Three studies were conducted to examine the relation of spatial visualization to solving kinematics problems that involved either predicting the two‐dimensional motion of an object, translating from one frame of reference to another, or interpreting kinematics graphs. In Study 1, 60 physics‐naíve students were administered kinematics problems and spatial visualization ability tests. In Study 2, 17 (8 high‐ and 9 low‐spatial ability) additional students completed think‐aloud protocols while they solved the kinematics problems. In Study 3, the eye movements of fifteen (...) (9 high‐ and 6 low‐spatial ability) students were recorded while the students solved kinematics problems. In contrast to high‐spatial students, most low‐spatial students did not combine two motion vectors, were unable to switch frames of reference, and tended to interpret graphs literally. The results of the study suggest an important relationship between spatial visualization ability and solving kinematics problems with multiple spatial parameters. (shrink)

Individuals differ greatly in their ability to learn and navigate through environments. One potential source of this variation is “directional sense” or the ability to identify, maintain, and compare allocentric headings. Allocentric headings are facing directions that are fixed to the external environment, such as cardinal directions. Measures of the ability to identify and compare allocentric headings, using photographs of familiar environments, have shown significant individual and strategy differences; however, the neural basis of these differences is unclear. Forty-five college students, (...) who were highly familiar with a campus environment and ranged in self-reported sense-of-direction, underwent fMRI scans while they completed the Relative Heading task, in which they had to indicate the direction of a series of photographs of recognizable campus buildings (i.e., “target headings”) with respect to initial “orienting headings”. Large individual differences were found in accuracy and correct decision latencies, with gender, self-reported sense-of-direction, and familiarity with campus buildings all predicting task performance. Using linear mixed models, the directional relationships between headings and the experiment location also impacted performance. Structural scans revealed that lateral orbitofrontal and superior parietal volume were related to task accuracy and decision latency, respectively. Bilateral hippocampus and right presubiculum volume were related to self-reported sense-of-direction. Meanwhile, functional results revealed clusters within the superior parietal lobule, supramarginal gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, and caudate among others in which the intensity of activation matched the linear magnitude of the difference between the orienting and target headings. While the retrosplenial cortex and hippocampus have previously been implicated in the coding of allocentric headings, this work revealed that comparing those headings additionally involved frontal and parietal regions. These results provide insights into the neural bases of the variation within human orientation abilities, and ultimately, human navigation. (shrink)

I argue that a dilemma arises for naturalistic philosophers of mind in the naturalised semantics tradition. Giving a naturalistic account of the mind is a pressing problem. Brentano’s Thesis — that a state is mental if, and only if, that state has underived representational content — provides an attractive route to naturalising the mental. If true, Brentano’s Thesis means that naturalising representation is sufficient for naturalising the mental. But a naturalist who accepts Brentano’s Thesis thus commits to an eliminativism about (...) the category of the mental. This is because naturalistic theories of representation are reductive, and so over-generalise by applying to patently non-mental states. According to these theories, it has been argued, phenomena like tree rings and saliva come out as representational. Only proposing further Naturalistic conditions on representation could avoid the eliminativist conclusion. But this shows that Naturalists have made only limited progress towards naturalising the mental. And if a Naturalist rejects Brentano’s Thesis, then she gives up on a clear link between representation and mentality. Hence, it is incumbent on the Naturalist to propose another, naturalistically acceptable, mark of the mental. This, again, shows that Naturalists have made only limited progress on the issue of naturalising the mental.Keywords: Intentionality, representation, physicalism, eliminativism, Brentano, materialism, naturalism. (shrink)

This book shows that the semantic analysis of modal notions of possibility and necessity can be used to enhance our understanding of the interpretation of reports of belief or emotional state. It introduces intuitive notation and terminology to express ideas in modern theories of modal interpretation that are normally represented in complex logical formulas, effectively updates the 1960s-era link between possible worlds and the semantics of propositional attitude ascriptions, and reconciles two disparate views of the role of events in semantic (...) interpretation, that of Donald Davidson and that of David Lewis. It reduces a host of variable behaviors of propositional attitude ascription to an intuitive and precise distinction between ascriptions that merely express a commitment to propositional content versus ones that attribute a mental state to the holder of the propositional attitude. This leads to an explanation of the nature and effects of the language disorder of fluent aphasia. (shrink)

Navigating to goal locations in a known environment (wayfinding) can be accomplished by different strategies, notably by taking habitual, well-learned routes (response strategy) or by inferring novel paths, such as shortcuts, from spatial knowledge of the environment's layout (place strategy). Human and animal neuroscience studies reveal that these strategies reflect different brain systems, with response strategies relying more on activation of the striatum and place strategies associated with activation of the hippocampus. In addition to individual differences in strategy, recent behavioral (...) studies show sex differences such that men use place strategies more than women, and age differences such that older adults use more response strategies than younger adults. This paper takes a comprehensive multilevel approach to understanding these differences, characterizing wayfinding as a complex information processing task. This analysis reveals factors that affect navigation strategy, including availability of the relevant type of environmental knowledge, momentary access to this knowledge, trade-offs between physical and mental effort in different navigation contexts, and risk taking. We consider how strategies are influenced by the computational demands of a navigation task and by factors that affect the neural circuits underlying navigation. We also discuss limitations of laboratory studies to date and outline priorities for future research, including relating wayfinding strategies to independent measures of spatial knowledge, and studying wayfinding strategies in naturalistic environments. (shrink)

This paper investigates reference to clausally introduced entities and proposes an explanation for why these are more readily available to immediate subsequent reference with a demonstrative pronoun than with the personal pronoun,it. New evidence is provided supporting proposals that such entities are typically activated, but not brought into focus, upon their introduction into a discourse. The study also provides further insight into the role of information structure, lexical semantics, presuppositional contexts, and syntactic structure in bringing an entity into focus of (...) attention. (shrink)

Navigating to goal locations in a known environment (wayfinding) can be accomplished by different strategies, notably by taking habitual, well-learned routes (response strategy) or by inferring novel paths, such as shortcuts, from spatial knowledge of the environment's layout (place strategy). Human and animal neuroscience studies reveal that these strategies reflect different brain systems, with response strategies relying more on activation of the striatum and place strategies associated with activation of the hippocampus. In addition to individual differences in strategy, recent behavioral (...) studies show sex differences such that men use place strategies more than women, and age differences such that older adults use more response strategies than younger adults. This paper takes a comprehensive multilevel approach to understanding these differences, characterizing wayfinding as a complex information processing task. This analysis reveals factors that affect navigation strategy, including availability of the relevant type of environmental knowledge, momentary access to this knowledge, trade-offs between physical and mental effort in different navigation contexts, and risk taking. We consider how strategies are influenced by the computational demands of a navigation task and by factors that affect the neural circuits underlying navigation. We also discuss limitations of laboratory studies to date and outline priorities for future research, including relating wayfinding strategies to independent measures of spatial knowledge, and studying wayfinding strategies in naturalistic environments. (shrink)

Three experiments examined the effects of interactive visualizations and spatial abilities on a task requiring participants to infer and draw cross sections of a three‐dimensional (3D) object. The experiments manipulated whether participants could interactively control a virtual 3D visualization of the object while performing the task, and compared participants who were allowed interactive control of the visualization to those who were not allowed control. In Experiment 1, interactivity produced better performance than passive viewing, but the advantage of interactivity disappeared in (...) Experiment 2 when visual input for the two conditions in a yoked design was equalized. In Experiments 2 and 3, differences in how interactive participants manipulated the visualization were large and related to performance. In Experiment 3, non‐interactive participants who watched optimal movements of the display performed as well as interactive participants who manipulated the visualization effectively and better than interactive participants who manipulated the visualization ineffectively. Spatial ability made an independent contribution to performance on the spatial reasoning task, but did not predict patterns of interactive behavior. These experiments indicate that providing participants with active control of a computer visualization does not necessarily enhance task performance, whereas seeing the most task‐relevant information does, and this is true regardless of whether the task‐relevant information is obtained actively or passively. (shrink)

This issue assesses how human spatial navigation differs: within individuals across short‐term variations in mood or stress, and between individuals across variations in age, gender, education, culture, and physical environment.

The landscape of graduate science education is changing as efforts to diversify the professoriate have increased because academic faculty jobs at universities have grown scarce and more competitive. With this context as a backdrop, the present research examines the perceptions and career goals of advisors and advisees through surveys of PhD students and faculty mentors in science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines. Study 1 examined actual preferences and career goals of PhD students among three options: research careers, teaching careers, and (...) non-academic careers in industry, and compared the actual preferences of students with what they perceived as being the normative preferences of faculty. Overall, students had mixed preferences but perceived that their advisors had a strong normative preference for research careers for them. Moreover, students who ranked research positions as most desirable felt the most belonging in their academic departments. Further analyses revealed no differences in career preferences as a function of underrepresented minority student status or first-generation status, but URM and FG students felt less belonging in their academic departments. Study 2 examined faculty preferences for different careers for their advisees, both in general and for current students in particular. While faculty advisors preferred students to go into research in general, when focusing on specific students, they saw their preferences as being closely aligned with the career preference of each PhD student. Faculty advisors did not perceive any difference in belonging between their students as a function of their URM status. Discrepancies between student and faculty perceptions may occur, in part, because faculty and students do not engage in sufficient discussions about the wider range of career options beyond academic research. Supporting this possibility, PhD students and faculty advisors reported feeling more comfortable discussing research careers with each other than either non-academic industry positions or teaching positions. Discussion centers on the implications of these findings for interpersonal and institutional efforts to foster diversity in the professoriate and to create open communication about career development. (shrink)