cognitive capacities
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2022 ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
Christophe Heintz ◽  
Thom Scott-Phillips

Abstract Human expression is open-ended, versatile and diverse, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved functions of which are the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how they are unleashed in humans. The relevant cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species’ social ecology to explain how and why humans, and only humans, evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity and open-endedness in means and modes of expression. Language use is but one of these modes of expression, albeit one of manifestly high importance. We make cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only language use but novel behaviour in many other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, teaching, punishment and art, all of which are ubiquitous in human societies but relatively rare in other species. Much of this diversity derives from graded aspects of human expression, which can be used to satisfy informative intentions in creative and new ways. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of the many of the most distinctive features of human behaviour, society and culture.


2021 ◽  
Vol 119 (1) ◽  
pp. e2110013119
Author(s):  
Matthew Groh ◽  
Ziv Epstein ◽  
Chaz Firestone ◽  
Rosalind Picard

The recent emergence of machine-manipulated media raises an important societal question: How can we know whether a video that we watch is real or fake? In two online studies with 15,016 participants, we present authentic videos and deepfakes and ask participants to identify which is which. We compare the performance of ordinary human observers with the leading computer vision deepfake detection model and find them similarly accurate, while making different kinds of mistakes. Together, participants with access to the model’s prediction are more accurate than either alone, but inaccurate model predictions often decrease participants’ accuracy. To probe the relative strengths and weaknesses of humans and machines as detectors of deepfakes, we examine human and machine performance across video-level features, and we evaluate the impact of preregistered randomized interventions on deepfake detection. We find that manipulations designed to disrupt visual processing of faces hinder human participants’ performance while mostly not affecting the model’s performance, suggesting a role for specialized cognitive capacities in explaining human deepfake detection performance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 1621
Author(s):  
Jannis Achenbach ◽  
Carsten Saft

Background: In addition to the effects on patients suffering from motor-manifest Huntington’s disease (HD), this fatal disease is devasting to people who are at risk, premanifest mutation-carriers, and especially to whole families. There is a huge burden on people in the environment of affected HD patients, and a need for further research to identify at-risk caregivers. The aim of our research was to investigate a large cohort of family members, in comparison with genotype negative and premanifest HD in order to evaluate particular cohorts more closely. Methods: We used the ENROLL-HD global registry study to compare motoric, cognitive, functional, and psychiatric manifestation in family members, premanifest HD, and genotype negative participant as controls. Cross-sectional data were analyzed using ANCOVA-analyses in IBM SPSS Statistics V.28. Results: Of N = 21,116 participants from the global registry study, n = 5174 participants had a premanifest motor-phenotype, n = 2358 were identified as family controls, and n = 2640 with a negative HD genotype. Analysis of variance revealed more motoric, cognitive, and psychiatric impairments in premanifest HD (all p < 0.001). Self-reported psychiatric assessments revealed a significantly higher score for depression in family controls (p < 0.001) when compared to genotype negative (p < 0.001) and premanifest HD patients (p < 0.05). Family controls had significantly less cognitive capacities within the cognitive test battery when compared to genotype negative participants. Conclusions: Within the largest cohort of HD patients and families, several impairments of motoric, functional, cognitive, and psychiatric components can be confirmed in a large cohort of premanifest HD, potentially due to prodromal HD pathology. HD family controls suffered from higher self-reported depression and less cognitive capacities, which were potentially due to loaded or stressful situations. This research aims to sensitize investigators to be aware of caregiver burdens caused by HD and encourage support with socio-medical care and targeted psychological interventions. In particular, further surveys and variables are necessary in order to implement them within the database so as to identify at-risk caregivers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rami Gabriel

The cultural project is a therapeutic melding of emotion, symbols, and knowledge. In this paper, I describe how spiritual emotions engendered through encounters in imaginative culture enable fixation of metaphysical beliefs. Evolved affective systems are domesticated through the social practices of imaginative culture so as to adapt people to live in culturally defined cooperative groups. Conditioning, as well as tertiary-level cognitive capacities such as symbols and language are enlisted to bond groups through the imaginative formats of myth and participatory ritual. These cultural materializations can be shared by communities both synchronically and diachronically in works of art. Art is thus a form of self-knowledge that equips us with a motivated understanding of ourselves in the world. In the sacred state produced through the arts and in religious acts, the sense of meaning becomes noetically distinct because affect infuses the experience of immanence, and one's memory of it, with salience. The quality imbued thereby makes humans attentive to subtle signs and broad “truths.” Saturated by emotions and the experience of alterity in the immanent encounter of imaginative culture, information made salient in the sacred experience can become the basis for belief fixation. Using examples drawn from mimetic arts and arts of immanence, I put forward a theory about how sensible affective knowledge is mediated through affective systems, direct perception, and the imagination.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 971-971
Author(s):  
Catherine Gosselin ◽  
Benjamin Boller ◽  
Meghan Désilets-Jutras

Abstract Since increasing life expectancy leads to a longer period of retirement, several studies have been investigating the possible impact of retirement on cognitive health. Several epidemiological studies with cross-sectional designs have reported a negative association between retirement and cognitive capacities. However, very few studies with longitudinal designs have confirmed the negative effect of retirement on cognitive functioning. The present study was conducted to investigate the impact of retirement on cognitive capacities among older Canadians. We used data from the Comprehensive cohort of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) to compare performance retirees and workers (N = 1442), 45 to 85 years of age at baseline. Memory and executive functioning were assessed using standardized assessment tools at baseline and at three-year follow up. Retirees and workers were matched for age, gender and education using the nearest neighbor propensity score method with a caliper of 0.02. Mixed ANOVA and post hoc analyses were conducted separately for the English- and French-speaking samples. Results for the English-speaking sample showed a significant decline on both the Stroop and the Mental Alternation Task for retirees compared to workers from baseline to follow-up. These results support previous cross-sectional studies that have demonstrated a negative effect of retirement on executive functioning. The absence of significant results in the French-speaking sample will be discussed in terms of sample size and professional occupation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tony James Scott

<p>Many modern approaches to the evolution of mind have claimed that the fundamental drivers of our cognitive capacities and cultures are genetically specified psychological adaptations, which evolved in response to evolutionary pressures deep within our lineage's history. Many of our cognitive capacities are innate. Recent approaches to moral cognition have similarly argued that moral cognition is innate. In this thesis, I argue that even though our capacity for moral cognising is an adaptation, it is a learned adaptation. Moral cognition is not innate. In arguing this thesis I will question many of the assumptions of traditional cognitive science and evolutionary approaches to the mind. By incorporating theory and evidence from cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, I apply the explanatory frameworks of embodied and extended cognition to the domain of morality: moral cognition is both embodied and extended cognition. This places particular importance on the role of our bodies and world in the fundamental structuring and scaffolding of the development and execution of moral cognition. Putting this in an evolutionary framework, I develop a dual inheritance model of the non-nativist evolution of moral cognition focusing on the roles of niche construction, biased learning and active learning in the transfer of moral phenotypes between generations. Morality is a learned adaptation that evolved through the dynamic and reciprocal interaction between genes and culture.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Andrew Neil Mahoney

<p>Recent psychological and cognitive research has explored the evolutionary origins of human religiosity. In this thesis, I explore the historical origin and social function of supernatural expertise. I define supernatural expertise as the act of acquiring and expressing supernatural knowledge. I critique several recent theories from evolutionary psychology and cognitive science by assessing the extent to which they can explain supernatural expertise. Costly signalling theory is the view that religious costs are adaptations that signal the cooperative intent of individuals. This theory cannot account for supernatural expertise as expressions of supernatural knowledge are typically linguistic, and one can verbally misrepresent one’s supernatural beliefs. Sexual selection theory explains how physiological or psychological traits can become exaggerated over time if they are preferred by mating partners. Sexual selection can explain an increase in the cognitive capacities necessary for the acquisition of supernatural knowledge. However, it cannot account for the complex nature of supernatural information. Cognitively optimal theory predicts that the religious information which persists within human populations should be easily transferred and recalled. The theory cannot account for any supernatural information which requires considerable effort to acquire. The modes theory explains religion in terms of memory systems and the social arrangements that humans have developed to mediate the exchange of religious ideas. These result in two modes of religiosity. The doctrinal mode of religiosity explains why supernatural experts exist, but not how supernatural expertise originated. I conclude by arguing for an innovative theory for supernatural expertise. I employ cognitively optimal theory to explain why some supernatural concepts are difficult to recall. I explain the signalling function of supernatural expertise in terms of the costly effort invested in the acquisition of supernatural information. I propose that sexual selection for the cognitive capacities to acquire supernatural knowledge has enhanced the ability to acquire such information; this necessitates an increase in the complexity of supernatural information which ensures cooperative commitment remains a predominant motivation for the acquisition of supernatural knowledge, in spite of enhanced cognitive ability. I discuss several social conditions that result from the doctrinal mode of religiosity and how they solve cooperation problems in dense populations.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Andrew Neil Mahoney

<p>Recent psychological and cognitive research has explored the evolutionary origins of human religiosity. In this thesis, I explore the historical origin and social function of supernatural expertise. I define supernatural expertise as the act of acquiring and expressing supernatural knowledge. I critique several recent theories from evolutionary psychology and cognitive science by assessing the extent to which they can explain supernatural expertise. Costly signalling theory is the view that religious costs are adaptations that signal the cooperative intent of individuals. This theory cannot account for supernatural expertise as expressions of supernatural knowledge are typically linguistic, and one can verbally misrepresent one’s supernatural beliefs. Sexual selection theory explains how physiological or psychological traits can become exaggerated over time if they are preferred by mating partners. Sexual selection can explain an increase in the cognitive capacities necessary for the acquisition of supernatural knowledge. However, it cannot account for the complex nature of supernatural information. Cognitively optimal theory predicts that the religious information which persists within human populations should be easily transferred and recalled. The theory cannot account for any supernatural information which requires considerable effort to acquire. The modes theory explains religion in terms of memory systems and the social arrangements that humans have developed to mediate the exchange of religious ideas. These result in two modes of religiosity. The doctrinal mode of religiosity explains why supernatural experts exist, but not how supernatural expertise originated. I conclude by arguing for an innovative theory for supernatural expertise. I employ cognitively optimal theory to explain why some supernatural concepts are difficult to recall. I explain the signalling function of supernatural expertise in terms of the costly effort invested in the acquisition of supernatural information. I propose that sexual selection for the cognitive capacities to acquire supernatural knowledge has enhanced the ability to acquire such information; this necessitates an increase in the complexity of supernatural information which ensures cooperative commitment remains a predominant motivation for the acquisition of supernatural knowledge, in spite of enhanced cognitive ability. I discuss several social conditions that result from the doctrinal mode of religiosity and how they solve cooperation problems in dense populations.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tony James Scott

<p>Many modern approaches to the evolution of mind have claimed that the fundamental drivers of our cognitive capacities and cultures are genetically specified psychological adaptations, which evolved in response to evolutionary pressures deep within our lineage's history. Many of our cognitive capacities are innate. Recent approaches to moral cognition have similarly argued that moral cognition is innate. In this thesis, I argue that even though our capacity for moral cognising is an adaptation, it is a learned adaptation. Moral cognition is not innate. In arguing this thesis I will question many of the assumptions of traditional cognitive science and evolutionary approaches to the mind. By incorporating theory and evidence from cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, I apply the explanatory frameworks of embodied and extended cognition to the domain of morality: moral cognition is both embodied and extended cognition. This places particular importance on the role of our bodies and world in the fundamental structuring and scaffolding of the development and execution of moral cognition. Putting this in an evolutionary framework, I develop a dual inheritance model of the non-nativist evolution of moral cognition focusing on the roles of niche construction, biased learning and active learning in the transfer of moral phenotypes between generations. Morality is a learned adaptation that evolved through the dynamic and reciprocal interaction between genes and culture.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Benjamin Jeffares

<p>I show how archaeologists have two problems. The construction of scenarios accounting for the raw data of Archaeology, the material remains of the past, and the explanation of pre-history. Within Archaeology, there has been an ongoing debate about how to constrain speculation within both of these archaeological projects, and archaeologists have consistently looked to biological mechanisms for constraints. I demonstrate the problems of using biology, either as an analogy for cultural processes or through direct application of biological principles to material remains. This is done through setting out the requirements of a Darwinian Archaeology, and then measuring various approaches against these requirements. This approach leads to the conclusion that archaeologist's explanations of the past must include within their formulations an account of human cognitive capacities within their explanatory framework. The limits of our understanding of the human past will be the limits of our understanding of Homo sapiens.</p>


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