The Structure of Time

The Structure of Time PDF Author: Vyvyan Evans
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027293783
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of the most enigmatic aspects of experience concerns time. Since pre-Socratic times scholars have speculated about the nature of time, asking questions such as: What is time? Where does it come from? Where does it go? The central proposal of The Structure of Time is that time, at base, constitutes a phenomenologically real experience. Drawing on findings in psychology, neuroscience, and utilising the perspective of cognitive linguistics, this work argues that our experience of time may ultimately derive from perceptual processes, which in turn enable us to perceive events. As such, temporal experience is a pre-requisite for abilities such as event perception and comparison, rather than an abstraction based on such phenomena. The book represents an examination of the nature of temporal cognition, with two foci: (i) an investigation into (pre-conceptual) temporal experience, and (ii) an analysis of temporal structure at the conceptual level (which derives from temporal experience).

Cognition in the Wild

Cognition in the Wild PDF Author: Edwin Hutchins
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262581469
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 403

Get Book Here

Book Description
Edwin Hutchins combines his background as an anthropologist and an open ocean racing sailor and navigator in this account of how anthropological methods can be combined with cognitive theory to produce a new reading of cognitive science. His theoretical insights are grounded in an extended analysis of ship navigation—its computational basis, its historical roots, its social organization, and the details of its implementation in actual practice aboard large ships. The result is an unusual interdisciplinary approach to cognition in culturally constituted activities outside the laboratory—"in the wild." Hutchins examines a set of phenomena that have fallen in the cracks between the established disciplines of psychology and anthropology, bringing to light a new set of relationships between culture and cognition. The standard view is that culture affects the cognition of individuals. Hutchins argues instead that cultural activity systems have cognitive properties of their own that are different from the cognitive properties of the individuals who participate in them. Each action for bringing a large naval vessel into port, for example, is informed by culture: the navigation team can be seen as a cognitive and computational system. Introducing Navy life and work on the bridge, Hutchins makes a clear distinction between the cognitive properties of an individual and the cognitive properties of a system. In striking contrast to the usual laboratory tasks of research in cognitive science, he applies the principal metaphor of cognitive science—cognition as computation (adopting David Marr's paradigm)—to the navigation task. After comparing modern Western navigation with the method practiced in Micronesia, Hutchins explores the computational and cognitive properties of systems that are larger than an individual. He then turns to an analysis of learning or change in the organization of cognitive systems at several scales. Hutchins's conclusion illustrates the costs of ignoring the cultural nature of cognition, pointing to the ways in which contemporary cognitive science can be transformed by new meanings and interpretations. A Bradford Book

Time, Action and Cognition

Time, Action and Cognition PDF Author: Françoise Macar
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401735360
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 402

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume is the outcome of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Time, Action and Cognition. which was held in Saint-Malo, France, in October 1991. The theme - time in action and cognition of time - was sparked by growing awareness in informal meetings between mostly French-speaking time psychologists of the need to bring together time specialists in the areas of development, motor behavior, attention, memory and representations. The workshop was designed to be a forum where different theoretical points of view and a variety of empirical approaches could be presented and discussed. Time psychologists tended to draw conclusions restricted to their specific fields of interest. From our own experience, we felt that addressing a common issue - possible relationships between time in action and representations of time - could lead to a more comprehensive approach. We are endebted to NATO for allowing us to bring this idea to fruition. We take this opportunity as well to express our thanks to Cognisciences ( Cognisud section) -- an active interdisciplinary research organization - for its financial backing and the CNRS for its scientific support.

The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition

The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition PDF Author: Michael Tomasello
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674660323
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ambitious and elegant, this book builds a bridge between evolutionary theory and cultural psychology. Michael Tomasello is one of the very few people to have done systematic research on the cognitive capacities of both nonhuman primates and human children. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition identifies what the differences are, and suggests where they might have come from. Tomasello argues that the roots of the human capacity for symbol-based culture, and the kind of psychological development that takes place within it, are based in a cluster of uniquely human cognitive capacities that emerge early in human ontogeny. These include capacities for sharing attention with other persons; for understanding that others have intentions of their own; and for imitating, not just what someone else does, but what someone else has intended to do. In his discussions of language, symbolic representation, and cognitive development, Tomasello describes with authority and ingenuity the "ratchet effect" of these capacities working over evolutionary and historical time to create the kind of cultural artifacts and settings within which each new generation of children develops. He also proposes a novel hypothesis, based on processes of social cognition and cultural evolution, about what makes the cognitive representations of humans different from those of other primates. Lucid, erudite, and passionate, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition will be essential reading for developmental psychology, animal behavior, and cultural psychology.

Subjective Time

Subjective Time PDF Author: Valtteri Arstila
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026254475X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 687

Get Book Here

Book Description
Interdisciplinary perspectives on the feature of conscious life that scaffolds every act of cognition: subjective time. Our awareness of time and temporal properties is a constant feature of conscious life. Subjective temporality structures and guides every aspect of behavior and cognition, distinguishing memory, perception, and anticipation. This milestone volume brings together research on temporality from leading scholars in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, defining a new field of interdisciplinary research. The book's thirty chapters include selections from classic texts by William James and Edmund Husserl and new essays setting them in historical context; contemporary philosophical accounts of lived time; and current empirical studies of psychological time. These last chapters, the larger part of the book, cover such topics as the basic psychophysics of psychological time, its neural foundations, its interaction with the body, and its distortion in illness and altered states of consciousness. Contributors Melissa J. Allman, Holly Andersen, Valtteri Arstila, Yan Bao, Dean V. Buonomano, Niko A. Busch, Barry Dainton, Sylvie Droit-Volet, Christine M. Falter, Thomas Fraps, Shaun Gallagher, Alex O. Holcombe, Edmund Husserl, William James, Piotr Jaśkowski, Jeremie Jozefowiez, Ryota Kanai, Allison N. Kurti, Dan Lloyd, Armando Machado, Matthew S. Matell, Warren H. Meck, James Mensch, Bruno Mölder, Catharine Montgomery, Konstantinos Moutoussis, Peter Naish, Valdas Noreika, Sukhvinder S. Obhi, Ruth Ogden, Alan o'Donoghue, Georgios Papadelis, Ian B. Phillips, Ernst Pöppel, John E. R. Staddon, Dale N. Swanton, Rufin VanRullen, Argiro Vatakis, Till M. Wagner, John Wearden, Marc Wittmann, Agnieszka Wykowska, Kielan Yarrow, Bin Yin, Dan Zahavi

The Nature of Cognition

The Nature of Cognition PDF Author: Robert J. Sternberg
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262692120
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 760

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is the first to introduce the study of cognition in terms of the major conceptual themes that underlie virtually all the substantive topics.

What Makes Us Smart

What Makes Us Smart PDF Author: Samuel Gershman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691225990
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book Here

Book Description
How a computational framework can account for the successes and failures of human cognition At the heart of human intelligence rests a fundamental puzzle: How are we incredibly smart and stupid at the same time? No existing machine can match the power and flexibility of human perception, language, and reasoning. Yet, we routinely commit errors that reveal the failures of our thought processes. What Makes Us Smart makes sense of this paradox by arguing that our cognitive errors are not haphazard. Rather, they are the inevitable consequences of a brain optimized for efficient inference and decision making within the constraints of time, energy, and memory—in other words, data and resource limitations. Framing human intelligence in terms of these constraints, Samuel Gershman shows how a deeper computational logic underpins the “stupid” errors of human cognition. Embarking on a journey across psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and economics, Gershman presents unifying principles that govern human intelligence. First, inductive bias: any system that makes inferences based on limited data must constrain its hypotheses in some way before observing data. Second, approximation bias: any system that makes inferences and decisions with limited resources must make approximations. Applying these principles to a range of computational errors made by humans, Gershman demonstrates that intelligent systems designed to meet these constraints yield characteristically human errors. Examining how humans make intelligent and maladaptive decisions, What Makes Us Smart delves into the successes and failures of cognition.

Language, Cognition, and Human Nature

Language, Cognition, and Human Nature PDF Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199328749
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 393

Get Book Here

Book Description
Collects for the first time Steven Pinker's most influential scholarly work on language and cognition. Pinker is a highly eminent cognitive scientist, and these essays emphasize the importance of language and its connections to cognition, social relationships, child development, human evolution, and theories of human nature.

The Psychology of Time Perception

The Psychology of Time Perception PDF Author: John Wearden
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137408839
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
How do people perceive time? This book presents a wealth of contemporary and classical research, including some of the history and philosophy of time perception. Influential internal clock-based models of time perception receive an in-depth but non-technical introduction and discussion. The role of cognition and emotion in perceiving time is also explored, as well as questions derived from time experience in daily life, such as why time seems to pass more quickly in one situation rather than another. Classical and modern research on timing in children is reviewed, as well as work on time perception and time experience in older people. Leading recent models of animal timing are also discussed in a non-mathematical way.

The Expression of Time

The Expression of Time PDF Author: Wolfgang Klein
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110199033
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book Here

Book Description
Time is the most fundamental category of human cognition and action, and all human languages have developed many devices to express it. These include verbal categories, such as tense and aspect, but also adverbials, particles, and principles of discourse organisation. This book is intended as a tutorial for the study of how time is expressed in natural languages. Its chapters take the reader through a number of foundational issues, such as the various notions of time and the various means to express it; other chapters are devoted to more specific questions, such as the acquisition of time, its modelling in formal semantics and in computational linguistics, or how its expression can be empirically investigated.