This study investigates interpersonal processes underlying dialog by comparing two approaches, interactive alignment and interpersonal synergy, and assesses how they predict collective performance in a joint task. While the interactive alignment approach highlights imitative patterns between interlocutors, the synergy approach points to structural organization at the level of the interaction—such as complementary patterns straddling speech turns and interlocutors. We develop a general, quantitative method to assess lexical, prosodic, and speech/pause patterns related to the two approaches and their impact on collective (...) performance in a corpus of task-oriented conversations. The results show statistical presence of patterns relevant for both approaches. However, synergetic aspects of dialog provide the best statistical predictors of collective performance and adding aspects of the alignment approach does not improve the model. This suggests that structural organization at the level of the interaction plays a crucial role in task-oriented conversations, possibly constraining and integrating processes related to alignment. (shrink)

The complex systems approach to cognitive science invites a new understanding of extended cognitive systems. According to this understanding, extended cognitive systems are heterogenous, composed of brain, body, and niche, non-linearly coupled to one another. This view of cognitive systems, as non-linearly coupled brain–body–niche systems, promises conceptual and methodological advances. In this article we focus on two of these. First, the fundamental interdependence among brain, body, and niche makes it possible to explain extended cognition without invoking representations or computation. Second, (...) cognition and conscious experience can be understood as a single phenomenon, eliminating fruitless philosophical discussion of qualia and the so-called hard problem of consciousness. What we call “extended phenomenological-cognitive systems” are relational and dynamical entities, with interactions among heterogeneous parts at multiple spatial and temporal scales. (shrink)

To accept that cognition is embodied is to question many of the beliefs traditionally held by cognitive scientists. One key question regards the localization of cognitive faculties. Here we argue that for cognition to be embodied and sometimes embedded, means that the cognitive faculty cannot be localized in a brain area alone. We review recent research on neural reuse, the 1/f structure of human activity, tool use, group cognition, and social coordination dynamics that we believe demonstrates how the boundary between (...) the different areas of the brain, the brain and body, and the body and environment is not only blurred but indeterminate. In turn, we propose that cognition is supported by a nested structure of task-specific synergies, which are softly assembled from a variety of neural, bodily, and environmental components (including other individuals), and exhibit interaction dominant dynamics. (shrink)

This paper presents a blueprint for an ecological cognitive architecture. Ecological psychology, I contend, must be complemented with a story about the role of the CNS in perception, action, and cognition. To arrive at such a story while staying true to the tenets of ecological psychology, it will be necessary to flesh out the central metaphor according to which the animal perceives its environment by ‘resonating’ to information in energy patterns: what is needed is a theory of resonance. I offer (...) here the two main elements of such a theory: a framework and a methodology. (shrink)

One big challenge faced by cognitive science is the development of a unified theory that integrates disparate scales of analysis of cognitive phenomena. In this paper, I offer a unified framework that provides a way to integrate neural and behavioral scales of analysis of cognitive phenomena—typically addressed by neuroscience and experimental psychology, respectively. The framework is based on the concept of resonance originated in ecological psychology and aims to be the foundation for a unified theory for radical embodiment; that is, (...) a unified theory for that dissident part of cognitive science that shares a methodological commitment to dynamic systems theory and remains skeptical about the adequacy of mechanism and representationalism as the guiding ideas in the field. In the course of my presentation, I analyze different issues regarding the requirements and constraints unification poses to radical embodiment. (shrink)

In everyday situations, and particularly in some sport and working contexts, humans face an inherently unpredictable and uncertain environment. All sorts of unpredictable and unexpected things happen but typically people are able to skillfully adapt. In this paper, we address two key questions in cognitive science. First, how is an agent able to bring its previously learned skill to bear on a novel situation? Second, how can an agent be both sensitive to the particularity of a given situation, while remaining (...) flexibly poised for many other possibilities for action? We will argue that both the sensitivity to novel situations and the sensitivity to a multiplicity of action possibilities are enabled by the property of skilled agency that we will call metastable attunement. We characterize a skilled agent’s flexible interactions with a dynamically changing environment in terms of metastable dynamics in agent-environment systems. What we find in metastability is the realization of two competing tendencies: the tendency of the agent to express their intrinsic dynamics and the tendency to search for new possibilities. Metastably attuned agents are ready to engage with a multiplicity of affordances, allowing for a balance between stability and flexibility. On the one hand, agents are able to exploit affordances they are attuned to, while at the same time being ready to flexibly explore for other affordances. Metastable attunement allows agents to smoothly transition between these possible configurations so as to adapt their behaviour to what the particular situation requires. We go on to describe the role metastability plays in learning of new skills, and in skilful behaviour more generally. Finally, drawing upon work in art, architecture and sports science, we develop a number of perspectives on how to investigate metastable attunement in real life situations. (shrink)

A widely shared assumption in the literature about skilled motor behavior is that any action that is not blindly automatic and mechanical must be the product of computational processes upon mental representations. To counter this assumption, in this paper we offer a radical embodied (non-representational) account of skilled action that combines ecological psychology and the Deweyan theory of habits. According to our proposal, skilful performance can be understood as composed of sequences of mutually coherent, task-specific perceptual-motor habits. Such habits play (...) a crucial role in simplifying both our exploration of the perceptual environment and our decision-making. However, we argue that what keeps habits situated, precluding them from becoming rote and automatic, are not mental representations but the agent's conscious attention to the affordances of the environment. It is because the agent is not acting on autopilot but constantly searching for new information for affordances that she can control her behavior, adapting previously learned habits to the current circumstances. We defend that our account provides the resources needed to understand how skilled action can be intelligent (flexible, adaptive, context-sensitive) without having any representational cognitive processes built into them. (shrink)

In this essay, I respond to the critical remarks of Louise Barrett, Amanda Corris and Anthony Chemero, and Daniel Hutto on my book Enactivist Interventions. In doing so, I consider whether behaviorism can make a contribution to enactivist theory, whether synergies are the same as dynamical gestalts, and whether the brain can add anything to mathematical reasoning.

Human neural and behavioral activities have been reported to exhibit fractal dynamics known as 1/f noise, which is more aptly named 1/f scaling. Some argue that 1/f scaling is a general and pervasive property of the dynamical substrate from which cognitive functions are formed. Others argue that it is an idiosyncratic property of domain‐specific processes. An experiment was conducted to investigate whether 1/f scaling pervades the intrinsic fluctuations of a spoken word. Ten participants each repeated the word bucket over 1,000 (...) times, and fluctuations in acoustic measurements across repetitions generally followed the 1/f scaling relation, including numerous parallel yet distinct series of 1/f fluctuations. On the basis of work showing that 1/f scaling is a universal earmark of metastability, it is proposed that the observed pervasiveness of 1/f fluctuations in speech reflects the fact that cognitive functions are formed as metastable patterns of activity in brain, body, and environment. (shrink)

In the classical Turing test, participants are challenged to tell whether they are interacting with another human being or with a machine. The way the interaction takes place is not direct, but a distant conversation through computer screen messages. Basic forms of interaction are face-to-face and embodied, context-dependent and based on the detection of reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies. Our idea is that interaction detection requires the integration of proprioceptive and interoceptive patterns with sensorimotor patterns, within quite short time lapses, so that (...) they appear as mutually contingent, as reciprocal. In other words, the experience of interaction takes place when sensorimotor patterns are contingent upon one’s own movements, and vice versa. I react to your movement, you react to mine. When I notice both components, I come to experience an interaction. Therefore, we designed a “minimal” Turing test to investigate how much information is required to detect these reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies. Using a new version of the perceptual crossing paradigm, we tested whether participants resorted to interaction detection to tell apart human from machine agents in repeated encounters with these agents. In two studies, we presented participants with movements of a human agent, either online or offline, and movements of a computerized oscillatory agent in three different blocks. In each block, either auditory or audiovisual feedback was provided along each trial. Analysis of participants’ explicit responses and of the implicit information subsumed in the dynamics of their series will reveal evidence that participants use the reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies within short time windows. For a machine to pass this minimal Turing test, it should be able to generate this sort of reciprocal contingencies. (shrink)

We explored the influence of negation on cognitive dynamics, measured using mouse‐movement trajectories, to test the classic notion that negation acts as an operator on linguistic processing. In three experiments, participants verified the truth or falsity of simple statements, and we tracked the computer‐mouse trajectories of their responses. Sentences expressing these facts sometimes contained a negation. Such negated statements could be true (e.g., “elephants are not small”) or false (e.g., “elephants are not large”). In the first experiment, as predicted by (...) the classic notion of negation, we found that negation caused more discreteness in the mouse trajectory of a response. The second experiment induced a simple context for these statements, yet negation still increased discreteness in trajectories. A third experiment enhanced the pragmatic context of sentences, and the discreteness was substantially diminished, with one primary measure no longer significantly showing increased discreteness at all. Traditional linguistic theories predict rapid shifts in cognitive dynamics occur due to the nature of negation: It is an operator that reverses the truth or falsity of an interpretation. We argue that these results support both propositional and contextual accounts of negation present in the literature, suggesting that contextual factors are crucial for determining the kind of cognitive dynamics displayed. We conclude by drawing broader lessons about theories of cognition from the case of negation. (shrink)

The complex-systems approach to cognitive science seeks to move beyond the formalism of information exchange and to situate cognition within the broader formalism of energy flow. Changes in cognitive performance exhibit a fractal (i.e., power-law) relationship between size and time scale. These fractal fluctuations reflect the flow of energy at all scales governing cognition. Information transfer, as traditionally understood in the cognitive sciences, may be a subset of this multiscale energy flow. The cognitive system exhibits not just a single power-law (...) relationship between fluctuation size and time scale but actually exhibits many power-law relationships, whether over time or space. This change in fractal scaling, that is, multifractality, provides new insights into changes in energy flow through the cognitive system. We survey recent findings demonstrating the role of multifractality in (a) understanding atypical developmental outcomes, and (b) predicting cognitive change. We propose that multifractality provides insights into energy flows driving the emergence of cognitive structure. (shrink)

Embodied cognitive science holds that cognitive processes are deeply and inescapably rooted in our bodily interactions with the world. Our finite, contingent, and mortal embodiment may be not only supportive, but in some cases even constitutive of emotions, thoughts, and experiences. My discussion here will work outward from the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the brain to a nervous system which extends to the boundaries of the body. It will extend to nonneural aspects of embodiment and even beyond the boundaries of (...) the body to prosthetics of various kinds, including symbioses with a broad array of cultural artifacts, our symbolic niche, and our relationships with other embodied human beings. While cognition may not always be situated, its origins are embedded in temporally and spatially limited activities. Cognitive work also can be off-loaded to the body and to the environment in service of action, tool use, group cognition, and social coordination. This can blur the boundaries between brain areas, brain and body, and body and environment, transforming our understanding of mind and personhood to provide a different grounding for faith traditions in general, and of the historically dualist Christian tradition in particular. (shrink)

According to ecological psychology, agency is a crucial feature of living organisms: therefore many ecological psychologists maintain that explaining agency is one of the core aims of the discipline. This paper aims to contribute to this goal by arguing that an ecological understanding of agency requires an account of intention. So far, intentions have not played a dominant role in ecological accounts of agency. The reluctance to integrate a notion of intention seems to be motivated by the widespread assumption that (...) intentions should be understood as internal states with representational content. This assumption goes against two main tenets of ecological psychology: its anti-representationalist stance and its claim that perception is direct (in the sense of not being mediated by inferential processes). Ecological psychology thus needs a different answer to the question what intentions are. In this paper, we aim to show that Elizabeth Anscombe’s theory of intention can be fruitfully brought to bear on an ecological theory of agency. We will argue that Anscombe’s account can meet the two challenges of bringing intentions into the framework of ecological psychology: firstly it can explain what intentions are, if not representational states; and, secondly, it can show how our perception of affordances is guided by intention without undermining the idea of direct perception. (shrink)

Complexity science is an investigative framework that stems from a number of tried and tested disciplines—including systems theory, nonlinear dynamical systems theory, and synergetics—and extends a common set of concepts, methods, and principles to understand how natural systems operate. By quantitatively employing concepts, such as emergence, nonlinearity, and self‐organization, complexity science offers a way to understand the structures and operations of natural cognitive systems in a manner that is conceptually compelling and mathematically rigorous. Thus, complexity science both transforms understandings of (...) cognition and reframes more traditional approaches. Consequently, if cognitive systems are indeed complex systems, then cognitive science ought to consider complexity science as a centerpiece of the discipline. (shrink)

Residual fluctuations produced in typical experimental methodologies are examined as correlated noises. The effective range of the correlations was assessed by determining whether the decay over look‐back time is better described as a power law or exponential. Both of these decay laws contain free parameters and it is argued that it is not possible to distinguish their models on the basis of simple measures of goodness‐of‐fit. Global analyses that evaluate models on the basis of how well they generalize are conducted. (...) The models are examined in terms of three constructs that all bear on generalization: cross‐validity, flexibility, and representativeness. Quantitative assessment of a large ensemble of data suggests that the correlations decay over time as a power law. The conclusion is that human residual fluctuation is a correlated fractal. (shrink)

Over two decades have passed since the publication of van Gelder's (1998) “dynamical hypothesis.” In that paper, van Gelder proposed that cognitive agents were not digital computers—per the representational computational approach—but dynamical systems. The evolution of the dynamical hypothesis was driven by parallel advances in three areas. Theoretically, a deeper understanding of genetics, biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science inspired questions about how systems within each domain dynamically interact and extend their effects across spatiotemporal scales. Methodologically, more sophisticated and domain-general tools (...) allowed researchers to discover, model, and quantify system dynamics, structure, and patterns across multiple scales to generate a more comprehensive system-level understanding of behaviors. Empirically, we can analyze a system's behavior while preserving its natural dynamics, revealing evidence that the reductionist approach leads to an incomplete understanding of the components and the overall system. Researchers have traditionally reduced a complex system into its component processes and assumed that the parts can be recombined to explain the whole. These three advances fundamentally altered our understanding of a “cognitive agent:” How their behaviors are driven by long-range coordination across multiple processes, how the interdependent and nested structure of interacting variables produces behaviors that are greater than the sum of its parts, and how environmental constraints shape adaptive yet stable behavioral patterns. (shrink)

Temporality underpins how living systems coordinate and function. Unlike measures that use mathematical conventions, lived temporalities grant functional cohesion to organisms-in-the-world. In foxtail grasses, for example, self-maintenance meshes endogenous processes with exogenous rhythms. In embrained animals, temporalities can contribute to learning. And cowbirds coordinate in a soundscape that includes conspecifics: social learning allows them to connect copulating with past events such that females exert ‘long-distance’ control over male singing. Using Howard Pattee’s work, we compare the foxtail’s self-maintenance, gender-based cowbird learning (...) and how humans manage multi-scalar activity. We argue that, while all living things coordinate, temporal ranging is typical of vertebrates. As primates, humans too use temporal ranging – they can draw on social learning, anticipate winter and manage coordinated action. However language behaviour grants new control over the scales of time. People connect the impersonal to lived experience in narratives, as they draw on autobiography and enact cultural practices. Humans become singular individuals who use temporal experience to manage affect, relationships, beliefs, fictions, and knowledge. Individual subjectivity permits collaborative and competitive activity based on linking events with quite different histories. As a result, alone of the vertebrates, we claim that humans become time-rangers. (shrink)

Through theoretical discussion, literature review, and a computational model, this paper poses a challenge to the notion that perspective-taking involves a fixed architecture in which particular processes have priority. For example, some research suggests that egocentric perspectives can arise more quickly, with other perspectives (such as of task partners) emerging only secondarily. This theoretical dichotomy–between fast egocentric and slow other-centric processes–is challenged here. We propose a general view of perspective-taking as an emergent phenomenon governed by the interplay among cognitive mechanisms (...) that accumulate information at different timescales. We first describe the pervasive relevance of perspective-taking to cognitive science. A dynamical systems model is then introduced that explicitly formulates the timescale interaction proposed. This model illustrates that, rather than having a rigid time course, perspective-taking can be fast or slow depending on factors such as task context. Implications are discussed, with ideas for future empirical research. (shrink)

The dominant assumption about the causal architecture of the mind is, that it is composed of a stable set of components that contribute independently to relevant observables that are employed to measure cognitive activity. This view has been called component-dominant dynamics. An alternative has been proposed, according to which the different components are not independent, but fundamentally interdependent, and are not stable basic properties of the mind, but rather an emergent feature of the mind given a particular task context. This (...) view has been called interaction-dominant dynamics. In this paper, we review evidence for interaction-dominant dynamics as the causal architecture of the mind. We point out, that such an architecture is consistent with problems of convergence in research on the level of results and theorizing. Moreover, we point out that if interaction-dominant dynamics as the causal architecture of the mind were to be true, this would naturally lead to problems with generalization and replicability in sciences of the mind and brain, and would probably warrant changes in the scientific practice with regard to study-design and data analysis. (shrink)

Several models of the evolution of religion claim that ritual creates “religion” and gives it a positive evolutionary role. Robert Bellah suggests that the evolutionary roots of ritual lay in the play of animals. For Homo sapiens, Bellah argues, rituals generate a world of experience different from the world of everyday life, and that different world of experience is the foundation of later religious developments. Robin Dunbar points to trance dancing as the original religious behavior. Trance dancing both alters ordinary (...) consciousness and generates trance experiences that will give rise to religious concepts and also, through the production of endorphins, bonds people into tight-knit social groups whose social bonding gives them a survival advantage. The role of ritual in social bonding has been well established through the research on the production of endorphins by synchronized activity and the role of endorphins in social bonding. The role of ritual in generating religious experience has been much less developed. Drawing on the extensive research on the ways in which bodily activity can impact and transform our sensory and cognitive processes, and the ways in which sensory and cognitive processes are neurologically connected with somatic processes, this article will propose one neuropsychological model of how ritual activity might give rise to religion. Starting from bodily activity means that here religion will be understood more as a set of practices and less as a set of beliefs. Theological implications of this model will be discussed. (shrink)

Many previous treatments of voluntary behavior have viewed intentions as causes of behavior. This has resulted in several dilemmas, including a dilemma concerning the origin of intentions. The present article circumvents traditional dilemmas by treating intentions as constraints that restrict degrees of freedom for behavior. Constraints self-organize as temporary dynamic structures that span the mind-body divide. This treatment of intentions and voluntary behavior yields a theory of intentionality that is consistent with existing findings and supported by current research.

The question whether cognition ever extends beyond the head is widely considered to be an empirical issue. And yet, all the evidence amassed in recent years has not sufficed to settle the debate. In this paper we suggest that this is because the debate is not really an empirical one, but rather a matter of definition. Traditional cognitive science can be identified as wedded to the ideals of “smallism” and “localism”. We criticize these ideals and articulate a case in favor (...) of extended cognition by highlighting the historical pedigree and conceptual adequacy of related empirical and theoretical work. (shrink)

Does a concurrent cognitive task affect the dynamics of bimanual rhythmic coordination? In‐phase coordination was performed under manipulations of phase detuning and movement frequency and either singly or in combination with an arithmetic task. Predicted direction‐specific shifts in stable relative phase from 0° due to detuning and movement frequency were amplified by the cognitive task. Nonlinear cross‐recurrence analysis suggested that this cognitive influence on the locations of the stable points or attractors of coordination entailed a magnification of attractor noise without (...) a reduction in attractor strength. An approximation to these findings was achieved through parameter changes in a motion equation in relative phase. Results are discussed in terms of dual‐task performance as limited resources, dynamics rather than chronometrics, and reparameterization rather than degradation. (shrink)

It is becoming ever more accepted that investigations of mind span the brain, body, and environment. To broaden the scope of what is relevant in such investigations is to increase the amount of data scientists must reckon with. Thus, a major challenge facing scientists who study the mind is how to make big data intelligible both within and between fields. One way to face this challenge is to structure the data within a framework and to make it intelligible by means (...) of a common theory. Radical embodied cognitive neuroscience can function as such a framework, with dynamical systems theory as its methodology, and self-organized criticality as its theory. (shrink)

Emotional regularity is the degree to which a person maintains and returns to a set of emotional states over time. The present investigation examined associations between emotional regularity and extant emotion measures as well as psychologically relevant dimensions of personality, health, and real-world occupational outcomes. Participants included 598 U.S. adults who provided daily experience sampling reports on their emotional states for approximately two months. Results suggest that emotional regularity was related to, but distinct from, well-established measures of emotion including emotional (...) intensity, variability, covariation, inertia, granularity, and emodiversity. Furthermore, emotional regularity significantly predicted measures of personality, psychological health, and occupational outcomes even when accounting for extant emotion measures and sociodemographic covariates. Finally, it explained modest (7.5%) improvement (in terms of cross-validated RSq.) over baseline models containing emotional intensity, variability, and sociodemographic covariates. These findings suggest that emotional regularity may provide an important indicator of healthy emotional functioning and may be a promising area for further scientific discovery. (shrink)

The finding of fractal scaling (FS) in behavioral sequences has raised a debate on whether FS is a pervasive property of the cognitive system or is the result of specific processes. Inferences about the origins of properties in time sequences are causal. That is, as opposed to correlational inferences reflecting instantaneous symmetrical relations, causal inferences concern asymmetric relations lagged in time. Here, I integrate Granger-causality with inferences about FS. Four simulations illustrate that causal analyses can isolate distinct FS sources, whereas (...) correlational techniques cannot. I then analyze three simultaneous sequences of responses from a database of word-naming trials. I find that two, or perhaps three, distinct sources account for the presence of FS in these sequences, but FS is not a general property of the system. This suggests that FS arises due to the properties of a limited number of identifiable psychological and/or neural processes. Finally, I reanalyze a previously published dataset of acoustic frequency spectra using the new tools. The causality/criticality combination introduced here offers a new important perspective in the study of cognition. (shrink)

Vector autoregression (VAR) modeling allows probing bidirectional relationships in gender/sex development and may support hypothesis testing following multi-modal data collection. We show VAR in three lights: supporting a hypothesis, rejecting a hypothesis, and opening up new questions. To illustrate these capacities of VAR, we reanalyzed longitudinal data that recorded dyadic mother-infant interactions for 15 boys and 15 girls aged 3 to 11 months of age. We examined monthly counts of 15 infant behaviors and 13 maternal behaviors (Seifert et al., 1994). (...) VAR models demonstrated that infant crawling predicted a subsequently close feedback loop from mothers of boys but a subsequently open ended, branched response from mothers of girls. A different finding showed that boys’ standing independently later predicted significant later increases of four maternal behaviors: rocking/jiggling, lifting, affectionate touching, and stimulation of infant gross-motor activity. In contrast, crawling by girls led mothers to later decrease the same maternal behaviors. Thus, VAR might allow us to identify how mothers respond differently during daily interactions depending on infant gender/sex. The present work intends mainly to showcase the VAR method in the specific context of the empirical study of gender/sex development. (shrink)