What is the utility of a process model of cognition over a verbal description?

Cognitive strategies in the mental rotation task revealed by EEG spectral power

2017, Brain and Cognition

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The classic mental rotation task (MRT; Shepard & Metzler, 1971) is commonly thought to measure mental rotation, a cognitive process involving covert simulation of motor rotation. Yet much research suggests that the MRT recruits both motor simulation and other analytic cognitive strategies that depend on visuospatial representation and visual working memory (WM). In the present study, we investigated cognitive strategies in the MRT using time-frequency analysis of EEG and independent component analysis. We scrutinized sensorimotor mu (µ) power reduction, associated with motor simulation, parietal alpha (pα) power reduction, associated with visuospatial representation, and frontal midline theta (fmθ) power enhancement, associated with WM maintenance and manipulation. µ power increased concomitant with increasing task difficulty, suggesting reduced use of motor simulation, while pα decreased and fmθ power increased, suggesting heightened use of visuospatial representation processing and WM, respectively. These findings suggest that MRT performance involves flexibly trading off between cognitive strategies, namely a motor simulation-based mental rotation strategy and WM-intensive analytic strategies based on task difficulty. Flexible cognitive strategy use may be a domain-general cognitive principle that underlies aptitude and spatial intelligence in a variety of cognitive domains. We close with discussion of the present study’s implications as well as future directions.

A Reflection on Noncognitive Factors Affecting Spatial Cognitive Testing: Examples From Nonmodel Species

2022, Journal of Comparative Psychology

Exploring the Spatial Distribution Characteristics and Correlation Factors of Wayfinding Performance on City-Scale Road Networks Based on Massive Trajectory Data

2021, Journal of Advanced Transportation

Influence of familiarity on the driving behavior, route risk, and route choice of older drivers

2019, IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems

The path more travelled: Time pressure increases reliance on familiar route-based strategies during navigation

2017, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

Strategies for selecting routes through real-world environments: Relative topography, initial route straightness, and cardinal direction

2015, PLoS ONE

Research article

Perceptual Learning, Cognition, and Expertise

Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 58, 2013, pp. 117-165

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Recent research indicates that perceptual learning (PL)—experience-induced changes in the way perceivers extract information—plays a larger role in complex cognitive tasks, including abstract and symbolic domains, than has been understood in theory or implemented in instruction. Here, we describe the involvement of PL in complex cognitive tasks and why these connections, along with contemporary experimental and neuroscientific research in perception, challenge widely held accounts of the relationships among perception, cognition, and learning. We outline three revisions to common assumptions about these relations: 1) Perceptual mechanisms provide complex and abstract descriptions of reality; 2) Perceptual representations are often amodal, not limited to modality-specific sensory features; and 3) Perception is selective. These three properties enable relations between perception and cognition that are both synergistic and dynamic, and they make possible PL processes that adapt information extraction to optimize task performance. While PL is pervasive in natural learning and in expertise, it has largely been neglected in formal instruction. We describe an emerging PL technology that has already produced dramatic learning gains in a variety of academic and professional learning contexts, including mathematics, science, aviation, and medical learning.

Research article

Point-to-point ligand–receptor interactions across the subunit interface modulate the induction and stabilization of conformational states of alpha7 nAChR by benzylidene anabaseines

Biochemical Pharmacology, Volume 85, Issue 6, 2013, pp. 817-828

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The homomeric α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor is a well-studied therapeutic target, though its characteristically rapid desensitization complicates the development of drugs with specific agonist effects. Moreover, some experimental compounds such as GTS-21 (2,4diMeOBA), a derivative of the α7-selective partial agonist benzylidene anabaseine (BA), produce a prolonged residual desensitization (RD) in which the receptor remains non-activatable long after the drug has been removed from extracellular solution. In contrast, the desensitization caused by GTS-21's dihydroxy metabolite (2,4diOHBA) is relatively short-lived. RD is hypothetically due to stable binding of the ligand to the receptor in its desensitized state. We can attribute the reduction in RD to a single BA hydroxyl group on the 4′ benzylidene position. Computational prediction derived from homology modeling showed the serine36 (S36) residue of α7 as a reasonable candidate for point-to-point interaction between BA compounds and the receptor. Through evaluating the activity of BA and simple derivatives on wild-type and mutant α7 receptors, it was observed that the drug–receptor pairs which were capable of hydrogen bonding at residue 36 exhibited significantly less stable desensitization. Further experiments involving the type II positive allosteric modulator (PAM) PNU-120596 showed that the various BA compounds’ preference to induce either a PAM-sensitive (Ds) or PAM-insensitive (Di) desensitized state is concentration dependent and suggested that both states are destabilized by S36 H-bonding. These results indicate that the fine-tuning of agonists for specific interaction with S36 can facilitate the development of therapeutics with targeted effects on ion channel desensitization properties and conformational state stability.

Research article

Space, Time, and Story

Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 58, 2013, pp. 47-76

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Life presents as a continuous multimodal barrage on all our senses. From that, we abstract events, discrete units characterized by completion of goals and peaks of action. Effective communication of sequences of events in explanations and narratives is similarly segmented, and linked globally by overall themes and locally by anaphora. Visuospatial explanations and narratives, notably diagrams, comics, and gestures, rely on congruity of mappings of elements and relations of ideas to space and marks in space. Just as we design visuospatial discourse, we design the world: Our design actions in space create diagrams in the world, patterns, piles, rows, one-to-one correspondences, and the like, that express abstractions, categories, hierarchies, dimensions, and more, a circular process termed spraction.

Research article

Causation, Touch, and the Perception of Force

Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 58, 2013, pp. 167-202

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Much of the thinking on causation recognizes that it entails more than spatial–temporal contiguity or correlation, but it has been difficult to specify exactly what that extra component of thought is. In this paper, we argue that the representation of causal relations is based on the feeling of force as understood through the sense of touch. Grounding causation in people’s sense of touch allows us to address the long-standing challenges that have been raised against force-based approaches to causation. In support of our proposal, we review research on the perception of causation that provides support for a force-based view of causation. We also describe recent findings that establish a direct connection between people’s impressions of causation and their sense of touch. We conclude by showing how a force-based view can be extended to handle the problem of how abstract causal relations are represented and acquired.

Research article

Individual Differences in Intelligence and Working Memory: A Review of Latent Variable Models

Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 58, 2013, pp. 233-270

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The purpose of the current review is to examine individual differences in intelligence and working memory capacity. The emphasis is on latent variable models and theoretical frameworks that connect interindividual differences in behavior with intraindividual psychological processes. Our review suggests that intelligence and working memory capacity are strongly correlated and that the shared variance is primarily due to the fluid reasoning component of intelligence and mechanisms of cognitive control in working memory. We conclude that research on intelligence and working memory is a rare successful example of the unification of experimental and differential psychology. Finally, we argue that general ability models of intelligence that posit a unitary source of variance are not consistent with contemporary research and should be fairly rejected.

Research article

Similarities and differences in visual and spatial perspective-taking processes

Cognition, Volume 129, Issue 2, 2013, pp. 426-438

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Processes for perspective-taking can be differentiated on whether or not they require us to mentally rotate ourselves into the position of the other person (). Until now, only two perspective-taking tasks have been differentiated in this way, showing that judging whether something is to someone’s left or right does require mental rotation, but judging if someone can see something or not does not. These tasks differ firstly on whether the content of the perspective is visual or spatial and secondly on whether the type of the judgement is early-developing (level-1 type) or later-developing (level-2 type). Across two experiments, we tested which of these factors was likely to be most important by using four different perspective-taking tasks which crossed orthogonally the content of judgement (visual vs. spatial) and the type of judgement (level-1 type vs. level-2 type). We found that the level-2 type judgements, of how something looks to someone else and whether it is to their left or right, required egocentric mental rotation. On the other hand, level-1 type judgements, of whether something was in front of or behind someone and of whether someone could see something or not, did not involve mental rotation. We suggest from this that the initial processing strategies employed for perspective-taking are largely independent of whether judgements are visual or spatial in nature. Furthermore, early developing abilities have features that make mental rotation unnecessary.

What is the cognitive process model?

Why is cognitive process important?

Why are models important in cognitive psychology?

What are the three main aspects of cognition?