In this article, we show how the phenomenon of self-deception when adequately analyzed, can be incorporated into a predictive processing framework. We describe four strategies by which a subject may become self-deceived to account for typical cases of self-deception. We then argue that the four strategies can be modeled within this framework, under the assumption that a satisfying account of motivation is possible within predictive processing. Finally, we outline how we can ground this assumption by discussing how such (...) a systematic model of motivation may be developed using the distinction between a world-model and a self-model. (shrink)

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary conglomerate of various research fields and disciplines, which increases the risk of fragmentation of cognitive theories. However, while most previous work has focused on theoretical integration, some kinds of integration may turn out to be monstrous, or result in superficially lumped and unrelated bodies of knowledge. In this paper, I distinguish theoretical integration from theoretical unification, and propose some analyses of theoretical unification dimensions. Moreover, two research strategies that are supposed to lead (...) to unification are analyzed in terms of the mechanistic account of explanation. Finally, I argue that theoretical unification is not an absolute requirement from the mechanistic perspective, and that strategies aiming at unification may be premature in fields where there are multiple conflicting explanatory models. (shrink)

Humans use their spatial information processing abilities flexibly to facilitate problem solving and decision making in a variety of tasks. This article explores the question of whether a general strategy can be adapted for performing two different spatial orientation tasks by testing the predictions of a computational cognitive model. Human performance was measured on an orientation task requiring participants to identify the location of a target either on a map (find‐on‐map) or within an egocentric view of a space (find‐in‐scene). (...) A general strategy instantiated in a computational cognitive model of the find‐on‐map task, based on the results from Gunzelmann and Anderson (2006), was adapted to perform both tasks and used to generate performance predictions for a new study. The qualitative fit of the model to the human data supports the view that participants were able to tailor a general strategy to the requirements of particular spatial tasks. The quantitative differences between the predictions of the model and the performance of human participants in the new experiment expose individual differences in sample populations. The model provides a means of accounting for those differences and a framework for understanding how human spatial abilities are applied to naturalistic spatial tasks that involve reasoning with maps. (shrink)

Despite the rising interest in environmental strategies, few studies have examined how managerial cognition of such strategies influences actual innovation capability development. Taking a managerial cognition perspective, this study investigates how managers’ perceptions of institutional pressures relate to their focus on proactive environmental strategy, which in turn affects firms’ realized innovation capability. The findings from a primary survey and three secondary datasets of publicly listed companies in China reveal that managers’ perceived business and social pressures are positively associated (...) with their focus on proactive environmental strategy, which consequently fosters innovation capability development. Moreover, state ownership and government administrative control weaken the impact of managerial focus on proactive environmental strategy on innovation capability. These findings have important implications for how managerial cognition supports environmental strategy and organizational capability building under the influence of institutional pressures and government intervention. (shrink)

The disagreement between defenders and opponents of extended cognition is often framed in terms of constitution. The underlying principle of this discussion is what I will call the co-location principle: cognition is located where its constituents are located. The crucial question is under which conditions something is to be counted as a constituent of cognition. I will formulate three criteria of adequacy that an account of constitution must satisfy to be applicable to the dispute on extended cognition. I will evaluate (...) different accounts of constitution as to whether they satisfy the criteria of adequacy. Three different accounts of constitution can be identified in the literature on extended cognition, which I will call property-based constitution, diachronic constitution, and mechanistic constitution. I will show that none of the accounts satisfies all three criteria. Thus, the search for the mark of constitution does not seem to be a promising strategy for defending extended cognition. I will briefly sketch a new strategy of how to deal with this situation. (shrink)

The chapters in this book address directly the issue of the cognitive penetrability of perception.

In this paper, I discuss the concept of adaptive rationality. I present a simple model of ecology and the set of decision rules. The basic structure of the process of cognitive adaptation to ecology is described as a structure comprising perceptual space, a function valuating perceived items, a set of available decision rules and the adaptation process - identification and selection of the best strategies in given ecological conditions. The presented model of ecosystem allows a conclusion that completely (...) opposite strategies may be compatible with the assumption of adaptive rationality. (shrink)

How do people reason about their opponent in turn-taking games? Often, people do not make the decisions that game theory would prescribe. We present a logic that can play a key role in understanding how people make their decisions, by delineating all plausible reasoning strategies in a systematic manner. This in turn makes it possible to construct a corresponding set of computational models in a cognitive architecture. These models can be run and fitted to the participants’ data in (...) terms of decisions, response times, and answers to questions. We validate these claims on the basis of an earlier game-theoretic experiment about the turn-taking game “Marble Drop with Surprising Opponent”, in which the opponent often starts with a seemingly irrational move. We explore two ways of segregating the participants into reasonable “player types”. The first way is based on latent class analysis, which divides the players into three classes according to their first decisions in the game: Random players, Learners, and Expected players, who make decisions consistent with forward induction. The second way is based on participants’ answers to a question about their opponent, classified according to levels of theory of mind: zero-order, first-order and second-order. It turns out that increasing levels of decisions and theory of mind both correspond to increasing success as measured by monetary awards and increasing decision times. Next, we use the logical language to express different kinds of strategies that people apply when reasoning about their opponent and making decisions in turn-taking games, as well as the ‘reasoning types’ reflected in their behavior. Then, we translate the logical formulas into computational cognitive models in the PRIMs architecture. Finally, we run two of the resulting models, corresponding to the strategy of only being interested in one’s own payoff and to the myopic strategy, in which one can only look ahead to a limited number of nodes. It turns out that the participant data fit to the own-payoff strategy, not the myopic one. The article closes the circle from experiments via logic and cognitive modelling back to predictions about new experiments. (shrink)

Locked and unlocked strategies are at the center of this article, as ways of shedding new light on the cognitive aspects of deep learning machines. The character and the role of these cognitive strategies, which are occurring both in humans and in computational machines, is indeed strictly related to the generation of cognitive outputs, which range from weak to strong level of knowledge creativity. I maintain that these differences lead to important consequences when we analyze (...) computational AI programs, such as AlphaGo, which aim at performing various kinds of abductive hypothetical reasoning. In these cases, the programs are characterized by _locked_ abductive strategies: they deal with weak (even if sometimes amazing) kinds of hypothetical creative reasoning, because they are limited in what I call eco-cognitive openness, which instead qualifies human cognizers who are performing higher kinds of abductive creative reasoning, where cognitive strategies are instead _unlocked_. (shrink)

_Locked_ and _unlocked_ strategies are illustrated in this article as concepts that deal with important cognitive aspects of deep learning systems. They indicate different inference routines that refer to poor (locked) to rich (unlocked) cases of creative production of creative cognition. I maintain that these differences lead to important consequences when we analyze computational deep learning programs, such as AlphaGo/AlphaZero, which are able to realize various types of abductive hypothetical reasoning. These programs embed what I call locked abductive (...) strategies, so, even if they present spectacular performances for example in games, they are characterized by poor types of hypothetical creative cognition insofar as they are constrained in what I call _eco-cognitive openness_. This openness instead characterizes unlocked human cognition that pertains to higher kinds of abductive reasoning, in both the creative and diagnostic cases, in which cognitive strategies are instead unlocked. This special kind of “openness” is physically rooted in the fundamental character of the human brain as an open system constantly coupled with the environment (that is, an “open” or “dissipative” system): its activity is the uninterrupted attempt to achieve the equilibrium with the environment in which it is embedded, and this interplay can never be switched off without producing severe damage to the brain. The brain cannot be conceived as deprived of its physical quintessence that is its openness. In the brain, contrary to the computational case, ordering is not derived from the outside thanks to what I have called in a recent book “computational domestication of ignorant entities”, but it is the direct product of an “internal” open dynamical process of the system. (shrink)

Researchers of advanced technologies are constantly seeking new ways of measuring and adapting to user performance. Appropriately adapting system feedback requires accurate assessments of user performance. Unfortunately, many assessment algorithms must be trained on and use pre‐prepared data sets or corpora to provide a sufficiently accurate portrayal of user knowledge and behavior. However, if the targeted content of the tutoring system changes depending on the situation, the assessment algorithms must be sufficiently independent to apply to untrained content. Such is the (...) case for Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART), an intelligent tutoring system that assesses the cognitive complexity of strategy use while a reader self‐explains a text. iSTART is designed so that teachers and researchers may add their own (new) texts into the system. The current paper explores student self‐explanations from newly added texts (which iSTART had not been trained on) and focuses on evaluating the iSTART assessment algorithm by comparing it to human ratings of the students’ self‐explanations. (shrink)

To this day, the study of the substratum of thought and its implied mechanisms is rarely directly addressed. Nowadays, systemic approaches based on introspective methodologies are no longer fashionable and are often overlooked or ignored. Most frequently, reductionist approaches are followed for deciphering the neuronal circuits functionally associated with cognitive processes. However, we argue that systemic studies of individual thought may still contribute to a useful and complementary description of the multimodal nature of perception, because they can take into (...) account individual diversity while still identifying the common features of perceptual processes. We propose to address this question by looking at one possible task for recognition of a “signifying sound”, as an example of conceptual grasping of a perceptual response. By adopting a mixed approach combining qualitative analyses of interviews based on introspection with quantitative statistical analyses carried out on the resulting categorization, this study describes a variety of mental strategies used by musicians to identify notes’ pitch. Sixty-seven musicians (music students and professionals) were interviewed, revealing that musicians utilize intermediate steps during note identification by selecting or activating cognitive bricks that help construct and reach the correct decision. We named these elements “mental anchorpoints”. Although the anchorpoints are not universal, and differ between individuals, they can be grouped into categories related to three main sensory modalities – auditory, visual and kinesthetic. Such categorization enabled us to characterize the mental representations that allow musicians to name notes in relationship to eleven basic typologies of anchorpoints. We propose a conceptual framework which summarizes the process of note identification in five steps, starting from sensory detection and ending with the verbalization of the note pitch, passing through the pivotal role of mental anchorpoints and mental representations. We found that musicians use multiple strategies and select individual combinations of mental anchorpoints belonging to these three different sensory modalities both in isolation and in combination. (shrink)

The ideological and political education situation is constantly developing and changing. In modern globalization, the ideological education of college students has received great attention. The purpose is to strengthen morality and cultivate people as the basic point of a college education. The principles of educational psychology are adopted to integrate IPE into the whole process of college teaching and help students develop healthily for a long time. First, IPE psychology’s concept and subject attribute under educational psychology are expounded. Next, the (...) concept and development of cognitive structure theory are introduced. Moreover, educational constructivist measures are analyzed. Furthermore, the cognitive structure of college students’ self-cognition and IPE is interpreted and analyzed using cognitive psychology. Then, a questionnaire is designed to study the influencing factors of political education strategies in colleges. Finally, the questionnaire is collected to summarize the influencing factors and put forward optimization strategies. The results show that using the principles of educational psychology and cognitive psychology to investigate can accurately understand modern college students’ self-cognitive structure and ideological and political cognitive structure. The opportunity factor greatly impacts the IPE strategy of college students. More than 97% think that it has an impact, of which more than 51% think that it has a great impact and more than 21% think that it is the decisive factor. Challenge factors greatly impact college students’ IPE strategies. More than 97% think they have an impact, of which more than 55% think they have a great impact, and more than 24% think they are decisive factors. It shows that educational psychology is conducive to the progress of political education in colleges and the improvement of college students’ ideological and political levels. This exploration provides a new direction for educational psychology research in ideological and political work. (shrink)

This study investigated the kinds of knowledge necessary to learn an important troubleshooting strategy, elimination. A total of 50 college-level students searched for the source of failures in simple digital networks. Production system modelling suggested that students using a common but simpler backtracking strategy would learn the more advanced elimination strategy if they applied certain domain-specific knowledge and the general-purpose problem-solving strategy of reductio ad absurdum. In an experiment, students solved network troubleshooting problems after being trained with either the domain-specific (...) knowledge, the reductio ad absurdum strategy, both types of knowledge, or neither. Students needed both the domain-specific and general knowledge identified by the models in order to significantly increase their elimination use. (shrink)

This research project analyzes a strategy for teaching philosophy in secondary school inspired by Socratic dialogue, which aims at the creation and effective management of cognitive dissonance as a tool for promoting critical thinking, called Socratic Challenge (SC). The research originates from workshops held in the years 2016/2019 in a technical and vocational institute in the province of Varese, in which I participated as the creator and conductor, involving the voluntary participation of about 150 students. The research questions are: (...) What are the characteristics of the Socratic Challenge? Can it constitute a teaching methodology to be proposed? Under what conditions? Within what project framework? The empirical research is qualitative, naturalistic, and exploratory (Lumbelli, 1984), specifically a self-study (Hamilton & Pinnegar 2009), divided into two phases. In the first phase, data regarding motivation and perceptions of training impact were collected through in-depth interviews of students (16) and analyzed using the criteria of reflective thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke 2019). In the second phase, the workshops were repeated remotely in technical and vocational institutes in Milan and the province, involving 113 students who were surveyed with a qualitative questionnaire. The workshops were recorded and the discussion interactions were analyzed according to a qualitative inductive approach that refers to Constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2006). Results show how this dialogical instructional strategy in philosophy teaching can be considered an effective alternative to the historical-philosophical approach predominant in the Italian tradition (Illetterati 2007). (shrink)