Argument maps represent some arguments more effectively than others. The goal of this article is to account for that variability, so that those who wish to use argument maps can do so with more foresight. I begin by identifying four properties of argument maps that make them useful tools for evaluating arguments. Then, I discuss four types of argument that are difficult to map well: reductio ad absurdum arguments, charges of equivocation, logical analogies, and mathematical arguments. The difficulties presented by (...) these four types appear unrelated to one another, but I show that, in each case, the difficulty can be traced back to the use of metalinguistic reasoning. The need to represent a transition between object language and metalanguage can undermine one or more of the benefits that argument map representation would otherwise confer. (shrink)

This thesis consists of five main chapters including three independent studies, focusing on reward-based distractor interference and reward-association. In particular, the thesis addresses at which attentional processing stages the reward-based distractor interference takes place, as well as whether and how the reward association is learned on different levels. In the first chapter, I introduced a general background of attention, associative learning, and relations between reward associative learning and attention. In the end, I highlighted the open issues that this thesis aimed (...) to address. Chapter II aimed to answer the question at which processing stage the reward-based distractor interferes with the ongoing task. The study adopted the visual additional singleton search task but extended it to visual-tactile search. A classical finding of the reward-based distractor interference is that a reward-associated color feature, which appears as a task-irrelevant distractor, albeit it is not salient, captures attention and impedes task-relevant response. However, it is unclear at which attentional processing stage the reward-driven capture effects occur. To identify the distractor interference at the pre-attentional searching stage or post/focal- attentional decision-making stage, three experiments were conducted. Instead of a circular search display used in a standard attentional capture paradigm, this study used a horizontal search display to maximize potential attentional capture and disengagement. The results revealed that the reward-based distractor interference was only observed when the target and reward-based distractor were on the same side, indicating the interference likely occurred at the post/focal- attentional decision-making stage. To confirm this, Experiments 2 and 3 adopted the crossmodal search paradigm, in which the search stage and post-selective identification stage took place in different modalities. Such design enabled us to distinguish whether the interference effect occurs at the searching stage or the post/focal-attentional decision-making stage. The results further corroborated that the reward-driven capture effects occur at the post/focal-attention stage. Chapter III focused on the question related to the level of reward associative learning. Most previous studies on reward-based attentional capture implicitly used feature-based reward association, particularly on the feature level, e.g., color-reward association. This leaves the question open regarding whether the associative reward could be established at the level of response mapping or task-set mapping. Two experiments were designed to address this question. In Experiment 1, high/low rewards were associated with both the two colors and the left/right response in the training phase, and the reward-associated color became one of the task-irrelevant distractors in the test phase. We failed to find any evidence on the reward-response association. However, the results showed the distractor with previously reward-associated features facilitated search, indicating a better distractor handling in the test phase. In Experiment 2, the reward was associated with task-sets in the training phase and the task-sets kept the same in the test phase, while the search task was changed. The results suggested that reward-associated learning facilitated distractor handling and task-set learning. Chapter IV tackled the open research question - whether reward associative learning could take place at the multi-conjunction level. The question is important, given that previous studies on reward-based attentional capture only investigated associative learning of a single feature. As reward association in daily life is usually complex, Study 3 aims to explore whether reward learning can be established through reward assignments with conjunction features and whether the interference of distractors with previously reward-associated features can be observed in a similar way as previous studies shown on single-feature-based reward-driven capture effects. Reward learning was found locally trial-by-trial throughout the whole learning process, however, it was hard to establish a reliable conjunction reward association. Furthermore, there was no reward-based distractor interference in the test phase. The findings suggest that conjunction reward-association is difficult, though a short-lived trial-to-trial conjunction reward learning can be established. The final Chapter V discussed the findings of these three studies and their inter-relations. And I summarized how these findings could contribute to the debate of reward-based distractor interference. In summary, this thesis helps to improve our knowledge about reward-based distractor interference, particularly on the identification of the processing stage of distractor interference and what can be associated with reward in reward associative learning. (shrink)

A venerable view holds that a border between perception and cognition is built into our cognitive architecture and that this imposes limits on the way information can flow between them. While the deliverances of perception are freely available for use in reasoning and inference, there are strict constraints on information flow in the opposite direction. Despite its plausibility, this approach to the perception-cognition border has faced criticism in recent years. This article develops an updated version of the architectural approach, which (...) I call the dimension restriction hypothesis (DRH). According to DRH, perceptual processes are constrained to compute over a bounded range of dimensions, while cognitive processes are not. This view allows that perception is cognitively penetrable, but places strict limits on the varieties of penetration that can occur. The article argues that DRH enjoys both theoretical and empirical support, and also defends the view against several objections. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor deemed informational encapsulation ‘the essence’ of a system’s modularity and argued that human perceptual processing comprises modular systems, thus construed. Nowadays, his conclusion is widely challenged. Often, this is because experimental work is seen to somehow demonstrate the cognitive penetrability of perceptual processing, where this is assumed to conflict with the informational encapsulation of perceptual systems. Here, I deny the conflict, proposing that cognitive penetration need not have any straightforward bearing on the conjecture that perceptual processing is composed (...) of nothing but informationally encapsulated modules, the conjecture that each and every perceptual computation is performed by an informationally encapsulated module, and the consequences perceptual encapsulation was traditionally expected to have for a perception-cognition border, the epistemology of perception and cognitive science. With these points in view, I propose that particularly plausible cases of cognitive penetration would actually seem to evince the encapsulation of perceptual systems rather than refute/problematize this conjecture. (shrink)

The ability to understand and communicate about the actions of others is a fundamental aspect of our daily activity. How can we talk about what others are doing? What qualities do different actions have such that they cause us to see them as being different or similar? What is the connection between what we see and the development of concepts and words or expressions for the things that we see? To what extent can two different people see and talk about (...) the same things? Is there a common basis for our perception, and is there then a common basis for the concepts we form and the way in which the concepts become lexicalized in language? The broad purpose of this thesis is to relate aspects of perception, categorization and language to action recognition and conceptualization. This is achieved by empirically demonstrating a prototype structure for action categories and by revealing the effect this structure has on language via the semantic organization of verbs for natural actions. The results also show that implicit access to categorical information can affect the perceptual processing of basic actions. These findings indicate that our understanding of human actions is guided by the activation of high level information in the form of dynamic action templates or prototypes. More specifically, the first two empirical studies investigate the relation between perception and the hierarchical structure of action categories, i.e., subordinate, basic, and superordinate level action categories. Subjects generated lists of verbs based on perceptual criteria. Analyses based on multidimensional scaling showed a significant correlation for the semantic organization of a subset of the verbs for English and Swedish speaking subjects. Two additional experiments were performed in order to further determine the extent to which action categories exhibit graded structure, which would indicate the existence of prototypes for action categories. The results from typicality ratings and category verification showed that typicality judgments reliably predict category verification times for instances of different actions. Finally, the results from a repetition priming paradigm suggest that high level information about the categorical differences between actions can be implicitly activated and facilitates the later visual processing of displays of biological motion. This facilitation occurs for upright displays, but appears to be lacking for displays that are shown upside down. These results show that the implicit activation of information about action categories can play a critical role in the perception of human actions. (shrink)

Understanding how people comprehend visual narratives (including picture stories, comics, and film) requires the combination of traditionally separate theories that span the initial sensory and perceptual processing of complex visual scenes, the perception of events over time, and comprehension of narratives. Existing piecemeal approaches fail to capture the interplay between these levels of processing. Here, we propose the Scene Perception & Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT), as applied to visual narratives, which distinguishes between front-end and back-end cognitive processes. Front-end processes occur (...) during single eye fixations and are comprised of attentional selection and information extraction. Back-end processes occur across multiple fixations and support the construction of event models, which reflect understanding of what is happening now in a narrative (stored in working memory) and over the course of the entire narrative (stored in long-term episodic memory). We describe relationships between front- and back-end processes, and medium-specific differences that likely produce variation in front-end and back-end processes across media (e.g., picture stories vs. film). We describe several novel research questions derived from SPECT that we have explored. By addressing these questions, we provide greater insight into how attention, information extraction, and event model processes are dynamically coordinated to perceive and understand complex naturalistic visual events in narratives and the real world. (shrink)

This PhD thesis concerns introspective approaches to the study of the mind. Across three standalone papers, I examine the significance of introspective data and advise on appropriate kinds of training for the production of such data. An overview document first introduces major themes, methods and arguments of the thesis. Paper 1 then begins the argumentative work, interrogating the constraining function of introspection in cognitive science. Here, I evaluate “enactivist” claims about the significance of introspection, clarifying central enactivist suggestions to draw (...) out the broader importance of introspection in science and philosophy. Paper 2 then examines the proposed employment of Buddhist meditation practices in the production of rigorous introspective data. I defend such proposals against concerns that meditators yield ungeneralizable data, given the transformative character of these attention-training techniques. I argue that some meditation-trained transformations are actually epistemically-beneficial, undermining popular associations between transformation and “distortion”. Paper 3 then reviews difficulties involved in integrating meditative training into research. I emphasise the importance of specific contextual supports to meditation as critical ingredients of introspective proficiency, showing how difficulties replicating these threaten to limit the scope of meditation’s scientific benefits. I layout methodological responses to this that can maximise meditation’s positive impact going forwards. (shrink)

Similarity is central for the definition of concepts in several theories in cognitive psychology. However, similarity encounters several problems which were emphasized by Goodman in 1972. At the end of his article, Goodman banishes similarity from any serious philosophical or scientific investigations. If Goodman is right, theories of concepts based on similarity encounter a huge problem and should be revised entirely. In this paper, we would like to analyze the notion of similarity with some insight from psychological works on analogical (...) cognition. Analogical cognition compares two situations or objects in order to find similarities between them. In doing so, the analogical process sorts the different features of the two situations or objects and determines the most important ones. The analogical process is also highly sensitive to context. Context-sensitivity is desirable at some level, but it is also problematic as it leads to a computational explosion. To answer this problem, we would like to consider salience as a possible heuristic in the analogical process. We will distinguish three forms of salience: Sensory, categorical, and operational. By taking salience into account, we can introduce a shortcut into the computation of similarity and circumvent computational explosion. (shrink)

The ability to analyze arguments is critical for higher-level reasoning, yet previous research suggests that standard university education provides at best modest improvements in students’ analytical reasoning abilities. What techniques are most effective for cultivating these skills? Here we investigate the effectiveness of a 12-week undergraduate seminar in which students practice a software-based technique for visualizing the logical structures implicit in argumen- tative texts. Seminar students met weekly to analyze excerpts from contemporary analytic philosophy papers, completed argument visualization problem sets, (...) and received individualized feedback on a weekly basis. We found that Seminar students improved substantially more on LSAT Logical Reasoning test forms than Control students (d = .71, p < .001), suggesting that learning how to visualize arguments in the seminar led to large generalized improvements in students’ analytical reasoning skills. Moreover, blind scoring of final essays from Seminar students and Control students, drawn from a parallel lecture course, revealed large differences in favor of seminar students (d = 0.87, p = .005). Seminar students understood the arguments better, and their essays were more accurate and effectively structured. Taken together, these findings deepen our understanding of how visualizations support logical reasoning, and provide a model for improving analytical reasoning pedagogy. (shrink)

In many theories in contemporary philosophy of mind, attention is constitutively linked to phenomenal consciousness. Ned Block has recently argued that ‘identity crowding’ provides an example of subjects consciously seeing something to which they are unable to attend. Here I examine the reasons that Block gives for thinking that this is a case of a consciously perceived item that we are unable to attend to, and I offer a different interpretation.

Human vision briefly retains a trace of a stimulus after it disappears. This trace—iconic memory—is often believed to be a surrogate for the original stimulus, a representational structure that can be used as if the original stimulus were still present. To investigate its nature, a flicker-search paradigm was developed that relied upon a full scan (rather than partial report) of its contents. Results show that for visual search it can indeed act as a surrogate, with little cost for alternating between (...) visible and iconic representations. However, the duration over which it can be used depends on the type of task: some tasks can use iconic memory for at least 240 ms, others for only about 190 ms, while others for no more than about 120 ms. The existence of these different limits suggests that iconic memory may have multiple layers, each corresponding to a particular level of the visual hierarchy. In this view, the inability to use a layer of iconic memory may reflect an inability to maintain feedback connections to the corresponding representation. (shrink)

Most empirical work in human categorization has studied learning in either fully supervised or fully unsupervised scenarios. Most real-world learning scenarios, however, are semi-supervised: Learners receive a great deal of unlabeled information from the world, coupled with occasional experiences in which items are directly labeled by a knowledgeable source. A large body of work in machine learning has investigated how learning can exploit both labeled and unlabeled data provided to a learner. Using equivalences between models found in human categorization and (...) machine learning research, we explain how these semi-supervised techniques can be applied to human learning. A series of experiments are described which show that semi-supervised learning models prove useful for explaining human behavior when exposed to both labeled and unlabeled data. We then discuss some machine learning models that do not have familiar human categorization counterparts. Finally, we discuss some challenges yet to be addressed in the use of semi-supervised models for modeling human categorization. (shrink)

The absence of a common understanding of attention plagues current research on the topic. Combining the findings from three domains of research on attention, this paper presents a univocal account that fits normal use of the term as well as its many associated phenomena: attention is a process of mental selection that is within the control of the subject. The role of the subject is often excluded from naturalized accounts, but this paper will be an exception to that rule. The (...) paper aims to show how we might reinstate the subject into the act of attention, endorsing the ordinary notion that attention is a direction of the mind by the subject, rather than a mere occurrence or happening. To do so, it lays out the best work of phenomenology, psychology, and neuroscience on specifying the nature of attention and, in finding them individually wanting, combines them into a unified view that avoids the problems of each. (shrink)