A theory of conceptual development must specify the innate representational primitives, must characterize the ways in which the initial state differs from the adult state, and must characterize the processes through which one is transformed into the other. The Origin of Concepts (henceforth TOOC) defends three theses. With respect to the initial state, the innate stock of primitives is not limited to sensory, perceptual, or sensorimotor representations; rather, there are also innate conceptual representations. With respect to developmental change, conceptual development (...) consists of episodes of qualitative change, resulting in systems of representation that are more powerful than, and sometimes incommensurable with, those from which they are built. With respect to a learning mechanism that achieves conceptual discontinuity, I offer Quinian bootstrapping. TOOC concludes with a discussion of how an understanding of conceptual development constrains a theory of concepts. (shrink)

Theories in cognitive science, and especially cognitive neuroscience, often claim that parts of cognitive systems are reused for different cognitive functions. Philosophical analysis of this concept, however, is rare. Here, I first provide a set of criteria for an analysis of reuse, and then I analyse reuse in terms of the functions of subsystems. I also discuss how cognitive systems execute cognitive functions, the relation between learning and reuse, and how to differentiate reuse from related concepts like multi-use, redundancy, and (...) duplication of parts. Finally, I illustrate how my account captures the reuse of dynamical subsystems as unveiled by recent research in cognitive neurobiology. This recent research suggests two different evolutionary justifications for reuse claims. _1_ Introduction _2_ Criteria for Analyses of Reuse _3_ Use and Reuse _4_ The Reuse of Dynamical Systems in Cognitive Systems _5_ Conclusion. (shrink)

People’s awareness of tactile stimuli has been investigated in far less detail than their awareness of stimuli in other sensory modalities. In an attempt to fill this gap, we provide an overview of studies that are pertinent to the topic of tactile consciousness. We discuss the results of research that has investigated phenomena such as “change blindness”, phantom limb sensations, and numerosity judgments in tactile perception, together with the results obtained from the study of patients affected by deficits that can (...) adversely affect tactile perception such as neglect, extinction, and numbsense. The similarities as well as some of the important differences that have emerged when visual and tactile conscious information processing have been compared using similar experimental procedures are highlighted. We suggest that conscious information processing in the tactile modality cannot be separated completely from the more general processing of spatial information in the brain. Finally, the importance of considering tactile consciousness within the larger framework of multisensory information processing is also discussed. (shrink)

Theories in cognitive science, and especially cognitive neuroscience, often claim that parts of cognitive systems are reused for different cognitive functions. Philosophical analysis of this concept, however, is rare. Here, I first provide a set of criteria for an analysis of reuse, and then I analyse reuse in terms of the functions of subsystems. I also discuss how cognitive systems execute cognitive functions, the relation between learning and reuse, and how to differentiate reuse from related concepts like multi-use, redundancy, and (...) duplication of parts. Finally, I illustrate how my account captures the reuse of dynamical subsystems as unveiled by recent research in cognitive neurobiology. This recent research suggests two different evolutionary justifications for reuse claims. (shrink)

The visual world of adults consists of objects at various distances, partly occluding one another, substantial and stable across space and time. The visual world of young infants, in contrast, is often fragmented and unstable, consisting not of coherent objects but rather surfaces that move in unpredictable ways. Evidence from computational modeling and from experiments with human infants highlights three kinds of learning that contribute to infants’ knowledge of the visual world: learning via association, learning via active assembly, and learning (...) via visual-manual exploration. Infants acquire knowledge by observing objects move in and out of sight, forming associations of these different views. In addition, the infant’s own self-produced behavior—oculomotor patterns and manual experience, in particular—is an important means by which infants discover and construct their visual world. (shrink)

In attempts to formulate a computational understanding of brain function, one of the fundamental concerns is the data structure by which the brain represents information. For many decades, a conceptual framework has dominated the thinking of both brain modelers and neurobiologists. That framework is referred to here as "classical neural networks." It is well supported by experimental data, although it may be incomplete. A characterization of this framework will be offered in the next section. Difficulties in modeling important functional aspects (...) of the brain on the basis of classical neural networks alone have led to the recognition that another, general mechanism must be invoked to explain brain function. That mechanism I call " binding." Binding by neural signal synchrony had been mentioned several times in the liter ature before it was fully formulated as a general phenomenon. Although experimental evidence for neural syn chrony was soon found, the idea was largely ignored for many years. Only recently has it become a topic of animated discussion. In what follows, I will summarize the nature and the roots of the idea of binding, especially of temporal binding, and will discuss some of the objec tions raised against it. (shrink)

The target article demonstrates how neurocognitive modellers should not be intimidated by challenges such as Jackendoff's and should explore neurally plausible implementations of linguistic constructs. The next step is to take seriously insights offlered by neuroscience, including the robustness allowed by analogue computation with distributed representations and the power of attractor dynamics in turning analogue into nearly discrete operations.

Are infants' initial object representations innately specified? We examine the development of perceptual completion in infants by highlighting two issues. First, perceptual completion is supported by neural mechanisms that rely on experience with the environment. Second, we present behavioral and modeling data that demonstrate how perceptual completion can emerge as a consequence of changes in visual attention and oculomotor skill.

We offer an ecological (Gibsonian) alternative to cognitive (im)penetrability. Whereas Pylyshyn explains cognitive (im)penetrability by focusing solely on computations carried out by the nervous system, according to the ecological approach the perceiver as a knowing agent influences the entire animal-environmental system: in the determination of what constitutes the environment (affordances), what constitutes information, what information is detected and, thus, what is perceived.

Our ability to select relevant information from the environment is limited by the resolution of attention – i.e., the minimum size of the region that can be selected. Neural mechanisms that underlie this limit and its development are not yet understood. Functional MRI was performed during an object tracking task in 7- and 11-year-old children, and in young adults. Object tracking activated canonical fronto-parietal attention systems and motion-sensitive area MT in children as young as 7 years. Object tracking performance improved (...) with age, together with stronger recruitment of parietal attention areas and a shift from low-level to higher-level visual areas. Increasing the required resolution of spatial attention – which was implemented by varying the distance between target and distractors in the object tracking task – led to activation increases in fronto-insular cortex, medial frontal cortex including anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and supplementary motor area, superior colliculi, and thalamus. This core circuitry for attentional precision was recruited by all age groups, but ACC showed an age-related activation reduction. Our results suggest that age-related improvements in selective visual attention and in the resolution of attention are characterized by an increased use of more functionally specialized brain regions during the course of development. (shrink)

We analysed location priming effects, and thus the ability to integrate visual information across subsequent trials in the three studies presented in the following chapters. Based on previous findings in healthy subjects priming effects occur under conditions that require no attentional shifts in-between subsequent trials, i.e. with the subject’s fixation maintained and the search displays presented at retinotopically equal locations with respect to the fixation cross. In study 1 we tested whether location-based priming effects would outlive spatial shifts of attention (...) in healthy subjects. The basic assumption, derived from Pisella and Mattingley´s account was they would, and that the outliving would be based on intact spatial remapping mechanisms operating in healthy subjects along with attention shifts. The aim of study 1 in view of further investigations in patients, i.e. in studies 2 and 3 was to test the suitability of the priming paradigm to serve our purpose to investigate spatial remapping abilities, and furthermore, in patients, purported deficits. To test whether priming effects would outlive saccadic shifts of overt attention, subjects had to re-fixate the fixation cross in turns on the left and on the right side of the monitor between subsequent trials. In two separate experiments priming effects were measured at post-saccadically retinotopic and spatiotopic locations, respectively, and compared to effects in a control experiment requiring no attention shifts. The experiments were also applied in study 2. To test whether priming effects would outlive covert shifts of attention subjects´ attention was distracted between subsequent trials while their fixation was maintained. In two separate experiments priming effects were measured after exogenous and endogenous distraction, respectively, and compared to a control experiment without distraction. The experiments were also applied in study 3. The presence of priming effects despite interfering attention shifts could be taken as evidence that processes that integrate visual information along with attention shifts, i.e. spatial remapping mechanisms, operate flawlessly in healthy subjects. The aim of study 2 was to test whether the parietal cortex provides the neural correlate of spatial remapping as assumed by Pisella and Mattingley. To that end, we tested whether spatial remapping deficits would occur after saccadic shifts of overt attention in patients with right parietal lesions. Deficits were expected to be indicated by altered or disturbed priming effects in those patients as compared to priming effects in healthy control subjects and furthermore, in patients with right-hemispheric lesions not involving the parietal lobe. Latter patients were tested, to control for and differentiate between deficits occurring more generally after right-hemispheric damages and specific deficits occurring after right parietal damages. Moreover, given the crucial role of priming for visual search disturbed priming as an indicator of deficient spatial remapping would provide support for the assumption made by Pisella and Mattingley that spatial remapping deficits contribute to visual search impairments as they are often observed in patients with right parietal lesions. The aim of study 3 was to test the model’s assumption that spatial remapping is required after spatial shifts of covert attention. Again, we compared priming effects of patients with right parietal lesions to those of patients with right-hemispheric lesions without parietal involvement, and healthy subjects. We expected priming effects to be disturbed in patients with right parietal lesions provided that covert attention shifts induce spatial remapping requirements, and that the anatomical site of spatial remapping mechanisms operating to integrate visual information across spatial shifts of covert attention is located in the parietal lobe. (shrink)

Observers can learn the locations where salient distractors appear frequently to reduce potential interference. The effect that observers appear to learn the spatial distribution of salient but task-irrelevant distractors in the visual environment to reduce the interference caused by such distractors was referred to as ‘statistical learning of distractor locations’. Emerging studies agreed that the observed reduction of distractor interference is largely attributable to better suppression of distractor in frequent locations, however, concerning how this spatial distractor suppression is implemented within (...) the functional architecture of search guidance, and how the learned suppression is processed in the brain to reduce the interference, remains debated and poorly understood. The line of studies of the current dissertation, therefore, explores the cognitive and neural mechanism underlying spatial distractor suppression based on statistical learning. Using psychophysical experiments, the first two studies examined a series of potentially ‘confounding’ factors that might lead to different theoretical conclusions concerning the locus of learned spatial distractor suppression in different studies. We found that irrespective of whether a salient singleton distractor is more likely to occur at multiple locations within a subregion of the display or at a specific location, observers are both likely to adopt the priority-map-based suppression strategy and dimension-based suppression strategy to reduce interference of distractor in the frequent region. Notably, a critical factor determining which strategy is adopted is whether the distractor and non-distractor items swap colors randomly across trials: without color swapping, observers are more likely to acquire a dimension-based suppression; with color swapping, they prefer to develop a priority-map-based suppression in the first beginning, and potentially shift to dimension-based suppression later with the course of learning. The third study employed functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques with the distractor-location learning paradigm with two types of distractors defined in either the same- or different- visual dimension relative to the target. We disclosed that statistical learning of distractor locations involves suppression down to the level of the early visual cortex to reduce distractor interference, potential different neural mechanisms of spatial distractor suppression between distractors defined in a different and the same dimension to the target. With different-dimension distractors, higher-level, dimension-specific filtering mechanisms plays a role to reduce the interference; with same-dimension distractors, interference reduction relies on cutting down lower-level sensory signals. (shrink)