Ambitious and elegant, this book builds a bridge between evolutionary theory and cultural psychology. Michael Tomasello is one of the very few people to have done systematic research on the cognitive capacities of both nonhuman primates and human children. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition identifies what the differences are, and suggests where they might have come from. -/- Tomasello argues that the roots of the human capacity for symbol-based culture, and the kind of psychological development that takes place within (...) it, are based in a cluster of uniquely human cognitive capacities that emerge early in human ontogeny. These include capacities for sharing attention with other persons; for understanding that others have intentions of their own; and for imitating, not just what someone else does, but what someone else has intended to do. In his discussions of language, symbolic representation, and cognitive development, Tomasello describes with authority and ingenuity the "ratchet effect" of these capacities working over evolutionary and historical time to create the kind of cultural artifacts and settings within which each new generation of children develops. He also proposes a novel hypothesis, based on processes of social cognition and cultural evolution, about what makes the cognitive representations of humans different from those of other primates. -/- Lucid, erudite, and passionate, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition will be essential reading for developmental psychology, animal behavior, and cultural psychology. (from the HUP website). (shrink)

This paper examines the different ways in which the body is linguistically codified in the Chinese language of emotions. The three general modes of emotion description under examination are via (a) externally observable (involuntary) bodily changes, (b) sensation, and (c) figurative bodily images. While an attempt is made to introduce a typology of sub-categories within each mode of emotion description, the paper focuses on the meaning of different iconic descriptions through the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). On one hand, the linguistic (...) evidence, from a Chinese perspective, attests to the emotional universals proposed by Wierzbicka (1999). On the other, it points to cultural diversity in bodily conceptualisation and interpretation in emotional experiences, which are crystallised in linguistic conventions of Chinese emotion talk, including certain syntactic constructions. This paper also demonstrates the importance of examining the language of emotions in emotion studies, and concludes that a full account of emotions must include the examination of the language of emotions. (shrink)

Linking the process of rational decision making to emotions, an award-winning scientist who has done extensive research with brain-damaged patients notes the dependence of thought processes on feelings and the body's survival-oriented regulators. 50,000 first printing.

A perfectly matched layer (PML) absorbing material composed of a uniaxial anisotropic material is presented for the truncation of finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) lattices. It is shown that the uniaxial PML material formulation is mathematically equivalent to the perfectly matched layer method published by Berenger (see J. Computat. Phys., Oct. 1994). However, unlike Berenger's technique, the uniaxial PML absorbing medium presented in this paper is based on a Maxwellian formulation. Numerical examples demonstrate that the FDTD implementation of the uniaxial PML medium (...) is stable, equal in effectiveness as compared to Berenger's PML medium, while being more computationally efficient. (shrink)

Attention to internal body sensations is practiced in most meditation traditions. Many traditions state that this practice results in increased awareness of internal body sensations, but scientific studies evaluating this claim are lacking. We predicted that experienced meditators would display performance superior to that of nonmeditators on heartbeat detection, a standard noninvasive measure of resting interoceptive awareness. We compared two groups of meditators (Tibetan Buddhist and Kundalini) to an age- and body mass index-matched group of nonmeditators. Contrary to our prediction, (...) we found no evidence that meditators were superior to nonmeditators in the heartbeat detection task, across several sessions and respiratory modulation conditions. Compared to nonmeditators, however, meditators consistently rated their interoceptive performance as superior and the difficulty of the task as easier. These results provide evidence against the notion that practicing attention to internal body sensations, a core feature of meditation, enhances the ability to sense the heartbeat at rest. (shrink)

Adopting a modified Stroop task, the authors tested the hypothesis that processing systems brought to bear on comprehension of emotional speech are attuned primarily to word evaluation in a low-context culture and language (i.e., in English), but they are attuned primarily to vocal emotion in a high-context culture and language (i.e., in Japanese). Native Japanese (Studies 1 and 2) and English speakers (Study 3) made a judgement of either vocal emotion or word evaluation of an emotionally spoken evaluative word. Word (...) evaluations and vocal emotions were comparable in extremity in the two languages. In support of the hypothesis, an interference effect by competing word evaluation in the vocal emotion judgement was significantly stronger in English than in Japanese. In contrast, an interference effect by competing vocal emotion in the word evaluation judgement was stronger in Japanese than in English. Implications for the cultural grounding of communication, emotion, and cognition are discussed. (shrink)

Attention to internal body sensations is practiced in most meditation traditions. Many traditions state that this practice results in increased awareness of internal body sensations, but scientific studies evaluating this claim are lacking. We predicted that experienced meditators would display performance superior to that of nonmeditators on heartbeat detection, a standard noninvasive measure of resting interoceptive awareness. We compared two groups of meditators (Tibetan Buddhist and Kundalini) to an age- and body mass index-matched group of nonmeditators. Contrary to our prediction, (...) we found no evidence that meditators were superior to nonmeditators in the heartbeat detection task, across several sessions and respiratory modulation conditions. Compared to nonmeditators, however, meditators consistently rated their interoceptive performance as superior and the difficulty of the task as easier. These results provide evidence against the notion that practicing attention to internal body sensations, a core feature of meditation, enhances the ability to sense the heartbeat at rest. (shrink)

This paper examines the different ways in which the body is linguistically codified in the Chinese language of emotions. The three general modes of emotion description under examination are via (a) externally observable (involuntary) bodily changes, (b) sensation, and (c) figurative bodily images. While an attempt is made to introduce a typology of sub-categories within each mode of emotion description, the paper focuses on the meaning of different iconic descriptions through the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). On one hand, the linguistic (...) evidence, from a Chinese perspective, attests to the emotional universals proposed by Wierzbicka (1999). On the other, it points to cultural diversity in bodily conceptualisation and interpretation in emotional experiences, which are crystallised in linguistic conventions of Chinese emotion talk, including certain syntactic constructions. This paper also demonstrates the importance of examining the language of emotions in emotion studies, and concludes that a full account of emotions must include the examination of the language of emotions. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of how feelings are expressed in Kaytetye, a Central Australian language of the Pama-Nyugan family. It identifies three different formal constructions for expressing feelings, and explores the extent to which specific body part terms are associated with types of feelings, based on linguistic evidence in the form of lexical compounds, collocations and the way people talk about feelings. It is suggested that particular body part terms collocate with different feeling expressions for different reasons: either because (...) the body part is the perceived locus of the feeling, or because of a lexicalised polysemy of a body part term, or because of a metonymic association between a body part, a behaviour and a feeling. (shrink)

Acknowledgments 1. Culture Is Essential 2. Culture Exists 3. Culture Evolves 4. Culture Is an Adaptation 5. Culture Is Maladaptive 6. Culture and Genes Coevolve 7. Nothing about Culture Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution.