Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 189-208, January 2022.

Foraging‐ and feeding‐related behaviors across eumetazoans share similar molecular mechanisms, suggesting the early evolution of an optimal foraging behavior called area‐restricted search (ARS), involving mechanisms of dopamine and glutamate in the modulation of behavioral focus. Similar mechanisms in the vertebrate basal ganglia control motor behavior and cognition and reveal an evolutionary progression toward increasing internal connections between prefrontal cortex and striatum in moving from amphibian to primate. The basal ganglia in higher vertebrates show the ability to transfer dopaminergic activity from (...) unconditioned stimuli to conditioned stimuli. The evolutionary role of dopamine in the modulation of goal‐directed behavior and cognition is further supported by pathologies of human goal‐directed cognition, which have motor and cognitive dysfunction and organize themselves, with respect to dopaminergic activity, along the gradient described by ARS, from perseverative to unfocused. The evidence strongly supports the evolution of goal‐directed cognition out of mechanisms initially in control of spatial foraging but, through increasing cortical connections, eventually used to forage for information. (shrink)

When searching for concepts in memory—as in the verbal fluency task of naming all the animals one can think of—people appear to explore internal mental representations in much the same way that animals forage in physical space: searching locally within patches of information before transitioning globally between patches. However, the definition of the patches being searched in mental space is not well specified. Do we search by activating explicit predefined categories and recall items from within that category, or do we (...) activate and recall a connected sequence of individual items without using categorical information, with each item recalled leading to the retrieval of an associated item in a stream, or both? Using semantic representations in a search of associative memory framework and data from the animal fluency task, we tested competing hypotheses based on associative and categorical search models. Associative, but not categorical, patch transitions took longer to make than position-matched productions, suggesting that categorical transitions were not true transitions. There was also clear evidence of associative search even within categorical patch boundaries. Furthermore, most individuals' behavior was best explained by an associative search model without the addition of categorical information. Thus, our results support a search process that does not use categorical information, but for which patch boundaries shift with each recall and local search is well described by a random walk in semantic space, with switches to new regions of the semantic space when the current region is depleted. (shrink)

The question of domain-specific versus domain-general processing is an ongoing source of inquiry surrounding cognitive control. Using a comparative evolutionary approach, Stout (2010) proposed two components of cognitive control: coordinating hierarchical action plans and social cognition. This article reports additional molecular and experimental evidence supporting a domain-general attentional process coordinating hierarchical action plans, with the earliest such control processing originating in the capacity of dynamic foraging behaviors—predating the vertebrate-invertebrate divergence (c. 700 million years ago). Further discussion addresses evidence required for (...) additional, domain-specific, cognitive control processes, noting that proposed social processes may simply provide emotionally valenced representational information to the above hierarchical process. (shrink)

Behavioural Network Science provides a comprehensive introduction to network science for social and behavioral researchers and students. It is a self-contained guide to the fundamentals of network science, beginning with principles of representing and making networks, network metrics, and network evolution. It then delves into specific applications of network science to behavioral research including language evolution, learning, memory, aging, creativity, conspiracies, group problem-solving, opinion polarization, and social conflict. Within each application, theoretical aspects surrounding a core problem are discussed, providing readers (...) with an intuitive understanding of how network science can be employed to quantify and generate behavioural phenomena. Accompanying online R code allows readers to replicate simulations and generate figures. This book is an essential reference for graduate students and researchers in cognitive sciences, behavioural economics, and health and social policy seeking a nuanced understanding of the intersection between network science and behavioural research. (shrink)

An assessment of a protocol devised to guide practitioners thinking of using covert video surveillance. Such surveillance is particularly used to help identify cases of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. The protocol in question has been written by staff at the Academic Department of Paediatrics, North Staffordshire Hospital, Stoke-on-Trent in association with their local Area Child Protection Committee and has been commended by the Department of Health to others wishing to implement covert video surveillance.

This paper is a response to Dr Shinebourne's response to my recent paper assessing the relative merits of the Staffordshire Protocol on covert video surveillance. Dr Shinebourne does not take the opportunity to rebut the criticisms made of the text of the protocol. It is further suggested that judicial oversight of the use of CVS might accord the process a degree of proportionality.

Do properties of a word's features influence the order of its acquisition in early word learning? Combining the principles of mutual exclusivity and shape bias, the present work takes a network analysis approach to understanding how feature distinctiveness predicts the order of early word learning. Distance networks were built from nouns with edge lengths computed using various distance measures. Feature distinctiveness was computed as a distance measure, showing how far an object in a network is from other objects based on (...) shared and non-shared features. Feature distinctiveness predicted order of acquisition across all measures: Words that were further away from other words in the network space were learned earlier. The best distance measures were based only on non-shared features and did not include shared features. This indicates that shared features may play less of a role in early word learning than non-shared features. In addition, the strongest effects were found for visual form and surface features. Cluster analysis further revealed that this effect is a localized effect in the object feature space, where objects' distances from their cluster centroid were inversely correlated with their age of acquisition. Together, these results suggest a role for feature distinctiveness in early word learning. (shrink)

The mental lexicon changes across the lifespan. Prior work, aggregating data among individuals of similar ages, found that the aging lexicon, represented as a network of free associations, becomes more sparse with age: degree and clustering coefficient decrease and average shortest path length increases. However, because this work is based on aggregated data, it remains to be seen whether or not individuals show a similar pattern of age-related lexical change. Here, we demonstrate how an individual-level approach can be used to (...) reveal differences that vary systematically with age. We also directly compare this approach with an aggregate-level approach, to show how these approaches differ. Our individual-level approach follows the logic of many past approaches by comparing individual data as they are situated within population-level data. To do this, we produce a conglomerate network from population-level data and then identify how data from individuals of different ages are situated within that network. Though we find most qualitative patterns are preserved, individuals produce associates that have a higher clustering coefficient in the conglomerate network as they age. Alongside a reduction in degree, this suggests more specialized but clustered knowledge with age. Older individuals also reveal a pattern of increasing distance among the associates they produce in response to a single cue, indicating a more diverse range of associations. We demonstrate these results for three different languages: English, Spanish, and Dutch, which all show the same qualitative patterns of differences between aggregate and individual network approaches. These results reveal how individual-level approaches can be taken with aggregate data and demonstrate new insights into understanding the aging lexicon. (shrink)

Intense competition can compel lobbyists to exaggerate the benefits the government would see in tax returns and social welfare if agency officials allocate such resources to the lobbyist's members. This incentive to misrepresent grows when information asymmetry exists between lobbyists and government officials. A large body of literature has investigated how interest groups compete and interact, but it disregards the interdependency of interests between competing groups and associated strategic behaviors of other players. Our signaling model of lobbying reveals ways in (...) which agency officials can compel lobbyists for competing interests to lobby truthfully and what the policy implications of this compulsion can be. We also present case-study evidence of how this works in practice. (shrink)

This essay examines the role of the University of Bridgeport's Faculty Council in relation to the faculty union. The Faculty Council is a governing body composed of elected faculty representatives from different schools and departments within the university. Faculty Council leaders facilitated the certification of AAUP as the faculty's bargaining agent in 1973 and, under the author's leadership, the faculty petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to decertify the union in 1991. The author participated on the picket line during the (...) 1975, 1978 and 1987 faculty strikes, but crossed the picket line during the 1990 strike. (shrink)

How, and how well, do people switch between exploration and exploitation to search for and accumulate resources? We study the decision processes underlying such exploration/exploitation trade‐offs using a novel card selection task that captures the common situation of searching among multiple resources (e.g., jobs) that can be exploited without depleting. With experience, participants learn to switch appropriately between exploration and exploitation and approach optimal performance. We model participants' behavior on this task with random, threshold, and sampling strategies, and find that (...) a linear decreasing threshold rule best fits participants' results. Further evidence that participants use decreasing threshold‐based strategies comes from reaction time differences between exploration and exploitation; however, participants themselves report non‐decreasing thresholds. Decreasing threshold strategies that “front‐load” exploration and switch quickly to exploitation are particularly effective in resource accumulation tasks, in contrast to optimal stopping problems like the Secretary Problem requiring longer exploration. (shrink)

Defining Imagery: Experience or Representation?
Historical Development of Ideas about Imagery
Subjective Individual Differences in Imagery Experience
Theories of Imagery, and their Implications for Consciousness
Picture theory
Description theory
Enactive theory.

Mental imagery (varieties of which are sometimes colloquially refered to as “visualizing,” “seeing in the mind's eye,” “hearing in the head,” “imagining the feel of,” etc.) is quasi-perceptual experience; it resembles perceptual experience, but occurs in the absence of the appropriate external stimuli. It is also generally understood to bear intentionality (i.e., mental images are always images of something or other), and thereby to function as a form of mental representation. Traditionally, visual mental imagery, the most discussed variety, was thought (...) to be caused by the presence of picturelike representations (mental images) in the mind, soul, or brain, but this is no longer universally accepted. (shrink)

Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation, a non-invasive alternative to vagus nerve stimulation with implantable devices, has shown promise in treating disorders such as depression, migraine, and insomnia. Studies of these disorders with resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging have found sustained changes in resting-state functional connectivity in patients treated with low frequency taVNS. A recent study has reported reductions in pain scores in patients with rheumatoid arthritis after a 12-week treatment of high-frequency sub-threshold taVNS. However, no studies to date have examined (...) the effects of high-frequency sub-threshold taVNS on rsFC. The objective of this study was to determine whether high-frequency sub-threshold taVNS induces changes in rsFC using seed regions from the cingulate cortex and insula, brain regions that play a key role in interoception and processing of pain. With a single-blind placebo-controlled repeated measures experimental design, rsfMRI scans were acquired before and after 15 min of either sub-threshold taVNS treatment or a sham control. Significant taVNS-related changes in functional connections to the cingulate cortex were detected between the anterior cingulate cortex and right superior temporal gyrus and between the midcingulate cortex and right inferior parietal lobule. In addition, significant changes in functional connections to the insula were detected between the posterior insula and right precuneus and between the anterior insula and right cuneus gyrus. These results suggest that high-frequency sub-threshold taVNS can lead to sustained effects on the rsFC of brain regions involved in interoception and processing of pain in a cohort of healthy subjects. This study lays the foundation for future rsfMRI studies of high-frequency sub-threshold taVNS in clinical populations. (shrink)

Philosopher's zombies are hypothetical beings behaviorally, functionally, and perhaps even physically indistinguishable from normal humans, but who lack our consciousness. Many people seem to be convinced that such zombies are a real conceptual possibility, and that this bare possibility entails that understanding human consciousness must remain forever beyond the reach of science. However, the conceptual entailments of zombiehood have not been sufficiently examined. This brief article shows that any way of understanding the behavior of zombies that does in fact support (...) the suggested entailment, leads to contradictions and absurdities. Zombies are _not_ conceptually possible. (shrink)

A theory of the structure and cognitive function of the human imagination that attempts to do justice to traditional intuitions about its psychological centrality is developed, largely through a detailed critique of the theory propounded by Colin McGinn. Like McGinn, I eschew the highly deflationary views of imagination, common amongst analytical philosophers, that treat it either as a conceptually incoherent notion, or as psychologically trivial. However, McGinn fails to develop his alternative account satisfactorily because (following Reid, Wittgenstein and Sartre) he (...) draws an excessively sharp, qualitative distinction between imagination and perception, and because of his flawed, empirically ungrounded conception of hallucination. His arguments in defense of these views are rebutted in detail, and the traditional, passive, Cartesian view of visual perception, upon which several of them implicitly rely, is criticized in the light of findings from recent cognitive science and neuroscience. It is also argued that the apparent intuitiveness of the passive view of visual perception is a result of mere historical contingency. An understanding of perception (informed by modern visual science) as an inherently active process enables us to unify our accounts of perception, mental imagery, dreaming, hallucination, creativity, and other aspects of imagination within a single coherent theoretical framework. (shrink)

Peak alpha frequency is known to vary not just between individuals, but also within an individual over time. While variance in this metric between individuals has been tied to working memory performance, less understood are how short timescale modulations of peak alpha frequency during task performance may facilitate behavior. This gap in understanding may be bridged by consideration of a key difference between individuals: sex. Inconsistent findings in the literature regarding the relationship between peak alpha frequency and cognitive performance, as (...) well as known sex-related-differences in peak alpha frequency and its modulation motivated our hypothesis that cognitive and neural processes underlying working memory—modulation of peak alpha frequency in particular—may differ based upon sex. Targeting sex as a predictive factor, we analyzed the EEG data of participants recorded while they performed four versions of a visual spatial working memory task. A significant difference between groups was present: females modulated peak alpha frequency more than males. Task performance did not differ by sex, yet a relationship between accuracy and peak alpha frequency was present in males, but not in females. These findings highlight the importance of considering sex as a factor in the study of oscillatory activity, particularly to further understanding of the neural mechanisms that underlie working memory. (shrink)