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To provide coverging support that the proper integration of analog and propositional representational systems is associated with spatial ability, visual, auditory and bimodal brain event-related potentials were recorded from 50 right-handed Caucasian males. Sensory interaction indices were derived for these S s who had taken the Surface Development Test of spatial ability. Product-moment correlations were computed between sensory interaction indices for eight cerebral sites and spatial ability test scores. Sensory interaction for left- and right-hemispheric regions was significantly related to spatial ability. As sensory suppression lessened, spatial ability increased. The results substantiated the theory that the visual-imaginal-analog and the auditory-verbal-propositional representational systems are implicated in spatial ability. The extent to which the cortex can inhibit or attenuate the interaction or integration between these dual-symbol systems is associated with complicated spatial task performance.

We classified Yoruba-English bilingual subjects as either high or low on separation of their representational systems on a word association test for a list of ten words. Subjects then took part in learning tasts where the list of ten words were learned to one errorless criterion first in one language, and then to another errorless criterion for the translated equivalent words in the other language. Transfer of learning was then measured. Low separation subjects gained significantly more positive transfer than high separation subjects. In addition, transfer from Yoruba to English was more marked for low separation subjects than for high separation subjects. These results are interpreted as supporting theories that postulate separate memory stores for bilinguals.

The procedures 1- to 3-year-old children use to group simple sets of objects are analyzed in an investigation of cognitive change in early representational intelligence. Forty children spontaneously manipulated two-class arrays and participated in two experimental probes of object grouping. Children 1 to 2 years of age group classes by looking for one kind of thing at a time. Consistent with this, they verbally mark single classes. Children from 2 1 2 to 3 years old employ spatial grouping procedures that require simultaneous consideration of two classes, and they refer to relations between classes. Advances made during the second year are consistent with other initial signs of representational-symbolic intelligence. The advances in the third year are unaccounted for by traditional cognitive-developmental theories, but they are congruent with late-emerging patterns in natural representational systems such as language, suggesting the presence of broad changes in mental organization shortly after the onset of representational intelligence.

The study explored the basic tenet of Neurolinguistic Programming theory, the senses through which people receive information. Visual, auditory-tonal, auditory-digital, and kinesthetic sense modalities were objectively categorized as separate modes for receiving information. The responses of 176 study participants in a film-questionnaire setting also indicated more preference for the use of auditory-tonal, auditory-digital, and kinesthetic sensory modes than the visual modality.

This paper is a broad survey of issues that I have been examining within the domain of lexical access. Experiments are briefly outlined looking at the questions of morphological processing in both visual and spoken word recognition, phonological recoding in visual word recognition, orthographic influences in spoken word recognition, and a morphophonemic level of word representation. These issues are discussed in the framework of a model of lexical access where the recognition system and the production system are seen as separate representational systems.

Perception is a process of creative construction which relies upon two modelling processes, verbal and non-verbal. Researchers believe that these processes are located respectively in the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The non-verbal (right brain) process plays a very important part in the act of creation, and designers develop means of accessing the right brain model. This accessing is done through ‘representational systems’ which are sensory based, and which involve a suspension of analytic thought. This process of accessing the non-dominant hemisphere is very similar to techniques used in hypnosis. The author maintains that the processes used by designers in their work involves the use of a different representational system than that in which design data is available, and that this results in an increase of solution poverty. He suggests that design is essentially a self-therapeutic process—an indispensable part of each person. Processes which exclude the user are in this respect seriously deficient. He argues for a political and social solution to the problems of environmental design—to a return to local autonomy and user participation.

Seen from the reflective attitude, rhetorical critical methods differ in the type of representational systems they employ, and in the stance critics take toward their methods. Types of representational systems and stances combine to frame the four forms of critical explanations available to rhetorical critics.

The newly-emerging and rapidly growing neuro-linguistic programming model of communication states that conversational language reflects a favored sense for processing information, the “primary representational system,” (PRS). Using similar language structures while interacting is thought to increase rapport and influence. This study tested that assumption. Thirty subjects were exposed to three different hypnotic inductions varying in sensory language structure according to major representational systems. Subjects were evaluated by EMG for relaxation obtained from compatible and noncompatible inductions. Subjects objectively obtained greatest relaxation when experiencing hypnotic inductions containing predicates corresponding to their PRS (p < .05). Matching PRS predicates increases the relaxation level of subjects exposed to matching and nonmatching hypnotic inductions. Identifying and matching PRS language structures appears to enhance rapport and influence.

The concept of mental representation has come to mean too many things. Some authors use representational terms to include both subjective experience and nonphenomenal, abstract, explanatory concepts. The reconciliation between the representational and structural frames of reference cannot be achieved by a conceptual stuffing of representations into the system ego as a container. The mediation of mental activities by substructures of the mind is a highly complicated problem with considerable clinical significance. It is useful to distinguish representational concepts which have circumscribed functional capacities from representational systems which parallel the ego in scope. It is not yet possible to claim that we have adequately reconciled our views of memory with representational terms. Just as the alluring prospect of inventing an infinite series of "instincts" misled biologists in the past, so must we now avoid an infinite series of representations to which we assign any problematic mental task for explanation. We lack information from object relations theory about what there is in the mind which is not a mental representation. The clinical advantage of representational language and models over the structural hypothesis of compromise formation remains unsettled. There is in principle no conceptual obstacle to the integration in one frame of reference of both representational and structural concepts. This requires clear understanding of the representational structure as the result of compromise formation, as well as an important influence on compromise formation. We could then better study our heritage of shared experience without confusing the precipitates of our experience with the structure of our minds.

To ascertain the amount of association between cognitive complexity and cerebral sensory interaction, visual, auditory and bimodal event-related potentials were recorded from 50 right-handed Caucasian males. Sensory interaction indices were derived for these S s who had taken the Role Construct Repertory Test of cognitive complexity. Product-moment correlations were computed between sensory interaction indices for eight cerebral and cognitive complexity test scores. Sensory interaction for one left and all right hemisphere regions was significantly related to cognitive complexity. As sensory suppression lessened, cognitive complexity decreased. The results substantiated the theory that the visual-imaginal and the auditory-verbal representational systems are implicated in cognitive complexity. The extent to which the cortex can inhibit or attenuate the interaction between these dual symbol systems is associated with intricate cognitive processing.

Several authors have proposed specifying semantics for representational systems by translating them into logic. Unfortunately, such translations often introduce unnecessary detail and complexity. We indicate how many kinds of informal semantics can be transformed directly into formal semantics of no greater complexity. The key to avoiding the difficulties of logical translations is to recognize the difference between internal and external meanings.

Neurolinguistic programmers claim that individuals have preferred (primary) representational systems. These may be auditory, visual or kinesthetic and determine how a person views/deals with the world. Systems can be identified by observation of eye movements. In workshops programmers demonstrated strong associations between eye movements following questioning and types of questions and eye movement categories (assumed to identify systems) and other assessments of systems. Studies have evaluated these ‘workshop’ associations and found little support for their general occurrence. In these studies, it is possible that eye movements following questioning were influenced by artifacts which influence predicted association between these and other variables. An attempt was made to exclude these artifacts in this study. Except for subjects who had attended neurolinguistic workshops, results supported those obtained elsewhere. Possibly, associations in workshops occur as a result of expectational-contextu...

This text is the beginning of a formalized reflection on some poetic aspects of my present compositional world. After a brief survey of our historical background, a general conceptual framework, inspired by research in knowledge representation and categorization, is established. Using two complementary representational systems, I develop a microworld paradigm, the paradigm which first sparks my imagination. Higher-level musical structures, considered as evolving societies in morphological spaces, are then examined, including the overall form of a piece. Excerpts from my own work are analyzed in terms of the writing techniques which are adopted. Finally, a few extensions to this compositional approach are succinctly discussed, together with some of the consequences that challenge traditional perception, analysis, performance, and interpretation.

In this paper, it will be argued that each time a procedure in a representational system is functioning adequately and automatically, the child steps up to a metaprocedural level and considers the procedure as a unit in its own right. Data will be drawn from microdevelopment in children's creation of external memory devices (i.e., changes in representation of a spatial task during a one hour's session) as well as from macrodevelopment in language acquisition (i.e., changes occurring over age in a study of nominal determiners, pronouns and gender markers). These two aspects of development of representational systems are examined with respect to the spontaneous passage from concrete reference to abstract systems, from idiosyncratic to conventional notations, from redundant to economic marking, from unifunctional to plurifunctional meaningful units. These micro- and macrodevelopmental changes take place in a spontaneous fashion despite the fact that the child's earlier system is adequate for successfully conveying the information required. A discussion will be made of the way in which children tend to indicate externally, by unifunctional markers, information which was implicit in their earlier use of an adult-like system. They appear to be striving for the delicate balance between encoding and decoding efforts, ultimately leading to a felicitous representational system. Metaprocedural behavior is hypothesized to act as a control mechanism in the striving for this delicate balance of information content and information processing effort. It also appears to act as a control mechanism for the interprocedural organization of what was previously a plethora of juxtaposed, unconnected procedures yielding superficially analogous behavior. The stepping-up to a metaprocedural level seems to occur each time the child has a handle on his currently functioning, goal-oriented system. This enables the child to treat the system, or procedures which are part thereof, as units functioning in their own right. Thus there appears to be a deep-rooted psychological tendency for a representational tool which functions well procedurally to become subsequently a problem-space per se.

40 undergraduates equally proficient in English and Yoruba were classified as “low” or “high” on separation of bilingual representational systems depending on the extent to which they were able to provide correct Yoruba translations to responses they had earlier given on a 10-item word-association test in English. The two groups of subjects participated in a task involving the repeated learning and recall of a bilingual list of translated equivalent words. Three trials were given. It was predicted that the low group who provided more translations would benefit more on this task than the high group who provided comparatively fewer translations. The low group recalled more translated equivalent words than the high group on Trials 2 and 3. It was concluded that the two groups of subjects are differentially sensitive to the semantic equivalence between the translated equivalent words and must possess somewhat different representations of the words in memory.

A developmental theory of bilingualism was advanced for children acquiring English for the first time at school in developing countries. It was argued that there would be a separation of an English representational (meaning) system from the mother-tongue representational system following greater competence in English. Degree of separation of representational systems for three groups of children was measured by two indices derived from word association data. The theory received support on one index but was not supported on the other index. It was concluded that theories that postulate separate representational systems for adult competent bilinguals more adequately account for the findings of this study.

In the philosophical controversy between realism and conventialism, pictorial representation stands as a concrete issue dividing the two positions: is linear perspective an intrinsically realistic mode of representation? or is it a conven? tional system with only apparent realism? Goodman and Wartofsky are the outstanding proponents of the latter view. According to Goodman, realism is a matter of habit and to say that a picture looks like nature often means only that it looks the way nature is usually portrayed. Wartofsky extends Good? man's thesis by arguing that social historical praxis endows representational systems with fidelity. However, while we agree that there are a multiplicity of realistic systems of representation, we do not agree that realism is entirely a matter of habit or social praxis. In this paper we will argue, following Gib? son, that the realism of perspective is due primarily to the visual information it captures.

Four representational systems are examined with respect to their adequacy for representing reasoning processes within kinship systems; the systems are associative, semantic feature, logical predicate, and an “algebraic” one based on set mappings. The associative and semantic feature systems are shown to be inadequate, and the logical predicate system is shown to be somewhat clumsy and unintuitive. The algebraic is proposed as the correct representation of kinship terms. It is suggested that certain other conceptual domains can also be best represented by an algebraic system.

The theory of decisional power of Hoede and Bakker is applied to representational systems in which all representatives of a certain group vote alike. An equivalent system is one in which a group is represented by one representative with a voting weight. The main theorem of this paper gives the optimal distribution of weights for such a system. As an example the distribution of seats in the european parliament of the european economic community is reconsidered. The effect of vetoes is discussed as well as other ways of voting towards inaction used for minority protection. The decrease in overall power is accompanied by a tendency towards greater equality of power.

This article elucidates the contributions of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) to counseling practice. The Meta-Model, representational systems, anchoring, and reframing are described, and implications and cautions are discussed.

In ageing the relationship to the body refers to the way in which old age is defined in our representational systems. This defining process intervenes on a social and individual level. The individual relationship to ageing is influenced by the way in which our society prefers a spatial or corporeal definition of old age to a temporal one and by the way in which it assigns a certain position to the individual on the ageing scale. In reference to this defining process different conceptions regarding the relationship between corporeity and ageing appear. Drawing on a survey of the literature and an exploratory interview conducted among elderly, three types of corporeity are disclosed. First, the diagnosed corporeity, which is also defined by the medical system in chronic illness terms. reflects our fear of the irreversibility and the deterioration which we associate with this stage of life. Second. The imagined and projected corporeity of the elderly by which they themselves react to their devaloris...

Twenty-two people kept records of difficulties and errors they experienced in recognizing people, producing a main set of 922 records of difficulties and errors collected over a seven-week period, and a subsidiary set of 86 records of experiences in which an encountered person was noticed to resemble a known person in some way(s). These records are classified into different types, and used to develop a model of person recognition in which representational systems create structural descriptions of the encountered person that are submitted to checks for resemblances to known people (by recognition units); any such resemblances can then be used to access person identity information (held in person identity nodes), and then additional information (including the appropriate name) held in separate stores. Outputs from the recognition units and from the person identity nodes go to the rest of the cognitive system, which can be important in taking decisions as to the 'real' identity of an encountered person, and which also has at its disposal various ways of gaining further information that may assist such decisions.

The graphic representations of the central Australian Walbiri and supplementary comparative data are used to explore the general thesis that categorical analysis can be applied to representational systems. Certain features of the meaning ranges of typical Walbiri elements are examined and compared with those of pictorial elements from other systems. It is suggested that Walbiri tolemic designs, consisting of combinations of these elements, can function to classify tolemic species by dissecting and reassembling them in a manner similar to that described by Levi-Strauss for other cultural systems.

Spatial memory comprises different representational systems that are sensitive to different environmental cues, like proximal landmarks or local boundaries. Here we examined how sleep affects the formation of a spatial representation integrating landmark-referenced and boundary-referenced representations. To this end, participants (n = 42) were familiarized with an environment featuring both a proximal landmark and a local boundary. After nocturnal periods of sleep or wakefulness and another night of sleep, integration of the two representational systems was tested by testing the participant's flexibility to switch from landmark-based to boundary-based navigation in the environment, and vice versa. Results indicate a distinctly increased flexibility in relying on either landmarks or boundaries for navigation, when familiarization to the environment was followed by sleep rather than by wakefulness. A second control study (n = 45) did not reveal effects of sleep (vs. wakefulness) on navigation in environments featuring only landmarks or only boundaries. Thus, rather than strengthening isolated representational systems per se, sleep presumably through forming an integrative representation, enhances flexible coordination of representational subsystems.

A case of Narcolepsy was treated successfully with “negative permission,” which liberated the client of his symptoms. The therapeutic process revealed some principles for giving effective permissio...

Neurolinguistic programming is a communication model whose basic principles are that human beings process information through the five senses (representational systems), tend to favor one of the primary representational systems (visual, auditory, or kinesthetic) over others, and display how they are thinking in subtle ways. This article describes this model in detail and discusses how orientation and mobility instructors can implement it to teach congenitally totally blind students, who have access to only the auditory and kinesthetic primary systems, to use a cane or a dog guide more effectively.

In Chapter 4 a method was described for exposing the content of schemas and the cognitive representations of passages. A representational system was also presented in which it was assumed that the cognitive representations consist of conceptual graph structures. These graph structures contain labeled nodes that are interconnected by labeled, directed arcs. In Chapter 4 no experimental evidence was presented that tested how well the theoretical graph structures approximate the true cognitive representations of passages. One goal in this chapter is to present supporting data. If the representations can account for data in a variety of behavioral tasks, then the representational system approaches credibility. As more data can be explained, the representational system becomes more credible. The studies reported in this chapter will not prove that the representational system is correct or better than all alternative representational systems. The enterprise is too young and the data are too scant to arrive at any definitive or sweeping statements. The most that can be hoped for is that some readers will be convinced that the proposed framework is worthwhile to pursue.

The neurolinguistie programming hypothesis that most people have a prefcrred way of dealing with the world - a primary representational system - was tested. 50 Ss were evaluated for sensory modality preference in 3 ways: (a) they chose among written descriptions using either visual, auditory, or kinesthetic wording (preference); (b) their eye movements were recorded during an interview; and (c) their verbal responses were scored for sensory predicates. The results did not support neurolinguistic programming theory in that preference of 1 modality on 1 measure did not relate to the same modality on the other measures as would be expected if primary representational systems were characteristic of the sample. Other studies have shown mixed results. The conclusion seems warranted that a good deal more empirical support is needed before the positive therapeutic claims of neurolinguistic programming proponents can be taken seriously.

There are two principal places in Sprachtheorie where Buhler undertook a comparison arison between language and other representational sign systems. The first is in §12, “Symbol Fields in Nonlinguistic Representational Instruments,” and the second in §26, “Anaphora.” Buhler’s goal was not a systematic phenomenology of sign artifacts and their comparative grammar but a clarification of the specificity of language. The various nonlinguistic representational systems are used as analyzers (Analysatoren) of language, are confronted with language with the intent of primarily clarifying language, even if the true analogies between language uage and the other systems are plain as pikestaff (ST 180). In spite of the very real analogies, however, Baler thought that there was something sui generis about language that would be revealed by such a comparative undertaking, whose primary goal was the construction of a model of language.

Blissymbols and manual signs are two representational systems widely used as alternatives to spoken communication for persons unable to speak understandably. They were compared to determine if there is any advantage of one over the other in ease of learning or in retention. Immediate and 1-day posttest measures were obtained from 20 7- and 8-year-old children engaged in a paired-associate transfer-of-training task using manual signs and Blissymbols. Results showed no overall difference between signs and symbols in number of correct responses on either the immediate or 1-day posttest.

The representation of even a simple stimulus event involves parallel activation of a number of separable internal codes. Some of these codes are available only to neurophysiological studies, some only to cognitive methods and some to both forms of investigation. We review the parallel activation of simple features of visual objects such as orientation, motion and color and their combination into the conjunctions of features that form objects. Rather surprisingly, output of feature codes appear to be available to some forms of cognitive study. Feature activation carries with it implicit information on location but dissociations between features argue that the precise conjoining of features into an integrated object appears to be a separable act. Studies of visual imagery reveal the operations of higher levels of representation that seem to play a role in pattern recognition and provide evidence favoring the ability to choose a level of detail appropriate to goals. Language stimuli follow similar coding principles but provide a special opportunity to apply cognitive methods to the study of cross-modality representation. The interplay between many forms of representation rather than a single unifying principle may underlie the richness of human cognition. Nonetheless the ability to isolate coding systems by experimental methods or brain injury supports efforts to simulate aspects of pattern recognition and also suggests why the simulation of any one aspect may not fully duplicate human performance.

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the sociolinguistic aspects of the use of sign language as derived from sociological field studies of the deaf. It discusses the application of linguistic methodology in sociolinguistic research on hearing subjects. It highlights recent work on sociolinguistic aspects of sign language use. The chapter presents some recent data based on research in a deaf community in South London and three schools for the deaf. Variations in adult signing and speech were examined by recording the oral and manual representations of a written story transmitted on five separate occasions by the same deaf subject to other deaf subjects. The chapter describes the relationship between cognitive processes and representational systems. It highlights recent research on visual informational processing and the role of internal representations, memory, and dual coding to indicate the relevance of visual informational processing for understanding auditory–vocal and visual–kinesthetic communication.

There has been a reappraisal of phylogenetic issues in cognitive science, as reconstructing cognitive phylogenies has been considered a key for unveiling the cognitive novelties that set the stage for what makes humans special. In our opinion, the studies made until now have approached cognitive phylogenies in a non-optimal way, and we wish to both highlight their problems, drawing on recent considerations in philosophy of biology. The inadequacy of current visions on cognitive phylogenies stems from the influence of the traditional “linear cladograms,” according to which every seemingly new or more sophisticated feature of a cognitive mechanism, viewed as a novelty, is represented as a node on top of the old and shared elements. We claim that this kind of cladograms does not succeed in depicting the complexity with which traits are distributed across species and, furthermore, that the labels of the nodes of these traditional representational systems fail to capture the “tinkering” nature of evolution. We argue that if we are to conceive of cognitive mechanisms in a multi-dimensional, bottom-up perspective, in accordance with the Darwinian logic of descent, we should rather focus on decomposing these mechanisms into lower-level, generic functions, which have the additional advantage of being implementable in neural matter, which ultimately produces cognition. Doing so renders current constructions of cognitive phylogenies otiose.

The nature of the cognition-motor interface has been brought to prominence by Butterfill & Sinigaglia (2014), who argue that the representations employed by the cognitive and motor systems should not be able to interact with each other. Here I argue that recent empirical evidence concerning the interface contradicts several of the assumptions incorporated in Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s account, and I seek to develop a theoretical picture that will allow us to explain the structure of the interface presented by this evidence. The central idea is that neural plasticity incorporates metarepresentational rules for constructing representational systems and linking them. The structure of the cognition-motor interface is constructed flexibly during development and skill learning based on information processing demands.

Comments on Betz, F., Mitroff, I. 1974. Representational systems theory. Management Sci. 20 (9, May) 1242–1252.

Response of the Ian Mitroff and Frederick Betz (Betz, F., Mitroff, I. 1974. Representational systems theory. Management Sci. 20 (9, May) 1242–1252.) to the comment (Berhold, M. 1975. Comment on “Representational systems theory” by Betz and Mitroff. Management Sci. 21 (9) 1077–1078.).