I argue that we can visually perceive others as seeing agents. I start by characterizing perceptual processes as those that are causally controlled by proximal stimuli. I then distinguish between various forms of visual perspective-taking, before presenting evidence that most of them come in perceptual varieties. In doing so, I clarify and defend the view that some forms of visual perspective-taking are “automatic”—a view that has been marshalled in support of dual-process accounts of mindreading.

There have recently been considerable advances in our understanding of the neuronal mechanisms underlying multitasking, but the role of multimodal integration for this faculty has remained rather unclear. We examined this issue by comparing different modality combinations in a multitasking paradigm. In-depth neurophysiological analyses of event-related potentials were conducted to complement the obtained behavioral data. Specifically, we applied signal decomposition using second order blind identification to the multi-subject ERP data and source localization. We found that both general multimodal information integration (...) and modality-specific aspects modulate behavioral performance and associated neurophysiological correlates. Simultaneous multimodal input generally increased early attentional processing of visual stimuli as well as measures of cognitive effort and conflict. Yet, tactile-visual input caused larger impairments in multitasking than audio-visual input. General aspects of multimodal information integration modulated the activity in the premotor cortex as well as different visual association areas concerned with the integration of visual information with input from other modalities. On top of this, differences in the specific combination of modalities also affected performance and measures of conflict/effort originating in prefrontal regions. (shrink)

Believing in free will may arise from a biological need for control. People induced to disbelieve in free will show impulsive and antisocial tendencies, suggesting a reduction of the willingness to exert self-control. We investigated whether undermining free will affects two aspects of self-control: intentional inhibition and perceived self-control. We exposed participants either to anti-free will or to neutral messages. The two groups then performed a task that required self-control to inhibit a prepotent response. No-free will participants showed less intentional (...) inhibitions than controls, suggesting a reduction of self-control. We assessed perceived self-control by asking participants whether the response resulted from a deliberate intention or from an impulsive reaction. Perceived self-control was lower in the no-free will group than in control group. Our findings show that undermining free will can degrade self-control and provide insights into how disbelieving in free will leads to antisocial tendencies. (shrink)

The problem of free will lies at the heart of modern scientific studies of consciousness. Some authors propose that actions are unconsciously initiated and awareness of intention is referred retrospectively to the action after it has been performed [e.g. Aarts, H., Custers, R., & Wegner, D. M. . On the inference of personal authorship: Enhancing experienced agency by priming effect information. Consciousness & Cognition, 14, 439–458]. This contrasts with the common impression that our intentions cause those actions. By combining a (...) stop signal paradigm and an intentional action paradigm we show that participants sometimes indicate to have intentionally initiated an action while reaction time data strongly suggest that they in fact failed to stop the action. In a second experiment we demonstrate that the number of trials in which participants misattributed their awareness of intention varied with the intentional involvement during action planning. Our data support the retrospective account of intentional action. Furthermore, we introduce an experimental approach that objectifies introspective judgments of awareness of intention. (shrink)

Alcohol intoxication is a major source of antisocial behavior in our society, strongly implicated in various forms of interpersonal aggression. Yet, moral philosophers have paid surprisingly little attention to the literature on alcohol and its effects. In part, this is because philosophers who have adopted a more empirically informed approach to moral psychology have gravitated toward moral sentimentalism, while the literature on alcohol intoxication fits very poorly with the sentimentalist account. Most contemporary research on the psychological effects of alcohol is (...) focused upon variants of the “disinhibition” theory, which suggests that alcohol does not provoke any specific affect, it merely weakens executive control. This research, we argue, lends support to a deontic moral psychology, which identifies our ability to suppress behavioral impulses as a central feature of moral agency. (shrink)

This article addresses the ability of Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) networks to generate stagewise cognitive development in accordance with Piaget's theory of cognitive epigenesis. We carried out a replication study of the simulation experiments by McClelland (1989) and McClelland and Jenkins (1991) in which a PDP network learns to solve balance scale problems. In objective tests motivated from catastrophe theory, a mathematical theory of transitions in epigenetical systems, no evidence for stage transitions in network performance was found. It is concluded (...) that PDP networks lack the ability to recover the positive outcomes of analogous catastrophe analyses of real cognitive developmental data. In an attempt to further characterize the learning behaviour of PDP networks, we carried out a second simulation study using the discrimination‐shift paradigm. The results thus obtained indicate that PDP learning is compatible with the learning of stimulus‐response relationships, not with the acquisition of mediating rules such as conceived in (neo‐)Piagetian theory. In closing, we speculate about the feasibility of simulating stagewise development with alternative network architectures. (shrink)

The Stroop effect is composed of interference and facilitation effects. The facilitation is less stable and thus many times is referred to as a “fragile effect”. Here we suggest the facilitation effect is highly vulnerable to individual differences in control over the task conflict . We replicated previous findings of a significant correlation between stop-signal reaction time and Stroop interference, and also found a significant correlation between SSRT and the Stroop facilitation effect—participants with low inhibitory control had no facilitation effect (...) or even a reversed one. These results shed new light on the “fragile” facilitation effect and highlight the necessity of awareness of task conflict, especially in the Stroop task. (shrink)

The relations between automatic processing and consciousness are discussed in this paper. It is argued that automatic processing should not be identified with the absence of consciousness. The organism has access to representations resulting from automatic processing, but these representations, in contrast to the representations resulting from nonautomatic processing, are not propositional. Therefore monitoring of the process, the defining feature of nonautomatic processing, is not possible.

Negrotti's theory of the artificial is based on the fundamental assumption that the human being cannot select more than one observation level per unit of time. Since this assumption has important consequences for the theory of knowledge — knowledge cannot be synthesised but only further differentiated — its plausibility is tested against two aspects that characterise any theory of knowledge: knowledge production and knowledge application. The way in which the human being produces and applies knowledge is analysed, and a model (...) of mind based on the transitoriness of its elements is proposed. The analysis confirms that only one observation level can be selected per unit of time. (shrink)

In this essay I critically examine Daniel Wegner’s account of conscious will as an illusion developed in his book The Illusion of Conscious Will. I show that there are unwarranted leaps in his argument, which considerably decrease the empirical plausibility and theoretical adequacy of his account. Moreover, some features essential to our experience of willing, which are related to our general understanding of free will, moral responsibility and human agency, are largely left out in Wegner’s account of conscious will. This (...) substantially diminishes its implications and significance for some profound philosophical issues. (shrink)

Cognitive control enables people to adjust their thoughts and actions according to the current task demands. Response inhibition and response adjustment are two key aspects of cognitive control. Here, we examined how the implicit processing of emotional information influences these two functions with the help of the double-step saccade task. Each trial had either a single target or two sequential targets. Upon a single target onset, participants were required to make a quick saccade, but upon two target onsets, participants were (...) instructed to inhibit their initial saccades and redirect their gaze to the second target. In three experiments, we manipulated the emotional information of the first and second targets. We found that irrelevant emotional information of the first target impaired response inhibition compared to non-emotional information (geometric shapes) of the first target. When non-emotional information (geometric shape) came as the first target, irrelevant angry emotional faces as the second target interfered with both response inhibition and response adjustment compared to irrelevant happy and neutral faces. We explain these results with previous findings that processing faces with irrelevant angry facial expressions take up many attentional resources, leaving fewer resources available for ongoing activities such as response inhibition and response adjustment. (shrink)

Adotei uma abordagem experimental para essa questão. Atos de vontade livre são precedidos por uma mudança elétrica específica no cérebro 3, que inicia 550 milissegundos antes do ato. As pessoas tomaram consciência da intenção de agir 350-400 milissegundos depois do início do RP e 200 milissegundos antes do ato motor. O processo volitivo é, portanto, iniciado inconscientemente. Mas a função consciente ainda poderia controlar o resultado; pode vetar o ato. O livre-arbítrio não é, portanto, excluído. Essas descobertas impõem restrições às (...) visões de como o livre-arbítrio pode operar; não faria iniciar um ato voluntário, mas poderia controlar a realização. As descobertas também afetam perspectivas de culpa e responsabilidade. (shrink)

Violence has been linked to the co-occurrence of cognitive dysfunction and altered activations in several brain regions. Empirical evidence demonstrated the benefits of acute exercise on motor inhibition and error detection and their neuronal processing. However, whether such effects also hold for the population with violent behaviors remains unknown. This study examined the effects of acute aerobic exercise on inhibitory control and error monitoring among violent offenders. Fifteen male violent offenders were counterbalanced into experimental protocols, which comprised a 30-min moderately (...) aerobic exercise [60% heart rate reserve] and a 30-min reading control session. After each session, participants performed an emotional stop signal task while event-related potentials were recorded simultaneously. Results showed insignificant changes in ERPs components [i.e., N2, P3, error-related negativity, and error-positivity amplitudes] and the behavioral performance in go condition, stop accuracy, and post-error adjustments by exercise. However, the current study demonstrated that the acute exercise facilitated stop signal reaction time when compared to the control session regardless of emotional conditions. This is the first research to exhibit the improvements in inhibitory performance by acute exercise for violent offenders. Most importantly, this effect was independent of affective settings, expanding the existing knowledge of the influences of acute exercise on cognition. Our findings implicate the perspective of acute exercise for clinical and correctional practices. (shrink)

A critical issue in executive control is how the nervous system exerts flexibility to inhibit a prepotent response and adapt to sudden changes in the environment. In this study, force measurement was used to capture “partial” unsuccessful trials that are highly relevant in extending the current understanding of motor inhibition processing. Moreover, a modified version of the stop-signal task was used to control and eliminate potential attentional capture effects from the motor inhibition index. The results illustrate that the non-canceled force (...) and force rate increased as a function of stop-signal delay, offering new objective indices for gauging the dynamic inhibitory process. Motor response was a function of delay in the presentation of novel/infrequent stimuli. A larger lateralized readiness potential amplitude in go and novel stimuli indicated an influence of the novel stimuli on central motor processing. Moreover, an early N1 component reflects an index of motor inhibition in addition to the N2 component reported in previous studies. Source analysis revealed that the activation of N2 originated from inhibitory control associated areas: the right inferior frontal gyrus, pre-motor cortex, and primary motor cortex. Regarding partial responses, LRP and error-related negativity were associated with error correction processes, whereas the N2 component may indicate the functional overlap between inhibition and error correction. In sum, the present study has developed reliable and objective indices of motor inhibition by introducing force, force-rate and electrophysiological measures, further elucidating our understandings of dynamic motor inhibition and error correction. (shrink)

Inhibition-induced forgetting refers to impaired memory for the stimuli to which responses were inhibited. The present study aimed to examine if it would be modulated by the processing of threateni...

The goal of this study was to investigate heterogeneity in clinical symptoms and cognitive functioning among children with hyperactivity-impulsivity and inattention using a novel approach that combined dimensional and person-centered perspectives. Executive, verbal and visuo-spatial functioning, hyperactivity-impulsivity, inattention, externalizing and internalizing symptoms were examined in 102 children at risk for ADHD and 62 children not at risk for ADHD in the age range of 8–10 years. We extracted seven groups with various profiles of psychopathological symptoms and cognitive functioning. We propose (...) that symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity in these groups are related to different cognitive and affective-motivational problems. (shrink)

Several attempts have been made previously to provide a biological grounding for cognitive architectures by relating their components to the computations of specific brain circuits. Often, the architecture's action selection system is identified with the basal ganglia. However, this identification overlooks one of the most important features of the basal ganglia—the existence of a direct and an indirect pathway that compete against each other. This characteristic has important consequences in decision-making tasks, which are brought to light by Parkinson's disease as (...) well as genetic differences in dopamine receptors. This paper shows that a standard model of action selection in a cognitive architecture cannot replicate any of these findings, details an alternative solution that reconciles action selection in the architecture with the physiology of the basal ganglia, and extends the domain of application of cognitive architectures. The implication of this solution for other architectures and existing models are discussed. (shrink)