Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews-Cognitive Science最新文献

This opinion piece is part of a collection on the topic: "What is attention?" Despite the word's place in the common vernacular, a satisfying definition for "attention" remains elusive. Part of the challenge is there exist many different types of attention, which may or may not share common mechanisms. Here we review this literature and offer an intuitive definition that draws from aspects of prior theories and models of attention but is broad enough to recognize the various types of attention and modalities it acts upon: attention as a multi-level system of weights and balances. While the specific mechanism(s) governing the weighting/balancing may vary across levels, the fundamental role of attention is to dynamically weigh and balance all signals-both externally-generated and internally-generated-such that the highest weighted signals are selected and enhanced. Top-down, bottom-up, and experience-driven factors dynamically impact this balancing, and competition occurs both within and across multiple levels of processing. This idea of a multi-level system of weights and balances is intended to incorporate both external and internal attention and capture their myriad of constantly interacting processes. We review key findings and open questions related to external attention guidance, internal attention and working memory, and broader attentional control (e.g., ongoing competition between external stimuli and internal thoughts) within the framework of this analogy. We also speculate about the implications of failures of attention in terms of weights and balances, ranging from momentary one-off errors to clinical disorders, as well as attentional development and degradation across the lifespan. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Attention Neuroscience > Cognition.

'Everyone knows what attention is' according to William James. Much work on attention in psychology and neuroscience cites this famous phrase only to quickly dismiss it. But James is right about this: 'attention' was not introduced into psychology and neuroscience as a theoretical concept. I argue that we should therefore study attention with broadly the same methodology that David Marr has applied to the study of perception. By focusing more on Marr's Computational Level of analysis, we arrive at a unified answer to the question of what attention is, what role it plays in the mind, and why organisms like us have that capacity. I propose a methodology for studying attention at Marr's Computational Level that optimizes in a three-dimensional space: it should capture core aspects of our first-person experience of attention, be explanatorily powerful in psychology and neuroscience, and fertile in an interdisciplinary context. I show how this methodology leads to what I call the priority structure account of attention. Attention is what organizes current information to make it more useful for the organism. We can identify it by four features. Attention, in this way, helps a cognitive system to integrate its informational state with its current motivational state. I describe how this account improves on alternatives and shows why attention is a useful concept in many disciplines and for connecting them. This article is categorized under: Philosophy > Psychological Capacities Psychology > Attention Philosophy > Foundations of Cognitive Science.

Conceptual fragmentation is when a term assumed to have one meaning is found to have many. When these different definitions overlap in meaning and application confusion and wasted effort follows. "Attention" is such a fragmented term. The response to conceptual fragmentation is simple. Stop using the original term. Our reticence to do so reflects false beliefs about attention. "Attention" is not an old term, but a modern one. Its original meaning is not related to our contemporary intuitions. Attention is not a necessary concept; psychology made substantial progress, even in cognitive areas, during the years when its use was banished. Attention is just one among many examples of conceptual fragmentation in psychology. The root cause is a dearth of theory driving cognitive experimentation. Theoretical clarity is enhanced when fundamental concepts can be expressed in a mathematical form. When theories are stated in mathematical language it opens the door to rigorous cross-domain comparisons using tools like category theory. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Attention Neuroscience > Cognition.

Attention prioritizes certain information at the expense of other information in ways that are similar across vision, audition, and other sensory modalities. It influences how-and even what-information is represented and processed, affecting brain activity at every level. Much of the core research into cognitive and neural mechanisms of attention has used visual tasks. However, the same top-down, object-based, and bottom-up attentional processes shape auditory perception, largely through the same underlying, cognitive networks. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Attention.

Cognitive linguists are increasingly extending their paradigm to include the study of gestures. The bottom-up, usage-based approach in cognitive linguistics has advanced the methods for identifying gesture functions, starting from a detailed analysis of gesture forms. Theoretical notions from cognitive linguistics also help explain the means by which the forms of gestures can be interpreted as meaningful functions. Principles of conceptual metonymy explain how gestures indicate referents through the partial representation of their features that are relevant in the context of use. Conceptual metaphor theory sheds light on how abstract notions can be represented in gesture via comparison with physical source domains. Furthermore, every gestural representation inherently requires the gesturing speaker to employ a specific viewpoint for their depiction-something which is normally not expressed verbally. These aspects of gesture provide insights into processes of thinking for speaking that can be exploited in various fields of cognitive science research. Referential gestures also normally combine pragmatic and interactive functions (showing stance-taking, for example) with representational or deictic functions. The multiple functions of gesture combined with those of speech raise questions for further research about how viewing-listeners interpret and combine information from the multiple semiotic systems employed by gesturing-speakers. Finally, gesture use has been shown to correlate not only with lexical concepts but also in some ways with grammatical constructions. This gives rise to fundamental questions about what constitutes the grammar of a language. Gesture analysis thus raises issues for consideration in any research in cognitive science that concerns spoken language. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Cognitive Linguistics > Linguistic Theory Psychology > Language.

Metacognition, or thinking about thinking, is a phenomenon that has received much attention across the numerous fields of Psychological Science. The overarching goal has centered on understanding how humans monitor their internal mental processes and exert control over these processes. However, discipline-focused approaches with little generalized discussion across the field have yielded an incomplete understanding of the construct of metacognition. Consider, for example, the cognitive approach: from this perspective, researchers have developed predictive models and useful frameworks. Further, the field has produced sophisticated techniques to measure monitoring accuracy and define attributes that contribute to monitoring assessments and control process selection. However, the impact of this research has been relatively limited and isolated from metacognitive investigations that consider other important constructs such as motivation and affect. The approaches taken in subfields, such as educational psychology, emotion, and neuropsychology when combined with the cognitive approach, may result in a more complete picture and thorough understanding of metacognition. In this article, we present an argument that the study of metacognition should bridge the various subfields of psychological inquiry. We present a framework toward an integrative approach to understanding metacognition as a complementary process to meta-affect and encourage researchers to consider the study of metacognition from a broader perspective. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Memory Psychology > Emotion and Motivation.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disease characterized by social disorder and stereotypical behaviors with an increasing incidence. ASD patients are suffering from varying degrees of mental retardation and language development abnormalities. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a noninvasive imaging technology to detect brain structural and functional dysfunction in vivo, playing an important role in the early diagnosisbasic research of ASD. High-field, small-animal MRI in basic research of autism model mice has provided a new approach to research the pathogenesis, characteristics, and intervention efficacy in autism. This article reviews MRI studies of mouse models of autism over the past 20 years. Reduced gray matter, abnormal connections of brain networks, and abnormal development of white matter fibers have been demonstrated in these studies, which are present in different proportions in the various mouse models. This provides a more macroscopic view for subsequent research on autism model mice. This article is categorized under: Cognitive Biology > Genes and Environment Neuroscience > Computation Neuroscience > Genes, Molecules, and Cells Neuroscience > Development.

Surgical resection of lesions and closed-loop suppression are the two main treatment options for patients with refractory epilepsy whose symptoms cannot be managed with medicines. Unfortunately, failures in foci localization and seizure prediction are constraining these treatments. Electrical impedance tomography (EIT), sensitive to impedance changes caused by blood flow or cell swelling, is a potential new way to locate epileptic foci and predict seizures. Animal validation is a necessary research process before EIT can be used in clinical practice, but it is unclear which among the many animal epilepsy models is most suited to this task. The selection of an animal model of epilepsy that is similar to human seizures and can be adapted to EIT is important for the accuracy and reliability of EIT research results. This study provides an overview of the animal models of epilepsy that have been used in research on the use of EIT to locate the foci or predict seizures; discusses the advantages and disadvantages of these models regarding inducement by chemical convulsant and electrical stimulation; and finally proposes optimal animal models of epilepsy to obtain more convincing research results for foci localization and seizure prediction by EIT. The ultimate goal of this study is to facilitate the development of new treatments for patients with refractory epilepsy. This article is categorized under: Neuroscience > Clinical Neuroscience Psychology > Brain Function and Dysfunction.

In the first years of life, infants rapidly acquire a series of new motor skills. They learn to sit independently, to walk with skill, and to engage in a wide variety of interactions with objects. Over these same years, infants also begin to develop language. These are not isolated events. In a complex developing system, even small changes in one domain can have far-reaching effects on development in other domains. This is the fundamental idea behind the rich framework known as the developmental cascades perspective. Here we employ this framework to show how early motor advances can exert downstream effects on the development of language. Focusing first on the emergence of independent sitting, then on the development of walking, and finally on changes in the ways in which infants act on and combine actions on objects, we describe how the nature and quality of infant actions change dramatically over the first few years and how this brings with it new possibilities for engaging the environment, more sophisticated ways of interacting with people, and significant alterations in communications directed by caregivers to the infant and coordinated with infant action in time and in meaning. The developmental cascades framework provides an approach for understanding how advances in motor skills influence communicative and language development, and more generally, for conceptualizing the constant, dynamic, and complex interplay between developing infants and their environments as it unfolds over time. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Language Acquisition Psychology > Motor Skill and Performance Psychology > Development and Aging.