informing individuals about task demand—the key variable determining resource mobilization. According to the motivational intensity theory, effort rises with experienced demand as long as success is possible and the necessary effort is justified. Twenty-five years of programmatic research have (...) provided clear evidence that both consciously experienced affect and implicitly activated affect knowledge systematically influence the intensity of effort. Importantly, affect's impact on effort is moderated by task context variables, like objective task difficulty, incentive, and other general boundary conditions. (shrink)

This paper discusses (i) the usefulness and (ii) the clarity of the concept of arousal. In discussing its usefulness, I argue that we can explain some key “arousal effects” without relying on the concept of arousal. To do so, I consider the role of the appraisal of affective relevance as a process mainly subserved by the amygdala and explaining emotional effects on attention, memory, and learning. Then, with respect to the clarity of the concept of arousal, I use the componential (...) approach to emotion to suggest that further research may investigate whether the umbrella term “arousal” covers five different concepts (energy, sympathetic nervous system activity, intensity, strength, and salience), each corresponding to a specific component of emotion. (shrink)

In this commentary, I briefly present in chronological order several historical developments which can explain some of the confusions with respect to arousal that have become entrenched in the contemporary debate. These historical developments include: Immanuel Kant's eighteenth-century division of the affects into sthenic vs. asthenic; the emergence of modern conceptions of pleasure and displeasure in the West; the nineteenth-century alignment of pleasure and displeasure with “sthenic” and “asthenic” in psycho-physiology; the early-twentieth-century disruption of this nineteenth-century alignment; the establishment of (...) a new-physiological order of emotions; and the emergence of “emotional excitement” as the new feeling of the new emotion order of physiology. (shrink)

The idea of arousal as a non-specific state of activation has been implicated as an explanatory factor for many aspects of human behavior, ranging from emotional experiences to learning and memory. Critiques of this concept have highlighted that arousal is ambiguous and evidence for its role in emotion is mixed. However, contemporary emotion theories and empirical research continue to incorporate the concept of arousal in ways that fail to address its problems. Here, we review the origins of the term arousal (...) in physiology and trace how it has been translated and applied to psychology (particularly as it relates to emotion). We consider whether the construct of arousal is currently (a) consistent and (b) useful in understanding human behavior. (shrink)

Whereas cognitive models of learning often assume direct experience with both the features of an event and with a true label or outcome, much of everyday learning arises from hearing the opinions of others, without direct access to either the experience or the ground-truth outcome. We consider how people can learn which opinions to trust in such scenarios by extending the hedge algorithm: a classic solution for learning from diverse information sources. We first introduce a semi-supervised variant we call the (...) delusional hedge capable of learning from both supervised and unsupervised experiences. In two experiments, we examine the alignment between human judgments and predictions from the standard hedge, the delusional hedge, and a heuristic baseline model. Results indicate that humans effectively incorporate both labeled and unlabeled information in a manner consistent with the delusional hedge algorithm—suggesting that human learners not only gauge the accuracy of information sources but also their consistency with other reliable sources. The findings advance our understanding of human learning from diverse opinions, with implications for the development of algorithms that better capture how people learn to weigh conflicting information sources. (shrink)

Amazon Book Review Series of “Better Economics for the Earth”.

Amazon Book Review Series of “Better Economics for the Earth: A Lesson from Quantum and Information Theories”.

According to recent accounts, we experience the emotion of “being moved” when a situation brings into play our core values. What are the core values evoked by nonhuman landscapes, however, particularly as the distinction between man-made and natural environments becomes increasingly blurry in the so-called Anthropocene? That is the central question tackled by this article. I start by rethinking the sublime as an affect that, since Romanticism, has shaped Western attitudes toward nature. I argue that today's climate crisis calls for (...) an expansion of our affective engagement with the nonhuman: the sublime can be part of our emotional repertoire, but only if it is complicated by feelings that point to constitutive human–nonhuman entanglement. (shrink)

Recent research has revealed the widespread effects of emotion on cognitive functions and memory. However, the influence of emotional valence on verbal short-term memory remains largely unexplored, especially in children. This study measured the effect of emotional valence on word immediate serial recall in 4–6-year-old French children (N = 124). Results show a robust effect of emotional valence on recall performances and recall errors. More precisely, we observed a facilitating effect of the positive valence of words: it allows better performance (...) and causes few recall errors. On the contrary, the data indicated a disruptive impact of negative word valence: the latter causes very low recall performance and is associated with a high proportion of recall errors. These findings add new evidence of the influence of emotion on children’s verbal short-term memory. Our results are discussed in relation to current semantic and attentional explanations of the emotional enhancement of memory. (shrink)

This commentary considers some applications of the typology of nostalgia proposed by Saulius Geniusas. The typology can illuminate our understanding of existential feelings of temporal malaise, perturbations of temporal experience in grief, and common experiences of letdown and resistance to the passage of time. It can also help in diagnosing various obstacles to mindfulness. However, the typology does not reflect the more positive aspects of nostalgia, such as the appreciation of transience as contributing to value—an important theme in Japanese aesthetics.

Wildfires have become an increasing global threat to public health and quality of life. Many countries employ air quality monitoring and reporting systems to mitigate health risks associated with air pollution, including wildfire smoke. This study investigates the factors influencing individuals’ sensitivity to air quality information, specifically their likelihood of reducing or ceasing outdoor activities in response to air quality ratings, with a focus on wildfire smoke exposure in the western United States. Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics, the (...) study analyzed data from 2,237 participants in the Boise Metropolitan Area of Idaho and Boise State University. The findings reveal that women, older individuals, and those with higher educational levels are more likely to reduce outdoor activities at lower unhealthy AQI levels (the lowest being ‘good air quality,’ while the highest being ‘hazardous air quality’), while individuals with higher incomes are less responsive. Women and older adults, in particular, are even more likely to eliminate all outdoor activities. Additionally, individuals who perceive wildfire smoke as more severe than other natural disasters are more inclined to reduce or eliminate outdoor activities at lower unhealthy air quality levels. Experiences of wildfire smoke-related illness—either personally or within their households—further amplify this effect. These findings highlight the importance of localized, context-specific approaches to AQI dissemination and wildfire smoke risk communication to build resilience and safeguard public health in the face of escalating wildfire challenges driven by climate change. (shrink)

There has been considerable research on confusion and frustration that has treated them as two unitary constructs, distinct from each other. In this article, we argue that there is instead a constellation of different types of confusion and frustration, with different antecedents, manifestations, and impacts, and that the commonalities between many types of confusion and frustration justify thinking of them as part of the same constellation of affect, distinct from other prominent affective categories. We discuss how these types of affect (...) have been considered historically and in key models. We then discuss unusual manifestations of each form of affect that have been documented in the literature, and what light they shed on the broader constructs. We conclude with a discussion of a new theoretical framing that treats confusion and frustration as a confrustion constellation, and the opportunities and open questions that this perspective presents. (shrink)

Studies of the evolution of language rely heavily on comparisons to nonhuman primates, particularly the gestural communication of nonhuman apes. Differences between human and ape gestures are largely ones of degree rather than kind. For example, while human gestures are more flexible, ape gestures are not inflexible. In this piece, I closely consider two features of the gestural communication of apes and humans that might display differences in kind: iconicity and temporal alignment. Iconicity has long played a privileged role in (...) theories of gestural language origins, the proposal being that it provided a steppingstone into language through a stage of pantomime. However, iconicity is not as easy as it seems. Evidence from co-speech gestures of hearing children and from homesign suggests that iconic reference is both cognitively complex and slow to develop in humans. There is no conclusive evidence that nonhuman apes understand or produce iconic gestures; some gestures may appear iconic to human observers but the apes themselves may not understand the similarity between form and meaning. Far from providing an easy pathway into the emergence of symbolic communication, iconicity relies on sophisticated capacities for analogy and abstraction, ones often lacking in apes and young children. Temporal alignment between gesture and vocalization is another area that may show sharp contrasts between adult humans and apes, though data here is sparser. I discuss the tight synchronization of gesture and speech that emerges over the first year of life in human children and contrast it with gesture and vocalization in apes, which typically are described as overlapping but not simultaneous. Human ancestors probably communicated in ways similar to other apes, but the dual emergence of the ability to use iconic reference and the alignment of hand and mouth may have set our ancestors down a unique evolutionary road toward language. (shrink)

This study delves into how various musical factors influence the experience of auditory illusions, building on Diana Deutsch's scale illusion experiments and subsequent studies. Exploring the interaction between scale mode and timbre, this study assesses their influence on auditory misperceptions, while also considering the impact of an individual's musical training and ability to discern absolute pitch. Participants were divided into nonmusicians, musicians with absolute pitch, and musicians with relative pitch, and were exposed to stimuli modified across three scale modes (tonal, (...) dissonant, atonal) and two timbres (same, different). The findings suggest that scale illusions occur less frequently with different timbres and vary with scale mode. Crucially, the absolute pitch ability appears to have a more significant impact on the perception of illusions than the duration of musical training. This research contributes to understanding the complex interplay between various factors in auditory perception and the mechanisms behind the experience of auditory illusions. (shrink)

Decision confidence is a prototypical metacognitive representation that is thought to approximate the probability that a decision is correct. The perception of being correct has also been associated with affective valence such that being correct feels more positive and being mistaken more negative. This suggests that, similarly to confidence, affective valence reflects the probability that a decision is correct. However, both fields of research have seen very little interaction. Here, we test if affect, similarly to confidence reflects probability that a (...) decision is correct in two perceptual decision-making experiments where we compare the relationships of theoretically relevant variables (e.g. evidence, accuracy, and expectancy) with both confidence and affect ratings. The findings indicate that confidence and affect ratings are similarly sensitive to changes in accuracy, evidence, and expectancy, indicating that both track the subjective probability that a decision is correct. We identify various mechanisms that can explain these results. We also envision future research for clarifying the role of cognitive and affective aspects of metacognition relying on deeper integration of the respective research fields. (shrink)

What is active touch? A common conception of active touch gives a rough but rather intuitive sketch. That is, active touch can be understood as mainly object-oriented, controlled movement. While parts or the totality of this characterization is espoused by an important number of researchers on touch, I will argue that this conception faces important challenges when we pay close attention to each of these features. I hold that active touch should be considered as before all else purposive. This view (...) has its roots in the active sensing literature in robotics but will be amended to give insight into human touch in the natural world. (shrink)

Ontological accounts of shame claim that the emotion has to do with our basic human vulnerability: on this view, one is ashamed over having had this vulnerability exposed before others. Against this view, I argue that it is not our vulnerable dependency on others itself which causes us to feel ashamed, but our rejection in the face of such vulnerability. Shame is not the result of simply being looked at, then, but of being looked at and not being seen. In (...) this sense, the shame we do feel over being vulnerable before, and dependent on, others is not a necessary part of human relations, but a sign that something has gone wrong within them; it is personal, not ontological. (shrink)

Việc áp dụng các nguyên lý quản trị mục tiêu lớn chính là nền tảng để Trung tâm Nghiên cứu Xã hội Liên ngành (ISR) thuộc Trường Đại học Phenikaa có thể thực hiện những mục tiêu phát triển dài hạn, khai thác sức mạnh của nghiên cứu liên ngành, và hiện thực hóa giá trị của các kiến thức không bị ràng buộc bởi tính thực dụng.

What is the value of a lightning bolt? A strange question, perhaps. But as it arcs across the sky, that bolt is doing something remarkable: it's fixing nitrogen from the air, making it available to plants in a process that took nature billions of years to evolve. If we tried to replicate this service industrially, it would cost millions. Yet, in our economic systems, that lightning bolt is worth exactly zero dollars and zero cents. This paradox sits at the heart (...) of our troubled relationship with nature. For centuries, we have tried to squeeze the infinite complexity of the natural world into the finite box of market prices. But as climate change accelerates and biodiversity collapses, it is becoming clear that our economic models are not just incomplete – they are actively dangerous. A new paradigm is emerging in the interdisciplinary of biology, physics, information science, and quantum theory, offering fresh perspectives on how we might better understand and measure value. (shrink)