Cognitive Science (cognitive + science)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNING DELIBERATIVE HEALTH CARE FORUMS: DEWEY'S METAPHYSICS, COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND A BRAZILIAN EXAMPLE

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 6 2008
Shane Ralston
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Social Constructionism as Cognitive Science

JOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 4 2004
THOMAS E. DICKINS
Social constructionism is a broad position that emphasizes the importance of human social processes in psychology. These processes are generally associated with language and the ability to construct stories that conform to the emergent rules of "language games". This view allows one to espouse a variety of critical postures with regard to realist commitments within the social and behavioural sciences, ranging from outright relativism (language constructs all of our concepts) to a more moderate respect for the "barrier" that linguistic descriptions can place between us and reality. This paper first outlines some possible social construction-ist viewpoints and then goes on to show how each of them conforms to the basic principles of information theory. After establishing this relation the paper then argues that this leads to a great deal of commonality between social construction-ist positions and the baseline aims of cognitive science. Finally, the paper argues that, if information theory is held in common, this both suggests future research collaborations and helps to "mop up" some of the arguments surrounding realist commitments. [source]


Nativism in Cognitive Science

MIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 3 2002
Richard Samuels
The central aim of this paper is to provide an account which addresses this concern and in so doing: a) makes sense of the roles that nativist theorizing plays in cognitive science and, moreover, b), explains why it really matters to the contemporary study of cognition. I conclude by outlining a range of further implications of this account for current debate in cognitive science. [source]


The Impact of Cognitive Science on Religious Studies: A Revolution in the Making

RELIGIOUS STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 4 2008
Kelly Bulkeley
First page of article [source]


Further Correspondences and Similarities of Shamanism and Cognitive Science: Mental Representation, Implicit Processing, and Cognitive Structures

ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, Issue 1 2003
Timothy L. Hubbard
Properties of mental representation are related to findings in cognitive science and ideas in shamanism. A selective review of research in cognitive science suggests visual images and spatial memory preserve important functional information regarding physical principles and the behavior of objects in the natural world, and notions of second-order isomorphism and the perceptual cycle developed to account for such findings are related to shamanic experience. Possible roles of implicit processes in shamanic cognition, and the idea that shamanic experience may involve normally unconscious information becoming temporarily available to consciousness, are considered. The existence of a cognitive module dedicated to processing information relevant to social knowledge and social interaction is consistent with cognitive science and with shamanism, and may help account for the extension of intentionality and meaning that characterize shamanic practice. Overall, findings from cognitive science and ideas from shamanism exhibit a number of correspondences and similarities regarding basic properties of cognition, and this suggests that shamanic and nonshamanic cognition may not be fundamentally different. [source]


Some Correspondences and Similarities of Shamanism and Cognitive Science: Interconnectedness, Extension of Meaning, and Attribution of Mental States

ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, Issue 2 2002
Timothy L. Hubbard
Correspondences and similarities between ideas in shamanism and ideas in contemporary cognitive science are considered. The importance of interconnectedness in the web of life worldview characteristic of shamanism and in connectionist models of semantic memory in cognitive science, and the extension of meaning to elements of the natural world in shamanism and indistributed cognition, are considered. Cognitive consequences of such an extension (e.g., use of representativeness and intentional stance heuristics, magical thinking, social attribution errors, and social in-group/out-group differences) are discussed. It is suggested that attributions of mental states, beliefs, and desires to a computer on the basis of behavioral measures (e.g., the Turing test) is consistent with the extension of meaning and intentionality to nonhuman elements of the natural world in shamanism. In general, the existence of such correspondencesand similarities suggests that elements of shamanism may reflect cognitive structures and processes that are also used by nonshamans and in nonshamanic settings. [source]


Assessing the tolls on the bridge: A review of ,Bridging Cognitive Science and Education: Learning, Memory, and Metacognition', Bridging cognitive science and education: Learning, memory, and metacognition.

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2009

No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Intuitions and introspections about imagery: the role of imagery experience in shaping an investigator's theoretical views

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2003
Daniel Reisberg
Early in a scientific debate, before much evidence has accumulated, why are some scientists inclined toward one position and other scientists toward the opposite position? We explore this issue with a focus on scientists' views of the ,imagery debate' that unfolded in Cognitive Science during the late 1970s and early 1980s. We examine the possibility that, during the early years of this debate, researchers' views were shaped by their own conscious experiences with imagery. Consistent with this suggestion, a survey of 150 psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists showed that those who experienced their own visual imagery as vivid and picture-like recall being more sympathetic in 1980 to the view that, in general, images are picture-like. Similarly, those who have vivid images and who regularly use their images in cognition were more inclined to believe that issues of image vividness deserve more research. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Erratum for: The Role of Explanation in Discovery and Generalization: Evidence from Category Learning, by Joseph J. Williams and Tania Lombrozo, in Cognitive Science 34(5)

COGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 6 2010
Article first published online: 3 AUG 2010
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Bringing Cognitive Science into Education, and Back Again: The Value of Interdisciplinary Research

COGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 4 2006
Danielle S. McNamara
First page of article [source]


Mind, Brain, and Education: Building a Scientific Groundwork for Learning and Teaching1

MIND, BRAIN, AND EDUCATION, Issue 1 2009
Kurt W. Fischer
ABSTRACT, The primary goal of the emerging field of Mind, Brain, and Education is to join biology, cognitive science, development, and education in order to create a sound grounding of education in research. The growing, worldwide movement needs to avoid the myths and distortions of popular conceptions of brain and genetics and build on the best integration of research with practice, creating a strong infrastructure that joins scientists with educators to study effective learning and teaching in educational settings. Science and practice together provide many potentially powerful tools to improve education. Neuroscience and genetics make possible analysis of the "black box" of biological processes that underpin learning. Understanding the biology of abilities and disabilities helps educators and parents to facilitate individual students' learning and development. Cognitive science provides analyses of the mental models/metaphors that pervade meaning making in human cultures, creating tools for avoiding unconscious distortions and crafting effective educational tools. Developmental and learning science produce tools to analyze learning pathways, including both shared patterns and learning differences. To reach the potential of grounding education effectively in research requires improving the infrastructure by creating (a) research schools where practice and science jointly shape educational research, (b) shared databases on learning and development, and (c) a new profession of educational engineers or translators to facilitate connecting research with practice and policy. [source]


BUILDING A DATA-MINING GRID FOR MULTIPLE HUMAN BRAIN DATA ANALYSIS

COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, Issue 2 2005
Ning Zhong
E-science is about global collaboration in key areas of science such as cognitive science and brain science, and the next generation of infrastructure such as the Wisdom Web and Knowledge Grids. As a case study, we investigate human multiperception mechanism by cooperatively using various psychological experiments, physiological measurements, and data mining techniques for developing artificial systems which match human ability in specific aspects. In particular, we observe fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and EEG (electroencephalogram) brain activations from the viewpoint of peculiarity oriented mining and propose a way of peculiarity oriented mining for knowledge discovery in multiple human brain data. Based on such experience and needs, we concentrate on the architectural aspect of a brain-informatics portal from the perspective of the Wisdom Web and Knowledge Grids. We describe how to build a data-mining grid on the Wisdom Web for multiaspect human brain data analysis. The proposed methodology attempts to change the perspective of cognitive scientists from a single type of experimental data analysis toward a holistic view at a long-term, global field of vision. [source]


Conceptual background, development, and preliminary data from the unified protocol for transdiagnostic treatment of emotional disorders,

DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, Issue 10 2010
Zofia A. Wilamowska M.A.
Abstract Anxiety and mood disorders are common, chronic, costly, and characterized by high comorbidity. The development of cognitive behavioral approaches to treating anxiety and mood disorders has left us with highly efficacious treatments that are increasingly widely accepted. The proliferation of treatment manuals targeting single disorders, sometimes with trivial differences among them, leaves the mental health professional with no clear way to choose one manual over another and little chance of ever becoming familiar with most of them, let alone trained to competence in their delivery. Deepening understanding of the nature of emotional disorders reveals that commonalities in etiology and latent structures among these disorders supersedes differences. Based on empirical evidence from the domains of learning, emotional development and regulation, and cognitive science, we have distilled a set of psychological procedures that comprise a unified intervention for emotional disorders. The Unified Protocol (UP) is a transdiagnostic, emotion-focused cognitive behavioral treatment, which emphasizes the adaptive, functional nature of emotions, and seeks to identify and correct maladaptive attempts to regulate emotional experiences, thereby facilitating appropriate processing and extinction of excessive emotional responding to both internal (somatic) and external cues. The treatment components of the UP are briefly outlined. Theory and rationale supporting this new approach are described along with some preliminary evidence supporting its efficacy. Implications for the treatment of emotional disorders using the UP are discussed. Depression and Anxiety, 2010. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]


Kinds of Thinking, Styles of Reasoning

EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY, Issue 4 2007
Michael A. Peters
Abstract There is no more central issue to education than thinking and reasoning. Certainly, such an emphasis chimes with the rationalist and cognitive deep structure of the Western educational tradition. The contemporary tendency reinforced by cognitive science is to treat thinking ahistorically and aculturally as though physiology, brain structure and human evolution are all there is to say about thinking that is worthwhile or educationally significant. The movement of critical thinking also tends to treat thinking ahistorically, focusing on universal processes of logic and reasoning. Against this trend and against the scientific spirit of the age this paper presents a historical and philosophical picture of thinking. By contrast with dominant cognitive and logical models the paper emphasizes kinds of thinking and styles of reasoning. The paper grows out of interests primarily in the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, and in the extension and development of their work in Critical Theory and French poststructuralist philosophy. The paper draws directly on some of this work to argue for the recognition of different kinds of thinking, which are explored by reference to Heidegger, and also the significance of styles of reasoning, which are explored by reference to Wittgenstein and to Ian Hacking. [source]


IS EDUCATIONAL POLICY MAKING RATIONAL , AND WHAT WOULD THAT MEAN, ANYWAY?

EDUCATIONAL THEORY, Issue 5 2009
Eric Bredo
In Moderating the Debate: Rationality and the Promise of American Education, Michael Feuer raises concerns about the consequences of basing educational policy on the model of rational choice drawn from economics. Policy making would be better and more realistic, he suggests, if it were based on a newer procedural model drawn from cognitive science. In this essay Eric Bredo builds on Feuer's analysis by offering a more systematic critique of the traditional model of rationality that Feuer criticizes, a more critical evaluation of the procedural model that he favors, and a recommendation that the situational model he does not consider may have some benefits over both. This analysis shows that the traditional model presupposes an actor that cannot learn or develop. While the actor in the procedural model can learn, Bredo contends that it cannot develop, that is, it cannot outgrow its initial assumptions and values. Only the situational model allows for learning and development, important in a model to be used in the field of education. Bredo also considers in his analysis the social-relational assumptions built into the traditional, procedural, and situational models and the likely ethical consequences of acting on them. [source]


Agency, Postmodernism, and the Causes of Change

HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 4 2001
Michael L. Fitzhugh
This theme issue's call for papers notes that "several prevalent and influential historical practices of the last thirty years have limited agency's significance, . . . seeing the human as the patient of History rather than its agent." The questions implicit in this statement are nowhere more urgent than in those practices collectively known as the "linguistic turn." Yet such questions have been explored sparsely enough in relation to this movement that some adherents can still insist that the ideas they favor do not devalue agency, while many simply ignore the issue and incorporate agency as an integral part of their work. By examining a largely unremarked episode in Michel Foucault's highly influential thought and considering its connections to foundational assumptions of the linguistic turn, we seek to demonstrate in detail why the premises that underlie both structuralism and poststructuralism (the theoretical movements most deeply implicated in the direction the linguistic turn has taken in history) logically require the denial of agency as a causal force and ultimately compel the conclusion that no change can occur in realities as interpreted by humans. We illustrate the intractability of these logical problems by analyzing unsatisfactory defenses from some of the few linguistic-turn historians who have discussed relevant issues, after which we conclude by suggesting that attention to current work in linguistics and cognitive science may help resolve such difficulties. [source]


Boys' Lack of Interest in Fine Arts in a Coeducational Setting: A Review of Sex-Related Cognitive Traits Studies

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ART & DESIGN EDUCATION, Issue 1 2009
Alain Savoie
Fine arts teachers' concerns about male underachievement in a Quebec coeducational high school, and a related survey showing boys' negative perceptions of fine arts motivated this interdisciplinary literature review. Referring to biology and cognitive science, the article explores concepts of sex-related cognitive traits to help in designing sex-adapted approaches to individual learning in art education. The nature-nurture controversy still surrounds sex-based cognitive differences studies, though science agrees that natural and socio-cultural factors are somehow closely interwoven in the complex gender identity construction process. Sex-related biological predispositions influencing cognition are proposed notably in ,instrumentality-expressiveness' and ,empathising-systemising (E-S)' theories. The article suggests that in the context of art education, these sex-related cognitive models deserve study, because they could initiate sex-adapted teaching strategies with the necessary flexibility and wider scope to overcome gender-stereotyped biases and stimulate boys' interest in the arts. This suggested approach should not be confused with stereotype-based pedagogy, which merely strengthens learned gender characteristics, producing or maintaining academic underachievement. [source]


Social Constructionism as Cognitive Science

JOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 4 2004
THOMAS E. DICKINS
Social constructionism is a broad position that emphasizes the importance of human social processes in psychology. These processes are generally associated with language and the ability to construct stories that conform to the emergent rules of "language games". This view allows one to espouse a variety of critical postures with regard to realist commitments within the social and behavioural sciences, ranging from outright relativism (language constructs all of our concepts) to a more moderate respect for the "barrier" that linguistic descriptions can place between us and reality. This paper first outlines some possible social construction-ist viewpoints and then goes on to show how each of them conforms to the basic principles of information theory. After establishing this relation the paper then argues that this leads to a great deal of commonality between social construction-ist positions and the baseline aims of cognitive science. Finally, the paper argues that, if information theory is held in common, this both suggests future research collaborations and helps to "mop up" some of the arguments surrounding realist commitments. [source]


A concept-oriented belief revision approach to domain knowledge recovery from source code

JOURNAL OF SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE AND EVOLUTION: RESEARCH AND PRACTICE, Issue 1 2001
Yang Li
Abstract Domain knowledge is the soul of software systems. After decades of software development, domain knowledge has reached a certain degree of saturation. The recovery of domain knowledge from source code is beneficial to many software engineering activities, in particular, software evolution. In the real world, the ambiguous appearance of domain knowledge embedded in source code constitutes the biggest barrier to recovering reliable domain knowledge. In this paper, we introduce an innovative approach to recovering domain knowledge with enhanced reliability from source code. In particular, we divide domain knowledge into interconnected knowledge slices and match these knowledge slices against the source code. Each knowledge slice has its own authenticity evaluation function which takes the belief of the evidence it needs as input and the authenticity of the knowledge slice as output. Moreover, the knowledge slices are arranged to exchange beliefs with each other through interconnections, i.e. concepts, so that a better evaluation of the authenticity of these knowledge slices can be obtained. The decision on acknowledging recovered knowledge slices can therefore be made more easily. Our approach, rooted as it is in cognitive science and social psychology, is also widely applicable to other knowledge recovery tasks. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Expectancy and Risk for Alcoholism: The Unfortunate Exploitation of a Fundamental Characteristic of Neurobehavioral Adaptation

ALCOHOLISM, Issue 5 2002
Mark S. Goldman
Psychological investigations of alcohol expectancies over the last 20 years, using primarily verbal techniques, have strongly supported expectancies as an important mediator of biological and environmental antecedent variables that influence risk for alcohol use and abuse. At the same time, rapid developments in neuroscience, cognitive science, affective science, computer science, and genetics proved to be compatible with the concept of expectancy and, in some cases, used this concept directly. By using four principles that bear on the integration of knowledge in the biological and behavioral sciences,consilience, conservation, contingency, and emergence,these developments are merged into an integrated explanation of alcoholism and other addictions. In this framework, expectancy is seen as a functional approach to adaptation and survival that has been manifested in multiple biological systems with different structures and processes. Understood in this context, addiction is not a unique behavioral problem or special pathology distinct from the neurobehavioral substrate that governs all behavior, but is rather a natural (albeit unfortunate) consequence of these same processes. The ultimate intent is to weave a working heuristic that ties together findings from molecular and molar levels of inquiry and thereby might help direct future research. Such integration is critical in the multifaceted study of addictions. [source]


User preference: A measure of query-term quality

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 12 2006
Nina Wacholder
The goal of this research is to understand what characteristics, if any, lead users engaged in interactive information seeking to prefer certain sets of query terms. Underlying this work is the assumption that query terms that information seekers prefer induce a kind of cognitive efficiency: They require less mental effort to process and therefore reduce the energy required in the interactive information-seeking process. Conceptually, this work applies insights from linguistics and cognitive science to the study of query-term quality. We report on an experiment in which we compare user preference for three sets of terms; one had been preconstructed by a human indexer, and two were identified automatically. Twenty-four participants used a merged list of all terms to answer a carefully created set of questions. By design, the interface constrained users to access the text exclusively via the displayed list of query terms. We found that participants displayed a preference for the human-constructed set of terms eight times greater than the preference for either set of automatically identified terms. We speculate about reasons for this strong preference and discuss the implications for information access. The primary contributions of this research are (a) explication of the concept of user preference as a measure of query-term quality and (b) identification of a replicable procedure for measuring preference for sets of query terms created by different methods, whether human or automatic. All other factors being equal, query terms that users prefer clearly are the best choice for real-world information-access systems. [source]


Latent demand and the browsing shopper

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 3-4 2000
Peter E Earl
This article explores ways of making sense of unplanned purchases on shopping expeditions without seeing shopping as lacking any systematic foundations or reflecting some kind of pathology. The analysis employs both introspection and inputs from cognitive science and focuses on shifts from planned search to browsing in response to promotional cues encountered whilst navigating malls that are designed to promote browsing behaviour. Browsing is examined both in terms of its socio-psychological foundations and with respect to a variety of kinds of latent demand. The economic psychology of attention is examined as are a variety of factors that bring browsing processes to a close. The paper concludes with a discussion of the significance of the analysis in terms of the path dependence of economic systems. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Nativism in Cognitive Science

MIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 3 2002
Richard Samuels
The central aim of this paper is to provide an account which addresses this concern and in so doing: a) makes sense of the roles that nativist theorizing plays in cognitive science and, moreover, b), explains why it really matters to the contemporary study of cognition. I conclude by outlining a range of further implications of this account for current debate in cognitive science. [source]


Mind, Brain, and Education: Building a Scientific Groundwork for Learning and Teaching1

MIND, BRAIN, AND EDUCATION, Issue 1 2009
Kurt W. Fischer
ABSTRACT, The primary goal of the emerging field of Mind, Brain, and Education is to join biology, cognitive science, development, and education in order to create a sound grounding of education in research. The growing, worldwide movement needs to avoid the myths and distortions of popular conceptions of brain and genetics and build on the best integration of research with practice, creating a strong infrastructure that joins scientists with educators to study effective learning and teaching in educational settings. Science and practice together provide many potentially powerful tools to improve education. Neuroscience and genetics make possible analysis of the "black box" of biological processes that underpin learning. Understanding the biology of abilities and disabilities helps educators and parents to facilitate individual students' learning and development. Cognitive science provides analyses of the mental models/metaphors that pervade meaning making in human cultures, creating tools for avoiding unconscious distortions and crafting effective educational tools. Developmental and learning science produce tools to analyze learning pathways, including both shared patterns and learning differences. To reach the potential of grounding education effectively in research requires improving the infrastructure by creating (a) research schools where practice and science jointly shape educational research, (b) shared databases on learning and development, and (c) a new profession of educational engineers or translators to facilitate connecting research with practice and policy. [source]


Mind, Language, and Epistemology: Toward a Language Socialization Paradigm for SLA

MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 3 2004
Karen Ann Watson-Gegeo
For some time now second language acquisition (SLA) research has been hampered by unhelpful debates between the "cognitivist" and "sociocultural" camps that have generated more acrimony than useful theory. Recent developments in second generation cognitive science, first language acquisition studies, cognitive anthropology, and human development research, however, have opened the way for a new synthesis. This synthesis involves a reconsideration of mind, language, and epistemology, and a recognition that cognition originates in social interaction and is shaped by cultural and sociopolitical processes: These processes are central rather than incidental to cognitive development. Here I lay out the issues and argue for a language socialization paradigm for SLA that is consistent with and embracive of the new research. [source]


Paradoxes of Pitch Space

MUSIC ANALYSIS, Issue 1 2008
Candace Brower
ABSTRACT Parallels between the mathematics of tiling, which describes geometries of visual space, and neo-Riemannian theory, which describes geometries of musical space, make it possible to show that certain paradoxes featured in the visual artworks of M. C. Escher also appear in the pitch space modelled by the neo-Riemannian Tonnetz. This article makes these paradoxes visually apparent by constructing an embodied model of triadic pitch space in accordance with principles drawn from the mathematics of tiling, on the one hand, and from cognitive science, on the other , specifically, the notion that our experience of pitch relationships is governed in part by the metaphorical projection of patterns abstracted from embodied experience known as image schemas. These paradoxes are illustrated with reference to passages drawn from four compositions to whose expressive character such paradoxes contribute: the fifteenth-century motet ,Absalon fili mi'; the finale of Haydn's String Quartet in G major, Op. 76 No. 1; Brahms's Intermezzo in B minor, Op. 119 No. 1; and Wagner's Parsifal. [source]


Meaning and normativity in nurse,patient interaction

NURSING PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2007
Halvor Nordby phd
Abstract, It is a fundamental assumption in nursing theory that it is important for nurses to understand how patients think about themselves and the contexts they are in. According to modern theories of hermeneutics, a nurse and a patient must share the same concepts in order to communicate beliefs with the same content. But nurses and patients seldom understand medical concepts in exactly the same way, so how can this communicative aim be achieved in interaction involving medical concepts? The article uses a theory of concepts from recent cognitive science and philosophy of mind to argue that nurses and patients can share medical concepts despite the diversity of understanding. According to this theory, two persons who understand medical language in different ways will nevertheless possess the same medical concepts if they agree about the normative standards for the applications of the concepts. This entails that nurses and patients normally share medical concepts even though patients' conceptions of disease and illness are formed in idiosyncratic ways by their social and cultural contexts. Several practical implications of this argument are discussed and linked to case studies. One especially important point is that nurses should seek to make patients feel comfortable with deferring to a medical understanding. In many cases, an adequate understanding of patients presupposes that nurses manage to do this. Another implication is that deference-willingness to normative meaning is not equivalent to the actual application of concepts. Deference-willingness should rather be thought of as a pre-communicative attitude that it is possible for patients who are not fully able to communicate to possess. What is important is that nurses and patients have the intention of conforming to the same meaning. [source]


Two Dogmas of Neo-Empiricism

PHILOSOPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 4 2006
Edouard Machery
This article critically examines the contemporary resurgence of empiricism (or "neo-empiricism") in philosophy, psychology, neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence. This resurgence is an important and positive development. It is the first time that this centuries-old empiricist approach to cognition is precisely formulated in the context of cognitive science and neuroscience. Moreover, neo-empiricists have made several findings that challenge amodal theories of concepts and higher cognition. It is argued, however, that the theoretical foundations of and the empirical evidence for neo-empiricism are not as strong as is usually claimed by its proponents. The empirical evidence for and against neo-empiricism is discussed in detail. [source]


Metaphor in the Mind: The Cognition of Metaphor1

PHILOSOPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 2 2006
Elisabeth Camp
The most sustained and innovative recent work on metaphor has occurred in cognitive science and psychology. Psycholinguistic investigation suggests that novel, poetic metaphors are processed differently than literal speech, while relatively conventionalized and contextually salient metaphors are processed more like literal speech. This conflicts with the view of "cognitive linguists" like George Lakoff that all or nearly all thought is essentially metaphorical. There are currently four main cognitive models of metaphor comprehension: juxtaposition, category-transfer, feature-matching, and structural alignment. Structural alignment deals best with the widest range of examples; but it still fails to account for the complexity and richness of fairly novel, poetic metaphors. [source]


Information behavior in developing countries: Research, issues, and emerging trends

PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2007
Dania Bilal Moderator
The field of library and information science (LIS) has historically been a leading discipline in studying human information behavior (Spink & Cole, 2006). Information seeking in industrialized nations is grounded in theories and moving towards new directions and evolutionary approaches that often challenge the established paradigms of information behavior studies (see Case, 2007; Spink & Cole, 2006; Fisher, Erdelez, & Mckechnie, 2005; Chelton & Cool, 2004. Information behavior has been conceptualized in a holistic context that draws upon theories from various disciplines such as cognitive science, communication, psychology, and computer science (Nahl & Bilal, 2007; Spink & Cole, 2006). Compared to industrialized nations, most developing countries relegate towards the bottom heap of research on information behavior (Coleman, 2005; Britz, 2005). A panel of researchers, educators, and consultants will address research in information behavior in various contexts in developing countries, particularly in India, South Africa, and the Arab world. Based on their research findings and experiences, the speakers will trace themes, map the intellectual terrain, identify emerging trends and approaches, and frame issues related to information behavior research in these countries. Moreover, they will identify significant knowledge domains, concepts, and topics of application in information behavior research where there can be mutual exchange between developing countries and the industrialized nations (including the United States) to nurture and further growth in this area of study. [source]