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26 6-yr.-old children were given a memory task in which they were asked to compare the orientation of oblique lines. The performance of the children suggests a spatial representation system similar to that of older children. The representation assigned to obliques within a square display is characterized by the coding of position and axis information. Orientation comparisons are based on matching the coded information. As mental operations are limited the young children often do not respond correctly.

In Chapters 6 and 7, several important dimensions of cognitive development during the school years were clarified. Because of their significance for the complete picture that emerged from the study, some of the primary conclusions may be reviewed before proceeding to results presented in this chapter. In Chapter 6, we observed that the four successively higher levels of concepts are attained in an invariant sequence. The consistency of the results across the four concepts and within the longitudinal blocks supports a powerful principle of development, namely, that the new mental operations essential for attaining each successively higher level of a concept emerge successively with learning and maturation. In Chapter 7, the rate at which the levels of concepts, the understanding of principles, the understanding of taxonomic relations, and problem solving develop across the school years was depicted in smoothed curves. In general, there is a rapid rate of increase during the first year or two during which any of the four levels is being attained. This is followed by a decelerating rate of increase and then a plateau as attainment approaches 95% correct. The consistency of this pattern for all levels and all concepts is remarkable. Understanding taxonomic relations for most concepts proceeds in the same manner as the levels; however, problem solving shows a uniform rate of increase throughout the school years. Understanding principles also progresses consistently throughout the school years; for some concepts growth proceeds at a uniform rate of increase and for others at a rapid rate of increase followed by a decelerating rate. More important than the form of the curves is the consistent development throughout the school years. The four levels and the three uses of cutting tool were mastered first and of noun last./This finding supports a basic proposition that the same mental operations are performed earlier on concepts with three-dimensional examples that can be experienced directly rather than only verbally Another important dimension of cognitive development clarified in Chapter 7 is that as concepts are attained to the successively higher levels, they can be used with increasing effectiveness in understanding taxonomic relations, in solving problems, and in understanding principles. Mastery of only the concrete or identity level is accompanied by practically no mastery of any use; mastery of the formal level is associated with much greater mastery of the uses than is mastery of the classificatory level. We digress momentarily to emphasize how important it is to the individual to master the formal level as early as possible. In this chapter, we portray interindividual differences and intraindividual differences in development. How much variability in performance might a teacher or other person expect among students in any grade who are of approximately the same chronological age? Results based on the percentage of students who did and who did not master the levels and the uses of concepts are presented to answer this question. Should we expect students to be equally high, middle, or low in their performances across the four concepts? Differences within individuals in their patterns of attaining the four concepts as inferred from factor analysis are presented to clarify this facet of development. Some of the most interesting findings concern interindividual differences in cognitive development. Curves depicting the individual performances of a few of the most rapid and a few of the least rapid developers underscore the presence of wide individual differences in cognitive growth. Because large differences were found among individuals, conditions in the student, the home, and the school that may have contributed to the differential rates of development were identified. These findings are presented in the last part of the chapter.

In this chapter, my aim is to provide an overview and discussion of the literature on the interactional aspects of denial and defense. Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts often speak or write about defense mechanisms as independent mental operations dissociated from the ebb and flow of interpersonal events. This review will show defense as an important aspect of communication between individuals and how they relate to each other. Until recently, classical psychoanalytic literature contained few studies of the influence of interpersonal relations on the formation or maintenance of defensive operations. The investigations summarized later reveal how both the form and the content of a person’s denials and defensive functioning throughout life are influenced and even partly shaped by interactions with other individuals operating out of their awareness.

In this chapter I present an approach using contemporary mathematical models of human judgment to explore the issue of whether the relations among a set of variables are conceptualized reversibly. Specifically, are the judgments of each of a set of variables based on a single, fully reversible set of mental operations?1 This topic is important to psychologists for three reasons. Piaget (1947/1960) proposed that reversible mental operations distinguish true intelligence from intuition and perception. If the transition to reversible thought is an important developmental event, then there is a need for precise representations of knowledge that is reversible. It is equally important to describe states of irreversible and partially reversible knowledge in order to describe the transition from irreversible to reversible thought.

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews a general stage model to reflect the various mental operations that comprise performance when a subject is rapidly processing visually presented stimuli. The memory research is based on paradigms substantially different from the information processing research. Changes may occur with development, but the crucial point is that the changes are not under the control of the individual. Tasks tapping central processes display varying results. The retarded perform similar to equal-MA control groups, indicating that the performance difference is because of the developmental immaturity rather than low intelligence. Non-retarded individuals display differential performance adjustments when variables affecting central processes or response processes are manipulated. Several intelligence X treatment interactions observed in tasks tapping central processes disappear when MA-matched controls are employed. Others are eliminated when experimental controls for differential familiarity with the stimuli are introduced. The results suggest that the retarded are characterized by a lag in the development of certain central processes structural defect in their processing systems. The performance differences in tasks tapping response processes are because of a developmental lag.

Cognitive psychology has entered its fourth decade. The information-processing approach to cognition that Broadbent, Miller and others pioneered more than thirty years ago is now firmly established. The development of models of information processing in this period has been steady and impressive. Starting with the single-channel model and the general flow diagrams introduced by Broadbent, cognitive models have become increasingly precise and well-specified. Many models of cognitive processes are now specified mathematically or computationally. It is now possible, for example, to provide a detailed account of the elementary mental operations involved in such covert cognitive processes as mental imagery (Kosslyn, 1981) and reading (Just & Carpenter, 1980). These operations can be specified computationally using production systems and related formal descriptive procedures (Kosslyn & Shwartz, 1977; Thibadeau, Just & Carpenter, 1981).

The use of mental operations as recognition cues was investigated. Two experiments support the hypothesis that processing details are retained in memory and that a re-creation of those processing details can effectively cue recognition. Four subjects performed a mental arithmetic task that emphasized speed and accuracy while discouraging memorization of the numbers. Recognition was cued either by single numbers or by a pair of numbers that, when added, replicated an episode of the original task. Reprocessing an episode was the most effective recognition cue. Of the two single-number cues, the intermediate subtotals were recognized, whereas the numbers that had been physically displayed were not. The study suggests: (1) that the sequence of mental operations is retained in memory, (2) that reprocessing uses this trace to facilitate performance, and (3) that the detection of facilitated reprocessing aids recognition.

Children 4 to 6 years of age made choices among colors that had been associated with numbers. Prior to learning four number-color associations, pretraining on counting and ordering objects was given to half of the Ss. Associations were established by either absolute (paired associate) or relative (choice discrimination) methods, and then tests involving "more or less" questions on each of the possible six color pairs were given. Numerical associations were acquired best with absolute training or counting-ordering pretraining. Using the children's justifications for their responses, the test data were fit by Estes's (1966) scanning model; a response strength model based on Luce's (1959) axiom failed. Young children apparently possess an ordered numerical scale, can map this scale onto other nonquantitative symbols, and can generate, compare, and make ordinal decisions using these symbols.

From our point of view, strategies for finding sums and differences involve the coordination of arithmetic symbols that signify systems of integration operations and their products. Moreover, because mental operations (including integration operations) can be expressed in terms of action, the coordination of symbols implies a corresponding coordination of action that need not be carried out unless the need arises (Piaget, 1974b, p. 238). In general, a symbol can figure in a re-presentation and “point to” a signified structure, without the need to realize that structure through either sensory-motor action or re-presentation (von Glasersfeld, 1982a). At the level of operative thought, Piaget suggested that figural re-presentations are, in fact, nothing but “illustrations” that may accompany the performance of mental operations.

The rediscovery of the old distinction between automatic and consciously controlled mental processes has been one of the major developments in attentional theory during the last decade. According to the “two process” approach (e.g., LaBerge & Samuels, 1974; Neumann, Note 1; Posner & Snyder, 1975a; Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977), mental operations can function in two different modes. Processes in the first mode occur as a passive consequence of stimulation and take place in a parallel, capacity-free manner, whereas processes in the second mode are controlled by the person’s conscious intentions and are subject to capacity limitations. This distinction has stimulated a wealth of research, some of which has been summarized by LaBerge (1981) and Posner (1978, 1982). The present paper reviews part of these recent findings on automaticity in an attempt to answer two questions: First, what are the functional properties of automatic as opposed to non-automatic processes? Second, what kind of theory is suited to explain these properties?

The learning disabilities are developmentally determined delays in children’s acquisition of certain mental skills. They are selective—only a subset of mental skills is insufficiently developed; by definition, mental skills are relevant to the educational process. Children vary in the degree to which they are affected along a continuum originating within the normal range. The mental operations affected differ, and the pathogenesis of the disorder is diverse (genetic flaw, genetic diversity, early brain damage). Learning-disabled children are not consistently characterized by evidence of structural brain disorder, metabolic abnormality, or associated neurological signs. Although certain clinical appearances accompany learning disabilities with more than chance frequency, none appears to be of diagnostic use. Diagnosis is made on the basis of the characteristics of the behavioral disorder alone.2

The notion of mental representation is fundamental in recent cognitive psychology. Furthermore, it is presumed that mental representations consist of mental symbols and that internal mechanisms operate on mental symbols. In explaining problem solving, reasoning, thinking, etc. cognitive psychologists have suggested various forms of mental representations. In this paper it is proposed that one way of comparing the various mental representations is by analyzing the syntactic and semantic features of mental symbols. This analysis has first been made by Goodman in the case of external symbols. In this paper Goodman's analysis is applied to the mental symbols, which constitute pictorial representations (Kosslyn) and propositional representations (Anderson).

Only a few studies of computational errors in children’s arithmetic have been reported in the psychological literature. The general approach of most investigators has been to carry out a post hoc analysis of subjects’ written work in the hope of uncovering information about faulty performance. These studies have usually attempted both to provide some sort of classification scheme for errors and to draw inferences about the mental operations responsible for them (e.g. Roberts, 1968; Magne, 1978).

Three experiments on mental rotation were carried out to investigate conditions under which hand images are operated kinesthetically. In Experiment 1 a, either a left or right hand was presented in a photographic slide, and subjects' task was left-right identification. In Exp. 2, each slide consisted of two hands, identical hands or mirror-imaged hands, and same-different judgment was required. In Exp. 3, two hands were presented successively, requiring same-different (mirror-reversed) judgement. On the other hand, subjects in Exp. 1 b were asked to rate physical difficulty of actual hand movements to imitate stimuli. Six to 12 undergraduate students served as subjects in each experiment. The results suggested that subjects' mental operations of hand images were kinesthetic in Exp. 1 a but visual in Exp. 2 and 3, on the basis of comparison between reaction times in the three experiments and the ratings in Exp. 1 b. Conditions which give rise to kinesthetic image processes were argued in relation with task structures.

Publisher Summary Perception is not just a process of passive registration in which an external stimulus gives rise to a corresponding internal representation in an automatic and invariable way. What is perceived on a given occasion depends not only on the pattern of stimulation at the sensory receptors but also on the preceding context and on the expectancies and states of motivation and the attention of the perceiver. In the case of the visual perception of objects in space, an important class of mental operations comprises those corresponding to reversible spatial transformations. In addition to the uniform expansion or contraction most typically associated with the approach or recession of an object, these spatial transformations include translations, reflections, and rotations of an object as a rigid whole. The chapter describes the nature of mental operations that correspond to spatial transformations other than rotation. These transformations include size changes, translations, reflections, and structural transformations in which the form of an object is changed or the parts of an object are synthesized. As in the case of rotational transformations, evidence concerning the time to carry out these other mental transformations has played a central role in assessing both the nature of the transformations themselves and the nature of the internal representations undergoing or resulting from such transformations.

Knowledge engineering can be considered as an influential paradigm for the design of complex information systems. Moreover, it will ultimately be of importance in all those situations where humans are to be taught and are supposed to be learning by means of computers at their own pace and using their own style of learning. Expert systems which are designed to help in human tasks such as diagnostics and to interpret patterns of data, are expected to tackle complex material and may even change the frontiers of cognitive psychology. Because knowledge-based systems can assist the mental operations of humans, it will be important to preserve the opacity and comprehensibility of their knowledge bases and the mechanisms they use to infer new facts from it. In the last decade several computer-based instructional systems were predicated as being “intelligent”: Bip, programming in basic (1976); Excheck, logic and set theory (1981); Spade, programming in Logo (1982); LMS, algebraic procedures (1982); Quadratic, quadratic equations (1982); Guidon, diagnostics of infectious diseases (1982); Algebra, applied algebra (1983). Since the main purpose of these systems was prototype development, they rely mainly on rule-based knowledge, particularly in the algorithmic components. Once there is a variety of software tools for the development of expert systems in several areas we will we able to elaborate on the more fuzzy and associative types of knowledge (Hofstaedter, 1985).

Ten adult speakers described 25 pictures depicting common scenes using both single long sentences and multiple short sentences. Reaction time to initiate speech was longer and fundamental voice frequency was higher at the beginning of single long sentences, indicative of speech planning. Analyses on pausing, syntax, and semantics provided further information about mental operations that accompany speaking.

Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology addresses itself to issues that are integral to the study of mental experience. [1] In this respect, it would not be inappropriate to refer to Husserl’s philosophy as cognitive phenomenology. In fact, given Husserl’s emphasis on the importance of establishing the strictly scientific character of the philosophical enterprise, one can extend this claim even further: cognitive phenomenology is, if Husserl is correct, the only truly rigorous foundation for the enterprise of cognitive science. We will investigate this claim at the conclusion of this essay. But first, we need to understand Hussei’s position with respect to the nature and function of minds. Since Husserl’s reflections on the structure of mental experience developed in large part out of an attempt to resolve the enigma of objective reference, I will present a capsule view of his proposed resolution to this problem. In the process, I will attempt to show that Husserl viewed mental operations as transactions—specifically, intentional transactions—between the life of conscious subjectivity and all that stands over and against consciousness as an object or objective state of affairs. In the end, it may be possible to show that Husserl’s theory of intentionality should be a crucial ingredient in any attempt to model or comprehend the functional nature of the human mind.

Whenever we are confronted with mental impairment in children, as for instance in autism, the most outstanding feature is that there is a general reduction of competence. However, as it is neither very illuminating nor profitable to come up repeatedly with the finding that children who are ill do less well than children who are not, the experimental psychologist is obliged to develop alternative approaches. A strategy which we have adopted is to look for communalities and dissimilarities in the cognitive processes of different diagnostic groups of children. Thus we do not adopt a distinct disease concept, but rather seek to establish how groups of children whose pathology is quite different will respond to situations and tasks which are defined in terms of certain specific underlying mental operations.

The technique introduced here induces the organization of information in memory from systematic inspection of regularities in free recall. The form of the representation of this organization is an “ordered tree.” The technique has the advantage of being based on a theory of the way in which the data were generated and can be shown to produce a unique structure that captures all the kinds of regularities the theory of recall prescribes. Also presented is a collateral technique for measuring the amount of organization evidenced in a struture, as well as a procedure for identifying errors. The experimental work shows the technique’s ability to recover the details of an organization presented to subjects and provides converging evidence for the particular structures induced from the pattern of recall pauses. In addition, the application of the technique to structures unknown a priori produced organizations that were easy to interpret and a second set of pauses that further confirmed the details of the induced structures. A number of contemporary topics in cognitive psychology involve investigation of complexly organized knowledge bases and the mental processes that operate on them. For example, researchers in human factors engineering are concerned with building man-machine interfaces that are compatible with the knowledge the user brings to the situation. Researchers in problem solving examine the changes in knowledge structures and mental operations that occur as one moves from the novice to the expert level. And, educators attempt to devise instructional programs that build complexly organized knowledge bases in the student. Essential to all of these investigations is a description of the form and the details of the psychological representation of the knowledge base. This paper introduces a technique that provides such a concrete representation of some aspects of the mental organization of complex categories, based on inferences from multitrial free recall. There are a number of other techniques that infer details of a subject’s mental organization. Selecting those that are appropriate for a particular investigation depends on a number of issues: the kind of behavior under investigation (e.g., similarity judgments, confusions, the order in which

The desire to discover and the fear of oversimplifying neural substrates for cognitive processes has been a continuing problem for psychology since the failure of phrenology in the last twenty years, work in cognition has usually proceeded in isolation from studies of the brain. During this period cognitive researchers have developed detailed componential analyses of many complex human skills. These analyses break skills such as word finding or scanning images into sets of elementary mental operations that are suitable for computer programs. The development of methods for imaging the human brain and for exploring the cellular basis of cognition in nonhuman animals has provided new impetus for efforts to explore the level of analysis at which connections between cognitive processes and neural systems can be best developed. In several areas of research this effort promises to provide advances which avoid over-simplification but still illuminate questions of interest to psychology and neuroscience.

THE interesting discussion between Mr. Francis Galton and Prof. Max Muller on this subject will doubtless raise many questions in the minds of those who have paid some attention to the habits of animals. I have been asking myself whether, if Prof. Max Muller is right in his conclusion—“Of course we all admit that without a name we cannot really know anything” (an utterable name, I presume), and “one fact remains, animals have no language”—animals must not, therefore, be held by him incapable of knowing anything. This would bring us to the question whether animals know in the same manner as men, or in some other manner which men do not understand. Now, I think—at least it is as strong a conviction as I am capable of entertaining—that animals not only know, but deal with the materials of knowledge—facts—in a manner quite indistinguishable from the manner in which I mentally handle them myself. Thus, I place an animal in circumstances which are quite unfamiliar to it, and from which it is urgently pressed to escape. There are two, or perhaps three, courses open to it; one being, to my mind, patently the most advantageous. It tries all of them, and selects that which I should have chosen myself, though it is much longer in coming to its conclusion. Here the animal has the same facts as the man to deal with, and, after consideration and examination, its judgment precisely corresponds with the man's. I cannot, then, find it possible to deny that the mental operations are identical in kind; but that they are not so in degree can be demonstrated by my importing into the situation an element foreign to the experience of the animal, when its failure is certain. It makes no difference whether the animal is under stress, or acting voluntarily. It may frequently be found to choose the method which most recommends itself to the man's judgment. Every student of animals is familiar with numbers of such cases. Indeed they are constantly being recorded in the columns of NATURE, and abound in all accepted works on animal intelligence. I am quite prepared to admit that where there are two or more courses open to it the animal will occasionally select that which presents the greatest difficulties, and labour most assiduously to overcome them, sometimes trying the remaining courses and returning to that which it first chose. Darwin gives a good example of the honey-bee (“Origin of Species,” p. 225, edition 1872). But no one will be surprised at imperfect judgment or vacillation of will in an animal, when such are common among men.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses chronometric studies of the rotation of mental images. It describes experimental paradigms for investigating the nature of mental images, selective reduction of reaction times, and preceding reaction-time studies of mental rotation. In the experiments described in the chapter, mental transformations and the selective reduction of reaction times are used, jointly, to establish that the internal representations and mental operations upon these representations are to some degree analogous or structurally isomorphic to corresponding objects and spatial transformations in the external world. In all of these experiments, each spatial transformation consists simply of single rigid rotation of a visual object about a fixed axis. However, in related work reported elsewhere, reaction times have been measured for much more complex sequences of imagined operations in space.

In three books, which belong to the last period of his life, Husserl laid down the program for a phenomenological theory of logic (understood in a very broad sense) and the sciences, especially physics, and took decisive steps towards its implementation1. According to this program, the disciplines in question have to be referred, and their phenomenological origin or genesis of sense (Sinnesgenese) has to be traced back to perceptual consciousness.2 The guiding idea is that perceptual consciousness contains the germs or roots of whatever entities are the subject matter of study in the disciplines in question, and that those entities are brought to full development and given their definitive shape by means of specific mental operations.

Man possesses a central system of limited capacity. Theorists at first described this system as a single limited capacity channel Two current theoretical alternatives to single-channel theory are (1) the undifferentiated capacity hypothesis that man possesses a pool of capacity units so that interference occurs oniy if the total number of capacity units that mental operations demand exceeds the system limit and (2) the hypothesis that some, but not all, mental operations require space in a limited capacity central mechanism and that any operation that requires space will interfere with any other operation that also demands space. Time on task fails as a sensitive measure of capacity demands because some task components require time but not full processing capacity. The secondary task technique uses the interference between a primary task and a secondary task to assess the extent to which the primary task makes processing demands on the central limited system. Processing demands have been measured for five categories of mental operation: (1) encoding, (2) multiple input, (3) rehearsal, (4) transformation, and (5) responding.

The language of young children is systematically constructed on certain basic principles. Various stages in language development are detailed. Since language is a distinct and consistent output from a characteristic form of mental organization, it may provide insight into other kinds of mental operations.

The approach to quantification in psychology through the timing of mental operations is rooted in the work of a Dutch physiologist, F. C. Donders (1818–1889). In examining Donders' writings, their translations, and the literature referring to Donders' work we were struck by the large number of minor but not insignificant errors.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses some of the contributions made by listeners while comprehending and remembering. The ability to understand linguistic symbols is based not only on the comprehender's knowledge of his language but also on his general knowledge of the world. Much of the extralinguistic knowledge affecting comprehension and memory may come from visually presented information. The chapter presents a number of studies that illustrate some of the interplay between linguistic inputs and extralinguistic knowledge. It highlights various implications of these studies with respect to the problem of characterizing the thought processes involved in comprehending language, and of characterizing the role of comprehension factors in learning and memory. The results of the studies reported do not dictate a detailed model of comprehension, but they suggest a general orientation toward the problem of linguistic comprehension that places it squarely within the domain of cognitive psychology, and that generates questions for future research. The aspects of the comprehension process may involve mental operations on knowledge structures and the realization of the implications of these operations. Information about the consequences of such operations—rather than information only about the input itself—may be necessary for comprehending subsequent inputs and may be an important part of what is available in memory tasks.

A distinction is made between desensitization techniques carried out in vivo and other modes of desensitization therapy (flooding, implosion, and systematic desensitization) which rely upon mental operations or processes. Research is reviewed and points are discussed which support a position supporting a relationship between variables and phenomena found in the desensitization therapies and those found in hypnosis. This relationship appears to be greatest in those desensitization therapies basing treatment upon the utilization of mental operations. Some new lines of research are then proposed.

Different mental operations were expected in the late phase of intracerebral ERPs obtained in the visual oddball task with mental counting. Therefore we searched for late divergences of target and nontarget ERPs followed by components exceeding the temporal window of the P300 wave. Electrical activity from 152 brain regions of 14 epileptic patients was recorded by means of depth electrodes. Average target and nontarget records from 1800 ms long EEG periods free of epileptic activity were compared. Late divergence preceded by almost identical course of the target and nontarget ERPs was found in 16 brain regions of 6 patients. The mean latency of the divergence point was 570±93 ms after the stimulus onset. The target post-divergence section of the ERP differed from the nontarget one by opposite polarity, different latency of the components, or even different number of the components. Generators of post-divergence ERP components were found in the parahippocampal gyrus, superior, middle and inferior temporal gyri, amygdala, and fronto-orbital cortex. Finding of late divergence indicates that functional differences exist even not sooner than during the final phase of the task.

The default mode network supports a variety of mental operations such as semantic processing, episodic memory retrieval, mental time travel and mind-wandering, yet the commonalities between these functions remains unclear. One possibility is that this system supports cognition that is independent of the immediate environment; alternatively or additionally, it might support higher-order conceptual representations that draw together multiple features. We tested these accounts using a novel paradigm that separately manipulated the availability of perceptual information to guide decision-making and the representational complexity of this information. Using task based imaging we established regions that respond when cognition combines both stimulus independence with multi-modal information. These included left and right angular gyri and the left middle temporal gyrus. Although these sites were within the default mode network, they showed a stronger response to demanding memory judgements than to an easier perceptual task, contrary to the view that they support automatic aspects of cognition. In a subsequent analysis, we showed that these regions were located at the extreme end of a macroscale gradient, which describes gradual transitions from sensorimotor to transmodal cortex. This shift in the focus of neural activity towards transmodal, default mode, regions might reflect a process of where the functional distance from specific sensory enables conceptually rich and detailed cognitive states to be generated in the absence of input.

An increasingly large number of neuroimaging studies have investigated functionally connected networks during rest, providing insight into human brain architecture. Assessment of the functional qualities of resting state networks has been limited by the task-independent state, which results in an inability to relate these networks to specific mental functions. However, it was recently demonstrated that similar brain networks can be extracted from resting state data and data extracted from thousands of task-based neuroimaging experiments archived in the BrainMap database. Here, we present a full functional explication of these intrinsic connectivity networks at a standard low order decomposition using a neuroinformatics approach based on the BrainMap behavioral taxonomy as well as a stratified, data-driven ordering of cognitive processes. Our results serve as a resource for functional interpretations of brain networks in resting state studies and future investigations into mental operations and the tasks that drive them.

Uncertainty is ubiquitous in cognitive processing. In this study, we aim to investigate the ability agents possess to track and report the noise inherent in their mental operations, often in the form of confidence judgments. Here, we argue that humans can use uncertainty inherent in their representations of value beliefs to arbitrate between exploration and exploitation. Such uncertainty is reflected in explicit confidence judgments. Using a novel variant of a multi-armed bandit paradigm, we studied how beliefs were formed and how uncertainty in the encoding of these value beliefs (belief confidence) evolved over time. We found that people used uncertainty to arbitrate between exploration and exploitation, reflected in a higher tendency toward exploration when their confidence in their value representations was low. We furthermore found that value uncertainty can be linked to frameworks of metacognition in decision making in two ways. First, belief confidence drives decision confidence, i.e. people's evaluation of their own choices. Second, individuals with higher metacognitive insight into their choices were also better at tracing the uncertainty in their environment. Together, these findings argue that such uncertainty representations play a key role in the context of cognitive control.

Concrete-operational thinking depicts an important aspect of cognitive development. A promising approach in promoting these skills is the instruction of strategies. The construction of such instructional programs requires insights into the mental operations involved in problem-solving. In the present paper, we address the question to which extent variations of the effect of isolated and combined mental operations (strategies) on correct solution of concrete-operational concepts can be observed. Therefore, a cross-sectional design was applied. The use of mental operations was measured by thinking-aloud reports from 80 first- and second-graders (N = 80) while solving tasks depicting concrete-operational thinking. Concrete-operational thinking was assessed using the subscales conservation of numbers, classification and sequences of the TEKO. The verbal reports were transcribed and coded with regard to the mental operations applied per task. Data analyses focused on tasks level, resulting in the analyses of N = 240 tasks per subscale. Differences regarding the contribution of isolated and combined mental operations (strategies) to correct solution were observed. Thereby, the results indicate the necessity of selection and integration of appropriate mental operations as strategies. The results offer insights in involved mental operations while solving concrete-operational tasks and depict a contribution to the construction of instructional programs.

During the past twenty years, much of the impetus for theoretical speculation in literary studies has come from non-literary disciplines. Yet, despite the intensity of this activity and the polemics associated with it, there has been relatively little attempt to elaborate a generally comprehensible explanation of how the writing and reading of literary texts relate to the more universal problem of how people orient themselves in the world where they are obliged to live. What is needed is a plausible epistemological model capable of integrating information and methodological strategies from various disciplines without contradicting the best available knowledge about how the human mind actually operates. Such a model should not be bound to the terminology or problem-setting techniques of a single discipline, nor should its applicability be restricted to the characteristic mental behavior of a single culture or ideology. The need to address this problem is particularly acute at a time when politically and intellectually conservative forces are threatening to discredit the genuine theoretical advances of the 1960's and 1970's by attacking their excesses and their limitations.' Although pluralism offers a tempting solution to the dilemma of competing interpretations, it too is ultimately unsatisfying, because, if people are to conceptualize their world and act in it, they must either choose among alternative explanations or synthesize a new one.2 A more promising point of departure might well be a serious consideration of cognitive function and its relationship to the creation and comprehension of literary texts.3 Any involvement with literature is necessarily embedded within the larger context of all human activity, and it seems plausible to assume that the same mental operations which allow people to make sense of their physical environments are also called upon when they seek to understand the verbal universes they encounter in literary texts. Furthermore, there is an undeniable carryover of information from lived experience to literature, and from literature to lived experience.4 To avoid the contradictions inherent in drawing absolute boundaries between the world of words and the

MACNAMARA, JOHN. A Note on Piaget and Number. CmLD DEVELOPMENT, 1975, 46, 424-429. In this note I argue that Piaget's account of how children develop an understanding of number is erroneous in 2 key respects. I argue, contrary to Piaget, that number bears only an accidental relationship to our system for classifying objects. I argue further that seriation cannot serve the function which Piaget ascribes to it; it cannot be the basis for discriminating among objects. Some conclusions for the teaching of arithmetic follow.

COMMONS, MICHAEL L.; RICHARDS, FRANCIS A.; and KUHN, DEANNA. Systematic and Metasystematic Reasoning: A Case for Levels of Reasoning beyond Piaget's Stage of Formal Operations. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1982, 53, 1058-1069. Modes of cognition are postulated consisting of thirdand fourth-order operations; they are hypothesized to be qualitatively distinct from, and hierarchically related to, the form of reasoning characterized as formal operational by Inhelder and Piaget. An instrument was developed to assess these modes of cognition, labeled systematic and metasystematic reasoning, and was administered to 110 undergraduate and graduate students. The results support the assertion that systematic and metasystematic reasoning exist as modes of cognition discrete from, and more complex and powerful than, formal operational reasoning.

James S Trefil 1978 Oxford: Pergamon xi + 250 pp price £7.25 In The Origins of Modern Science, the historian Herbert Butterfield contends that, in Western civilisation, the scientific revolution 'outshines everything since the rise of Christianity ... It changed the character of men's habitual mental operations even in the conduct of the nonmaterial sciences, while transforming the whole diagram of the physical universe and the very texture of human life itself, [and] it looms large as the real origin both of the modern world and the modern mentality. If Butterfield is correct, and I think few would demur, study of the main ideas of physics and the intellectual history of their development should be a sine qua non of university education in the humanities.

Cognitive psychologists focus on internal mental operations controlling access to consciousness, memory and responding. They are concerned with the way in which central intentions come to affect sensory and memorial processing. The problem of selective attention to visually presented stimuli provides an important model for integrating this approach with an understanding of underlying neural systems. Studies of humans and alert monkeys show that they can attend selectively to eccentric visual locations while maintaining fixation. The occurrence of a target eccentric to fixation induces a disengagement from the current attentional focus, a movement of attention and an engagement of the target. It has been shown that damage to the parietal lobe affects the ability to disengage, while midbrain injury affects the move component. Each hemisphere appears biased toward processing contralateral targets. In order for the posterior visual selection system to operate it must have access to another more general selective attention system not dedicated to visual spatial information. Thus attentional selectivity requires a multilevel hierarchical system with each level viewed as a network of component mental operations. At one level the component operations are dedicated to particular cognitive systems (e.g., visual-spatial) but at higher levels they seem to be general across different cognitive systems (e.g., visual-spatial and language).

In keeping with Piagetian theory, objective social reasoning seems to require the onset of formal operations ( 1 ) . However, the relationship between one form of social reaoning, e.g., open-mindedness ( 2 ) , and the highest stage of cognitive development, e.g., formal reasoning, is a much neglected area of research. This is true in spite of the fact that they both exemplify a systematic structure or network of formalized principles and emphasize structure over content. A relationship seems reasonable since openminded thinking depends on the interconnectedness of psychological systems as does formal reasoning, whereas closed-minded thinking, i.e., dogmatism, represents a compartmentalization, isolation, or incompleteness of these systems as in non-formal thinking. To examine the possible relationship between formal and open-minded reasoning, Rokeach's 40-item Dogmatism Scale (Form E. 1960) was administered concurrently with the "How is your Logic?" test (Form B, 1976)' to 59 college students at the University of Toledo and 420 students in Grades 7 through 12 at Lake Local Schools, Toledo, Ohio. The Dogmatism Scale required students to indicate their opinions about social and personal issues on a six-point Likert scale and the Logic test required students to construct and explain answers to 13 questions involving the mental operations of seriation, combinatorial reasoning, permutations, implication, and proportionally. The reliability coefficient ranged from .68 to .93 for the Dogmatism Scale ( 2 ) , and .71 €or this administration of the Logic test (W. M. Gray, formal communication, May, 1979). A one-way analysis of variance showed a significant difference across grade levels for both the Dogmatism and the Logic scores (Pa . r~ = 18.3, and P = 18.9, ps < .001, respectively) as well as for just the formal reasoning items of the Logic test (P = 19.5, p < .001). Mean scores at the highest grade, i.e., college, were 56.9 ( 8 1 maximum) on the Logic test and -29 ( 120 maximum) on the Dogmatism scale. The Dogmatism scores were significantly correlated but only at a low level with the Logic scores (M.30, p < .001) and also with the formal reasoning scores (-0.27, p < .001), indicating a reduction in closed-mindedness aod improvement in formal reasoning with increased age. At each grade, however, Dogmatism scores were significantly ( p < .05) and negatively correlated with both Logic and formal reasoning scores only at Grades 8, 9, and 12. Further, scores grouped as homogeneous subtests (using a Scheffk multiple-range test) indicated different patterns of age-related changes for the Dogmatism and formal reasoning measures. The present results indicate chat fully formal reasoning as well as openmindedness is not necessarily an eventuality even by college. Also, the pattern of scores on measures of both formal and dogmatic reasoning is not necessarily parallel at any particular grade nor for the age-related improvement that occurs across all grades. Obviously, further research is needed.

T HE TITLE of this paper represents a small subdivision of one of the subtlest problems in the field of sociology, namely, the nature of the symbolic mechanisms through which man deals to an increasing degree with his universe. These mechanisms consist of neuro-muscular sets of some kind in the human organism. When these sets, namely our verbal mechanisms, correspond closely to the conditions to which we must adjust, they greatly facilitate our adjustments. For example, a map is a highly valuable symbolic representation provided its pattern, order, and sequences correspond to the actual terrain over which we must travel.' It is a corresponding handicap, if it fails to indicate where the rivers and the mountains are, if it confuses the order in which they occur, or otherwise fails to correspond to the conditions to which we must adjust. Sometimes a local map which may be adequate for most kinds of travel within its own borders turns out to be very misleading in the light of a larger perspective. In the same way the verbal systems and orientations of a primitive primary group society may turn out to be grossly inadequate in a national or world society of secondary group relationships. The best illustration of this phenomenon is the successive intellectual revolutions that mark the epochs of science. Each resulted from the difficulty of forcing increasingly adequate observations into the then existing verbal schemes. The new orientations, such as those of Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein, provided a more adequate intellectual chart according to which mental operations could proceed without contradicting the concrete observations of life. As Poincare says: "All the scientist creates in a fact is the language in which he enunciates it.12 Now social psychology is the branch of sociology which is increasingly concerned with the linguistic behavior of man. The present paper deals with one type of this linguistic be

Systems neuroscience has identified a set of canonical large-scale networks in humans. These have predominantly been characterized by resting-state analyses of the task-unconstrained, mind-wandering brain. Their explicit relationship to defined task performance is largely unknown and remains challenging. The present work contributes a multivariate statistical learning approach that can extract the major brain networks and quantify their configuration during various psychological tasks. The method is validated in two extensive datasets (n = 500 and n = 81) by model-based generation of synthetic activity maps from recombination of shared network topographies. To study a use case, we formally revisited the poorly understood difference between neural activity underlying idling versus goal-directed behavior. We demonstrate that task-specific neural activity patterns can be explained by plausible combinations of resting-state networks. The possibility of decomposing a mental task into the relative contributions of major brain networks, the "network co-occurrence architecture" of a given task, opens an alternative access to the neural substrates of human cognition., Author Summary Assuming the central importance of canonical brain networks for realizing human cognitive processes, the present work demonstrates the quantifiability of relative neural networks involvements during psychological tasks. This is achieved by a machine-learning approach that combines exploratory network discovery and inferential task prediction. We show that activity levels of network sets can be automatically derived from task batteries of two large reference datasets. The evidence supports the often-held suspicion that task-specific neural activity might be due in large part to distinct recombinations of the same underlying brain network units. The results further discourage the frequently embraced dichotomy between exteroceptive task-associated versus interoceptive task-unspecific brain systems. Standard fMRI brain scans can thus be used to reconstruct and quantitatively compare the entire set of major network engagements to test targeted hypotheses. In the future, such network co-occurrence signatures could perhaps be useful as biomarkers in psychiatric and neurological research.