This chapter provides an overview of the phenomenology of size perception and the use of instructions to tease apart phenomenal and cognitive aspects. It develops his own recent proposals concerning the geometry of visual space. The chapter proposes that visual space is contracted along the lines of sight. This contraction would explain the apparent convergence of railway tracks, but without invoking a “proximal mode” experience. Parallel railway tracks receding into the distance project converging lines onto the retinas. A (...) true proximal mode representation would show these lines converging as if in a vertical plane. But we experience them as converging while also receding in depth along the ground. The chapter suggests that this calls for a third geometry of visual space, intermediate between a linear perspective projection and full phenomenal constancy. The chapter attributes reports of full constancy to cognitive factors. size perception, visual space, geometry, lines of sight, proximal mode, phenomenal constancy. (shrink)

Some experiments in perceptual psychology measure perceivers’ phenomenal experiences of objects versus their cognitive assessments of object properties. Analyzing such experiments, this article responds to Pizlo’s claim that much work on shape constancy before 1985 confused problems of shape ambiguity with problems of shape constancy. Pizlo fails to grasp the logic of experimental designs directed toward phenomenal aspects of shape constancy. In the domain of size perception, Granrud’s studies of size constancy in children (...) and adults distinguish phenomenal from cognitive factors. (shrink)

Seeing happens effortlessly and yet is endlessly complex. Among the most fascinating aspects of visual perception is its stability and constancy. As we shift our gaze or move about the world, the light projected onto the retinas is constantly changing. Yet the surrounding objects appear stable in their properties. Psychologists have long been interested in the constancies. They have asked questions such as: How good is constancy? Is constancy a fact about how things look, or is it (...) a product of our beliefs and judgments about how things look? How can the contents of visual experience be studied experimentally? Philosophers have long been interested in characterizing visual experience and have become widely interested in the constancies more recently. As psychologists and philosophers have interacted, new questions have arisen: If experience is not as of retinal stimulation (proximal mode), but does not always exhibit constancy (or at least not in all respects), how shall we describe this intermediate state? Also, should we regard any departure from constancy as a failure of the visual system, or might it be a reasonable or adaptive response? In what circumstances is seeing highly conditioned by cognitive factors such as background assumptions, and in what circumstances not? Our volume focuses on size constancy and color constancy. It considers methodologies for studying conscious visual perception, efforts to describe visual experience in relation to constancy, what it means that constancy is not always perfect, and the conceptual resources needed for explaining visual experience. (shrink)

The phenomenon of size constancy is defined as the apparent perceptual invariance of the linear dimensions of a seen object as this approaches the eye or recedes from it. It has been interpreted as resulting from the application by the brain of a size correction, made possible by the subject's apprehension of distance cues present in the image. We present several observations which, by dissociating accommodation from distance of the seen object and by suppressing the optic effects (...) of accommodation on the visual image itself, show that this interpretation is incorrect, and that in fact the size correction of the visual image is a function of the central effort of accommodation, not of the distance of the seen object. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: Hallucinations and delusions that complicate Parkinson’s disease could lead to nursing home placement and are linked to increased mortality. Cognitive impairments are typically associated with the presence of hallucinations but there are no data regarding whether such a relationship exists with delusions. OBJECTIVE: We hypothesized that hallucinations would be associated with executive and visuospatial disturbance. An exploratory examination of cognitive correlates of delusions was also completed to address the question of whether they differ from hallucinations. METHODS: 144 (...) PD subjects completed a neuropsychological battery to assess cognition and the SAPS to examine psychosis. Correlational analyses assessed associations between hallucinations and delusions with cognitive domains. RESULTS: 48 subjects reported psychotic symptoms: 25 experienced hallucinations without delusions, 23 had symptoms dominated by delusions. Severity and/or number of hallucination subtypes were significantly correlated with lower scores in language, memory, attention, executive functioning, and visuospatial ability. Correlations with delusions were non-significant. Tests of differences in the size of the correlations between groups revealed a significant relationship between language and visuospatial performance with hallucinations. CONCLUSIONS: Cognitive correlates of hallucinations and delusions appear to be different in PD, suggesting distinct pathogenic mechanisms and possibly anatomical substrates. Hence, delusions may not share the same associations with dementia as hallucinations. Since this is a new finding, further studies will be needed to confirm our results. (shrink)

Modern human beings are most sharply distinguished from all other organisms alive today by their possession of symbolic reasoning, the cognitive capacity that makes possible the mental construction of alternative versions of the world. Scrutiny of the human fossil and archaeological records reveals that, while brain sizes expanded independently in several hominid lineages over the course of the Pleistocene, this qualitatively distinctive symbolic faculty only emerged in our own. What is more, this acquisition was made remarkably recently: well within (...) the 200,000-year tenure on Earth of our anatomically distinctive species Homo sapiens. The earliest anatomical Homo sapiens appear to have behaved in much the same manner as their non-symbolic contemporaries, although it is highly likely that they had acquired the neural wiring necessary for symbolic thought in the same event of developmental reorganization that gave Homo sapiens its strikingly derived bony morphology. Only subsequent to about 100,000 years ago do archaeological traces suggest that our forebears had actually begun to think symbolically. This implies that the new capacity was released by a purely cultural stimulus. I suggest that cultural trigger involved was the spontaneous invention of language by members of a small population isolate of Homo sapiens in Africa, at some time after about 100,000 years ago. Structured, rule-bound language is intricately intertwined with symbolic thought as we experience it today; and it is possible to conceive at least in principle how each could have fed back into the other to create a new dynamic. (shrink)

Objectives:Social isolation is increasing in aging societies and several studies have shown a relation with worse cognition in old age. However, less is known about the association in the oldest-old (85+); the group that is at highest risk for both social isolation and dementia. Methods:Analyses were based on follow-up 5 to 9 of the longitudinal German study on aging, cognition, and dementia in primary care patients (AgeCoDe) and the study on needs, health service use, costs, and health-related quality of life (...) in a large sample of oldest-old primary care patients (AgeQualiDe), a multi-center population-based prospective cohort study. Measurements included the Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS-6), with a score below 12 indicating social isolation, as well as the Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE) as an indicator of cognitive function. Results:Dementia-free study participants (n = 942) were M = 86.4 (SD = 3.0) years old at observation onset, 68.2% were women. One third (32.3%) of them were socially isolated. Adjusted linear hybrid mixed effects models revealed significantly lower cognitive function in individuals with smaller social networks (β = 0.5, 95% CI = 0.3-0.7, p <.001). Moreover, changes in an individual's social network size were significantly associated with cognitive changes over time (β = 0.2, 95% CI = 0.1-0.4, p =.003), indicating worse cognitive function with shrinking social networks. Conclusion:Social isolation is highly prevalent among oldest-old individuals, being a risk factor for decreases in cognitive function. Consequently, it is important to maintain a socially active lifestyle into very old age. Likewise, this calls for effective ways to prevent social isolation. (shrink)

The standard way to test alternative descriptive theories of moral judgment is by asking subjects to evaluate (amongst others) sacrificial dilemmas, where acting classifies as a utilitarian moral judgment and not acting classifies as a deontological moral judgment. Previous research uncovered many situational factors that alter subject’s moral judgments without affecting which type of action utilitarianism or deontology would recommend. This literature review provides a systematic analysis of the experimental literature on the influence of situational factors on moral (...) judgments in sacrificial dilemmas. It analyses 53 articles in detail and reports mean effect sizes, as well as operationalizations, for 36 situational factors that significantly influence moral judgment. Moreover, the review discusses how the impact of situational factors relates to a dual process theory of moral judgment. It supports the view that utilitarian judgments are driven by controlled cognitive processes and shows that the drivers of deontological judgments depend on valence. (shrink)

Neuroconstructivism postulates the progressive complexity of mental representation over the course of cognitive development and the role of the graphic representation of movement in the transformation of mental schemas, cognitive flexibility, and representational complexity. This study aims to: understand children’s resources in the drawing of movement ; and verify whether there are differences in the graphic representation of movement as an indicator of cognitive flexibility. The participants were N = 240 children aged 5–8 years; 1,440 drawings were (...) collected representing 2,880 characters from six stories. The analysis consisted: data quality control, using the kappa coefficient, and Generalizability Theory to test the instrument’s validity and reliability; Multivariate General Analysis and Mixed Linear Analysis of the factors ; Multivariate General Analysis of the graphic components: categories and microcategories, as well as the elements that make up the macrocategories: “Static,” “Indication,” and “Movement”; and calculation of the generalizability coefficient. The results show that: age best explains variability, with a high effect size across all components, thus increasing its complexity and at ages 6 and 7, “Indication” appears as a modulator of “Static” toward “Movement”. The generalizability coefficient is optimal. It is concluded that changes in the initial graphic representation of movement may interactively transform mental representation, thus increasing cognitive flexibility and prompting teaching applications to optimize such changes. (shrink)

It is often assumed that the reaction time of a saccade toward visual and/or auditory stimuli reflects the sensitivities of our oculomotor-orienting system to stimulus saliency. Endogenous factors, as well as stimulus-related factors, would also affect the saccadic reaction time. However, it was not clear how these factors interact and to what extent visual and auditory-targeting saccades are accounted for by common mechanisms. The present study examined the effect of, and the interaction between, stimulus saliency and audiovisual (...) spatial congruency on the SRT for visual- and for auditory-target conditions. We also analyzed pre-target pupil size to examine the relationship between saccade preparation and pupil size. Pupil size is considered to reflect arousal states coupling with locus-coeruleus activity during a cognitive task. The main findings were that the pattern of the examined effects on the SRT varied between visual- and auditory-auditory target conditions, the effect of stimulus saliency was significant for the visual-target condition, but not significant for the auditory-target condition, Pupil velocity, not absolute pupil size, was sensitive to task set, and there was a significant correlation between the pre-saccade absolute pupil size and the SRTs for the visual-target condition but not for the auditory-target condition. The discrepancy between target modalities for the effect of pupil velocity and between the absolute pupil size and pupil velocity for the correlation with SRT may imply that the pupil effect for the visual-target condition was caused by a modality-specific link between pupil size modulation and the SC rather than by the LC-NE system. These results support the idea that different threshold mechanisms in the SC may be involved in the initiation of saccades toward visual and auditory targets. (shrink)

We perceive the objective world through a subjective perceptual veil. Various perceived properties, particularly “secondary qualities” like colours and tastes, are mind-dependent. Although mind-dependent, our knowledge of many facts about the perceptual veil is immediate and secure. These are well-known facets of sense-datum theory. My aim is to carve out a conception of sense-datum theory that does not require the immediate and secure knowledge of a wealth of facts about experienced sense-data (§1). Such a theory is of value on its (...) own, given well-known challenges to epistemic foundationalism. Beyond this such a theory helps demonstrate how sense-datum theory can accommodate challenging perceptual phenomena like shape and size constancies (§3). These ideas are bridged by the roots of perceptual ambiguity (§2). In brief, tapering acquaintance knowledge creates space for perceptual representation to resolve the ambiguities in presented objects seemingly inherent in scenarios involving perceptual constancies. Thus, I offer a two-factor (acquaintance-representation) sense-datum theory to meet the challenge posed by constancies. Following Smith (2002), from whom this challenge is drawn, my focus is on shape and size constancies. Other constancies, notably colour constancy, are treated elsewhere (Brown 2014). (shrink)

This paper examines social network size in contemporary Western society based on the exchange of Christmas cards. Maximum network size averaged 153.5 individuals, with a mean network size of 124.9 for those individuals explicitly contacted; these values are remarkably close to the group size of 150 predicted for humans on the basis of the size of their neocortex. Age, household type, and the relationship to the individual influence network structure, although the proportion of kin remained (...) relatively constant at around 21%. Frequency of contact between network members was primarily determined by two classes of variable: passive factors (distance, work colleague, overseas) and active factors (emotional closeness, genetic relatedness). Controlling for the influence of passive factors on contact rates allowed the hierarchical structure of human social groups to be delimited. These findings suggest that there may be cognitive constraints on network size. (shrink)

The alleged robustness of Z, t, and F tests against nonnormality and, when sample sizes are equal, of t and F tests against heterogeneity as well was investigated in a large-scale sampling study under conditions realistic to experimentation and testing in the behavioral sciences. Factors varied were: population shape (L or bell), σ1/σ2 (1/2, 1, or 2), size N of smallest sample (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, or 1,024), N1/N2 (1/3,1/2,1, 2, or 3), α (...) (.05,.01, or.001), and test tailedness (left, right, or two). In about 25% of the situations investigated, the test failed to meet a very lax criterion for robustness at every examined N value less than 100, and in 8% at every value less than 1,000; no test met the criterion in all of the situations studied before N=512. Robustness was strongly influenced by all of the factors investigated, and interactions among the influencing factors were often strong and complex. (shrink)

This chapter reconsiders the notion of perceptual constancy from the ground up. It distinguishes the phenomenology of perceptual constancy and stability from a functional characterization of perception as aiming at full constancy. Drawing on this distinction, we can attend to the phenomenology of constancy itself, and ask to what extent human perceivers attain constancy, as usually defined. Within this phenomenology, I distinguish phenomenal presentations of spatial features and color properties from categorizations, conceptualizations, and judgments that (...) underlie verbal or other responses to those presentations. Although phenomenal presentation and categorization commonly co-occur, they are distinct aspects of experience. After reviewing several standard descriptions of constancy, I present laboratory findings and my own phenomenological descriptions by way of confirming that, although perception "tends toward" constancy, human perceivers do not usually attain full constancy for either spatial or chromatic properties (as many investigators acknowledge). For spatial perception, I find that the phenomenology has been systematically misdescribed, and I offer a more adequate description of the phenomenology of everyday spatial perception. However, my greatest quarrel with previous theory concerns the functional aim of the constancies. I argue not only that perception does not achieve full constancy but that we should not characterize it as aiming for full constancy. Rather, perception seeks a stability of representation suitable for guiding our actions and which can also, as needed, enable us to classify and re-identify objects by phenomenally presented properties such as shape, size, or color. Further, I argue that theorists should not confuse these classifications with the qualitative character of phenomenal experience. My arguments underscore the need to distinguish phenomenal representation (better, "presentation") from conceptual categorization, and to distinguish perceptual presentations from subsequent processes that are involved in responding to them. (shrink)

_Background:_ Preterm infants are still at an increased risk for suboptimal neurodevelopmental outcomes when compared with term born infants. The development of a child born preterm can be jeopardized by suboptimal conditions during pregnancy, in addition to the suboptimal growth environment postnatally compared to the normal in utero environment. This review summarizes the literature on the role of chorioamnionitis, placental insufficiency, and maternal smoking on the developmental outcomes of preterm infants. _Methods:_ A systematic database search was performed to identify all (...) original articles published on or before September 12, 2018 that evaluated the impact of clinical or histological chorioamnionitis, abnormal prenatal fetal and placental blood flow, and prenatal smoking exposure on the neuropsychological and cognitive outcomes of preterm infants. We identified a total of 54 studies. Thirty five original articles evaluated the effects of clinical or histological chorioamnionitis; 15 studies evaluated the effects of abnormal blood flow patterns; and four studies evaluated the effects of maternal smoking during pregnancy. _Results:_ The studies on prenatal risk factors showed conflicting results about the impact on the neurodevelopment of preterm infants. The majority of the studies did not show that chorioamnionitis poses a direct risk to the development of preterm infants. The role of abnormal prenatal placental and fetal blood flow on the development of preterm infants remained inconclusive because the sample sizes were often small and methodological problems complicated the interpretation of the data. Maternal smoking during pregnancy was assessed only in one cohort which showed that maternal smoking is a risk for suboptimal cognitive and neuropsychological development in preterm infants. _Conclusions:_ This review summarizes the data on several prenatal risk factors which play a role in the developmental outcomes of preterm infants. To optimize the developmental outcomes, we need to first optimize the fetal wellbeing before birth. More research that extends from the fetal life to long-term developmental outcomes is needed. (shrink)

Visual illusions provide important evidence for the co-existence of unconscious and conscious representations. Objects surrounded by other figures are consciously perceived as different in size, while the visuo-motor system supposedly uses an unconscious representation of the discs’ true size for grip size scaling. Recent evidence suggests other factors than represented size, e.g., surrounding rings conceived as obstacles, affect grip size. Use of the diagonal illusion avoids visual obstacles in the path of the reaching hand. (...) Results support the dual representation theory. Grip size scaling follows actual size independent of illusory effects, which clearly bias conscious perception in direct comparisons of lengths and in finger-thumb span indications of perceived length. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHumans are social beings that often interact in multi-individual environments. As such, we are frequently confronted with nonverbal social signals, including eye-gaze direction, from multiple individuals. Yet, the factors that allow for the prioritisation of certain gaze cues over others are poorly understood. Using a modified conflicting gaze paradigm, we tested the hypothesis that fearful gaze would be favoured amongst competing gaze cues. We further hypothesised that this effect is related to the increased sclera exposure, which is characteristic of (...) fearful expressions. Across three experiments, we found that fearful, but not happy, gaze guides observers’ attention over competing non-emotional gaze. The guidance of attention by fearful gaze appears to be linked to increased sclera exposure. However, differences in sclera exposure do not prioritise competing gazes of other types. Thus, fearful gaze guides attention among competing cues and this effect is facilitated by increased sclera exposure... (shrink)

In recent decades, and with the rise of the biological sciences, the color literature especially has taken seriously evidence from ethology and comparative psychology. However, there has been significantly less discussion of comparative cases in other areas of philosophy of perception. This essay aims to bring insights from animal studies into dialogue with more traditional ways of thinking about the perception of size. It argues that an indexing approach to perceptual representation, pioneered by Prettyman (Perceptual content is indexed to (...) attention. Synthese, 194(10), 4039–4054, 2017) in response to evidence of attentional effects in perception, cannot fully address the challenge. (shrink)

BackgroundAging and type 2 diabetes mellitus are important risk factors for the development of cognitive deterioration and dementia. The objective of this research was to investigate the effects of an exercise intervention on cognitive function in older T2DM patients.MethodsEight literature databases were searched from inception to 20 January 2022. The researchers examined randomized controlled trials that evaluated the impact of exercise on the cognitive performance of older T2DM patients. The Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for RCTs was used (...) to assess each study. The quality of evidence was assessed using the GRADE approach. The mini-mental state examination, Modified MMSE, and Montreal cognitive assessment were used to evaluate the cognitive outcomes. We performed a subgroup analysis with stratification according to exercise intervention modality, duration, and cognitive impairment.ResultsFive trials were eligible, with a total of 738 T2DM patients. The combined findings revealed that exercise improved global cognitive function significantly. In the studies that were included, no relevant adverse events were reported.ConclusionExercise is beneficial in improving global cognitive function in older adults with T2DM. Studies with bigger sample sizes and higher quality are additionally expected to draw more definite conclusions.Systematic Review Registration[https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/#recordDetails], identifier [CRD42022296049]. (shrink)

There is increasing interest in how the pupil dynamics of the eye reflect underlying cognitive processes and brain states. Problematic, however, is that pupil changes can be due to non-cognitive factors, for example luminance changes in the environment, accommodation and movement. In this paper we consider how by modeling the response of the pupil in real-world environments we can capture the non-cognitive related changes and remove these to extract a residual signal which is a better index (...) of cognition and performance. Specifically, we utilize sequence measures such as fixation position, duration, saccades, and blink-related information as inputs to a deep recurrent neural network (RNN) model for predicting subsequent pupil diameter. We build and evaluate the model for a task where subjects are watching educational videos and subsequently asked questions based on the content. Compared to commonly-used models for this task, the RNN had the lowest errors rates in predicting subsequent pupil dilation given sequence data. Most importantly was how the model output related to subjects' cognitive performance as assessed by a post-viewing test. Consistent with our hypothesis that the model captures non-cognitive pupil dynamics, we found (1) the model's root-mean square error was less for lower performing subjects than for those having better performance on the post-viewing test, (2) the residuals of the RNN (LSTM) model had the highest correlation with subject post-viewing test scores and (3) the residuals had the highest discriminability (assessed via area under the ROC curve, AUC) for classifying high and low test performers, compared to the true pupil size or the RNN model predictions. This suggests that deep learning sequence models may be good for separating components of pupil responses that are linked to luminance and accommodation from those that are linked to cognition and arousal. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this research paper is to examine the early stages of a research project aimed at evaluating the pedagogic effectiveness of a teaching module in computing ethics.Design/methodology/approachScores of students' cognitive capabilities to make moral judgements were measured before and after they had taken the module by means of the “Defining Issues Test”. This is a standard test of students' capability to make moral judgement based on the work of Lawrence Kohlberg. Interviews were then used to help understand (...) the results of the test.FindingsResults revealed low mean scores of post‐conventional thinking skills and wide variation in overall scores of capability for moral judgement. Interviews with the students about the course and the test revealed the importance of understanding students' beliefs about the importance of ethics in interpreting the results.Research limitations/implicationsDifficulties in matching “before and after” results for each subject limited the sample size in what was an early step in the overall research project.Practical implicationsThe results point towards the importance of addressing students' own understanding of the importance of ethics when teaching computing ethics.Originality/valueThe paper reveals some of the limitations of tests of capabilities for moral judgement which rely on strongly individualistic notions of ethics. It enables a new appreciation to be made of the strengths and weaknesses of assessing student moral development in higher education in terms of cognitive factors. (shrink)

Sensitivity to others’ emotional signals is an important factor for social interaction. While many studies of emotional reactivity focus on facial emotional expressions, signals such as pupil dilation which can indicate arousal, may also affect observers. For example, observers’ pupils dilate when viewing someone with dilated pupils, so-called pupillary contagion. Yet it is unclear how pupil size and emotional expression interact as signals. Further, examining individual differences in emotional reactivity to others can shed light on its mechanisms and potential (...) outcomes. In the current study, adults’ (N = 453) pupil size was assessed while they viewed images of the eye region of individuals varying in emotional expression (neutral, happy, sad, fearful, angry) and pupil size (large, medium, small). Participants showed pupillary contagion regardless of the emotional expression. Individual differences in demographics (gender, age, socioeconomic status) and psychosocial factors (anxiety, depression, sleep problems) were also examined, yet the only factor related to pupillary contagion was socioeconomic status, with higher socioeconomic status predicting less pupillary contagion for emotionally-neutral stimuli. The results suggest that while pupillary contagion is a robust phenomenon, it can vary meaningfully across individuals. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the effect of two cognitive variables, Semantic Neighborhood Density and Interpretive Diversity, in first, distinguishing between literary (poetic) and nonliterary metaphor, and second, in determining what makes for a good metaphor. Analyses of items taken from a widely used set ofmetaphor norms indicated that while literary and nonliterary metaphor did not differ in many ways, the poetic items tended to 1) contain concepts that came from a more dense semantic space, 2) contain topic and (...) vehicles that came from equally dense semantic space, 3) suggest a greater number of possible interpretations as the topic and vehicle became more semantically dissimilar, and 4) evoke more emergent interpretations (i.e., less likely to be a characteristic of the topic or vehicle when considered separately). In addition, we found one way that the two variables were related to metaphor goodness: better metaphors were those with vehicles that came from increasingly less dense semantic space. This correlation was only reliable for literary, poetic items, presumably because these items were taken from a richer semantic environment suggesting many more alternative possibilities. (shrink)

Languages show substantial variability between their speakers, but it is currently unclear how the structure of the communicative network contributes to the patterning of this variability. While previous studies have highlighted the role of network structure in language change, the specific aspects of network structure that shape language variability remain largely unknown. To address this gap, we developed a Bayesian agent‐based model of language evolution, contrasting between two distinct scenarios: language change and language emergence. By isolating the relative effects of (...) specific global network metrics across thousands of simulations, we show that global characteristics of network structure play a critical role in shaping interindividual variation in language, while intraindividual variation is relatively unaffected. We effectively challenge the long‐held belief that size and density are the main network structural factors influencing language variation, and show that path length and clustering coefficient are the main factors driving interindividual variation. In particular, we show that variation is more likely to occur in populations where individuals are not well‐connected to each other. Additionally, variation is more likely to emerge in populations that are structured in small communities. Our study provides potentially important insights into the theoretical mechanisms underlying language variation. (shrink)

Cognitive diagnosis models (CDMs) allow classifying respondents into a set of discrete attribute profiles. The internal structure of the test is determined in a Q-matrix, whose correct specification is necessary to achieve an accurate attribute profile classification. Several empirical Q-matrix estimation and validation methods have been proposed with the aim of providing well-specified Q-matrices. However, these methods require the number of attributes to be set in advance. No systematic studies about CDMs dimensionality assessment have been conducted, which contrasts with (...) the vast existing literature for the factor analysis framework. To address this gap, the present study evaluates the performance of several dimensionality assessment methods from the factor analysis literature in determining the number of attributes in the context of CDMs. The explored methods were parallel analysis, minimum average partial, very simple structure, DETECT, empirical Kaiser criterion, exploratory graph analysis, and a machine learning factor forest model. Additionally, a model comparison approach was considered, which consists in comparing the model-fit of empirically estimated Q-matrices. The performance of these methods was assessed by means of a comprehensive simulation study that included different generating number of attributes, item qualities, sample sizes, ratios of the number of items to attribute, correlations among the attributes, attributes thresholds, and generating CDM. Results showed that parallel analysis (with Pearson correlations and mean eigenvalue criterion), factor forest model, and model comparison (with AIC) are suitable alternatives to determine the number of attributes in CDM applications, with an overall percentage of correct estimates above 76% of the conditions. The accuracy increased to 97% when these three methods agreed on the number of attributes. In short, the present study supports the use of three methods in assessing the dimensionality of CDMs. This will allow to test the assumption of correct dimensionality present in the Q-matrix estimation and validation methods, as well as to gather evidence of validity to support the use of the scores obtained with these models. The findings of this study are illustrated using real data from an intelligence test to provide guidelines for assessing the dimensionality of CDM data in applied settings. (shrink)

Experimental research suggests that people draw a moral distinction between bad outcomes brought about as a means versus a side effect (or byproduct). Such findings have informed multiple psychological and philosophical debates about moral cognition, including its computational structure, its sensitivity to the famous Doctrine of Double Effect, its reliability, and its status as a universal and innate mental module akin to universal grammar. But some studies have failed to replicate the means/byproduct effect especially in the absence of other (...) class='Hi'>factors, such as personal contact. So we aimed to determine how robust the means/byproduct effect is by conducting a meta-analysis of both published and unpublished studies (k = 101; 24,058 participants). We found that while there is an overall small difference between moral judgments of means and byproducts (standardized mean difference = 0.87, 95% CI 0.67 – 1.06; standardized mean change = 0.57, 95% CI 0.44 – 0.69; log odds ratio = 1.59, 95% CI 1.15 – 2.02), the mean effect size is primarily moderated by whether the outcome is brought about by personal contact, which typically involves the use of personal force. (shrink)

It has often been observed that color is a highly preferred attribute for use in distinguishing descriptions, that is, referring expressions produced with the purpose of identifying an object within a visual scene. However, most of these observations were based on visual displays containing only colors that were maximally different in hue and for which the language of experimentation possessed basic color terms. The experiments described in this paper investigate whether speakers’ preference for color is reduced if the color of (...) the target referent is similar to that of the distractors. Because colors that look similar are often also harder to distinguish linguistically, we also examine the impact of the codability of color values. As a third factor, we investigate the salience of available alternative attributes and its impact on the use of color. The results of our experiments show that, while speakers are indeed less likely to use color when the colors in a display are similar, this effect is mostly due to the difficulty in naming similar colors. Color use for color with a basic color term is affected only when the colors of target and distractors are very similar. The salience of our alternative attribute size, manipulated by varying the difference in size between target and distractors, had no impact on the use of color. (shrink)

The term “perceptual constancy” was used by the Gestalt theorists in the early part of the twentieth century (e.g., Koffka 1935, 34, 90) to refer to the tendency of perception to remain invariant over changes of viewing distance, viewing angle, and conditions of illumination. This tendency toward constancy is remarkable: every change in the viewing distance, position, and illumination is necessarily accompanied by a change in the local proximal (retinal) stimulation, and yet perception remains relatively stable. The tendency (...) toward perceptual constancy encouraged the Gestalt theorists to look beyond local proximal stimulation in grounding their theories of perception. In the ensuing decades, much has been learned about the constancies. Evidence for this assertion may be found in the contributions to the current volume as well as in earlier volumes (e.g., Epstein 1977; Walsh and Kulikowsky 1998). These advances notwithstanding, significant questions remain open. Our aim here is to note some advances and specify some open questions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Alzheimer's Disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and the Biology of Intrinsic AgingThomas B. L. Kirkwood (bio)Keywordsaging, Alzheimer’s disease, genetic mutation, mild cognitive impairment, telomereThe article by Gaines and Whitehouse (2006) raises key questions about the uncertain relationship between (i) the intrinsic, "normal" aging process, and (ii) the clinicopathologic states represented by the labels of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This short commentary offers a (...) perspective on this debate that is drawn from a consideration of underlying biological mechanisms.Because age is unquestionably the greatest single risk factor associated with AD and MCI, I begin by asking what we know about the intrinsic processes of aging. The central feature of current understanding of intrinsic aging is that it consists of the gradual, lifelong accumulation of a wide variety of molecular and cellular faults that begins very early in life and eventually leads to overt functional impairments resulting in age-related frailty, disability, and disease (Kirkwood 2005). This is an essentially bottom-up process. A strong consensus has emerged in recent years that there is no active program for aging and that there are no genetic factors that have evolved specifically to cause aging or age-related diseases. Unquestionably, there are genes that influence susceptibility to disease and even length of life, but these genes are genes for maintenance and repair functions, not for aging. It is the limitation in the past evolutionary pressure to invest in greater longevity than was required, within an environment where life was usually truncated by hazards such as starvation, injury, or infection, that means that our maintenance systems—good as they are—are insufficient to keep us going indefinitely. Added to this is the idea that there are probably also genes that program processes that are good for the young organism, but which may in later life have harmful effects. Processes like inflammation and apoptosis, which are seen to occur extensively in aged tissues, including brain, surely evolved to help cope with infection and cellular damage arising earlier in life. That they are called into play in aged tissues is a direct, but secondary, consequence of accumulated damage.With this general framework to understand the intrinsic biology of aging, let us now ask what we might expect a priori for the aging of an organ such [End Page 79] as the brain. Although we cannot pretend complete ignorance of how the brain actually does age, our enquiry can be based entirely on data from other organ systems, so we can develop our predictions about brain aging without prejudice.Aging begins very early during human development, faults accumulating from the first stages of embryonic development. Each time a cell divides, each of the daughter cells is likely to acquire a few new mutations. We know this from the estimates for the error rate in DNA replication and the size of the human genome. It is confirmed by direct evidence that at individual gene loci where mutations have been measured, mutation frequency increases with age (Morley 1998; Vijg 2000). In addition to replication errors, DNA is damaged on a daily basis to a very considerable degree by agents such as reactive oxygen species (free radicals), which are formed as byproducts of normal cellular metabolism. Although most of this damage is corrected by repair, the repair mechanisms themselves are not error free and additional mutations accumulate through this route. If a mutation is lethal to the cell, the cell dies and thus the mutation is eliminated. However, the majority of mutations are nonlethal, either because the mutation is recessive and the cell carries an intact gene copy on the other chromosome, because the gene is not currently required, or because the mutation produces only a delayed deleterious effect. Examples of genes that produce delayed deleterious effects include the genes responsible for familial AD. It is interesting to reflect that on statistical grounds alone, it is almost certain that each of us carries a randomly determined fraction of cells in our brains that bear amyloid precursor protein or presenilin mutations associated with AD. We also carry a heterogeneous array of random mutations that compromise essential cell maintenance functions. How many such... (shrink)

What follows is a discussion of three sets of experimental results that deal with various aspects of universal biological understanding among American and Maya children and adults. The first set of experiments shows that by the age of four-to-five years urban American and Yukatek Maya children employ a concept of innate species potential, or underlying essence, as an inferential framework for understanding the affiliation of an organism to a biological species, and for projecting known and unknown biological properties to organisms (...) in the face of uncertainty. The second set of experiments shows that the youngest Maya children do not have an anthropocentric understanding of the biological world. Children do not initially need to reason about non-human living kinds by analogy to human kinds. The third set of results show that the same taxonomic rank is cognitively preferred for biological induction in two diverse populations: people raised in the Mid-western USA and Itza' Maya of the Lowland Meso-american rainforest. This is the generic species  the level of oak and robin. These findings cannot be explained by domain-general models of similarity because such models cannot account for why both cultures prefer species-like groups in making inferences about the biological world, although Americans have relatively little actual knowledge or experience at this level. The implication from these experiments is that folk biology may well represent an evolutionary design: universal taxonomic structures, centred on essence-based generic species, are arguably routine products of our ‘habits of mind,' which may be in part naturally selected to grasp relevant and recurrent ‘habits of the world.' The science of biology is built upon these domain-specific cognitive universals: folk biology sets initial cognitive constraints on the development of any possible macro-biological theory, including the initial development of evolutionary theory. Nevertheless, the conditions of relevance under which science operates diverge from those pertinent to folk biology. For natural science, the motivating idea is to understand nature as it is ‘in itself,' independently of the human observer. From this standpoint, the species-concept, like taxonomy and teleology, may arguably be allowed to survive in science as a regulative principle that enables the mind to readily establish stable contact with the surrounding environment, rather than as an epistemic concept that guides the search for truth. (shrink)

We agree with Rachlin's aim to account for altruism within existing theory. However, his argument is implicitly dependent on social and cognitive constructs that are explicitly identified in other social-psychological theories. The account does not advance theory beyond available constructs (e.g., self-categorizations, motives, values, role-identities, and social structure), and Rachlin's implicit use of these strains the behaviorist account.

The body is a highly complex, coordinated system engaged in coping with many environmental problems. It can be considered as some sort of opportunity or obstacle, with which internal processing must deal. Internal processing must take into account the possibilities and limitations of the particular body. In other words, even if the body is not involved in the realization of some cognitive explicit task, it is not a neutral factor of our understanding of why a system solves a task (...) in one way or another. Therefore, when conducting research on embodiment and the body’s cognitive system we should not neglect internal, cognitive processing. I appeal to Goldman’s research on embodied cognition to sketch the broader framework for internal processing in embodied cognition. I believe that even if we don’t accept Goldman’s approach as the viable proposal for embodied cognition in general, it’s a quite natural starting point for our analysis. Goldman (2012; 2014, and with de Vignemont 2009) argue for the essential role of the bodily formats or bodily codes (respectively: B-formats and B-codes) in embodied cognition. B-codes are here described as the processing of regions or sub-regions of the central nervous system. They are primarily employed for body control or monitoring, and reused for cognitive tasks. Beyond doubt, this conception provides an excellent starting point for analyzing the internal (mostly neural) processing in cases of embodied cognition. At the end of this paper, I will argue that the embodiment of cognition needs a conceptual twist. Following Keijzer’s (2015) interest in the evolution of the nervous system, and the minimal forms of cognition, I argue that in investigating embodied cognition, we should investigate the role played by cognitive processing for specific kinds of organisms, meaning organisms with a body of a particular morphology (size, shape, kinds, and distribution of sensors and effectors). Doing that, I refer to some conceptual and empirical considerations. I will also try to show that research on embodied cognition is still not sufficiently anchored in evolutionary and comparative studies on cognition, nor on the nervous system and body morphology. Bigger reliance on these kinds of studies, will make it make possible to gain a deeper understanding of internal processing in embodied cognition. (shrink)

Robotic and Autonomous Agricultural Technologies (RAAT) are increasingly available yet may fail to be adopted. This paper focusses specifically on cognitive factors that affect adoption including: inability to generate trust, loss of farming knowledge and reduced social cognition. It is recommended that agriculture develops its own framework for the performance and safety of RAAT drawing on human factors research in aerospace engineering including human inputs (individual variance in knowledge, skills, abilities, preferences, needs and traits), trust, situational awareness (...) and cognitive load. The kinds of cognitive impacts depend on the RAATs level of autonomy, ie whether it has automatic, partial autonomy and autonomous functionality and stage of adoption, ie adoption, initial use or post-adoptive use. The more autonomous a system is, the less a human needs to know to operate it and the less the cognitive load, but it also means farmers have less situational awareness about on farm activities that in turn may affect strategic decision-making about their enterprise. Some cognitive factors may be hidden when RAAT is first adopted but play a greater role during prolonged or intense post-adoptive use. Systems with partial autonomy need intuitive user interfaces, engaging system information, and clear signaling to be trusted with low level tasks; and to compliment and augment high order decision-making on farm. (shrink)

In the current study we look at whether subjective and proprioceptive aspects of selfrepresentation are separable components subserved by distinct systems of multisensory integration. We used the rubber hand illusion to draw the location of the ‘self’ away from the body, towards extracorporeal space , thereby violating top-down information about the body location. This was compared with the traditional RHI which drew position of the ‘self’ towards the body . We were successfully able to draw proprioceptive position of the limbs (...) in and out from the body suggesting body perception is a purely bottom-up process, resistant to top-down effects. Conversely, we found subjective self-representation was altered by the violation of top-down body information – as the strong association of subjective and proprioceptive factors found in the In Condition became non-significant in the Out Condition. Interestingly, we also found evidence that subjective embodiment can modulate tactile perception. (shrink)