Intellectual development is primarily considered a domain specific enterprise. Children develop naïve physics, a folk psychology (theory of mind), a naïve biology, etc. But understanding perspective is a general, overarching phenomenon that cuts across such domains in development and in the brain. This has important theoretical consequences. For instance, our folk psychology cannot consist of a uniform "theory of mind" for explaining behaviour. Parts of the theory that are sensitive to perspective differences have to be separated from those that are not. A central concern is how perspective is represented in the mind. The answer comes from mental files theory. A mental file represents or refers to an object. It presents the object under a particular mode of presentation-perspective. Coreferential files refer to the same object and present the object under different perspectives. Files, thus, give us a concrete way to capture perspectives with the tools for basic object cognition. This book introduces mental files theory in relation to object files and discourse referents and then applies it to the development of perspective taking in early childhood and to brain imaging. The theory goes well beyond perspective; it is the theoretical tool for representing persisting objects, tracking them over time, and storing knowledge about them. From a leading figure in developmental psychology, this book addresses a topic much neglected in the cognitive sciences. The Context and Content series is a forum for outstanding original research at the intersection of philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science. The general editor is François Recanati (Institut Jean-Nicod, Paris).

Mental Files in Perspective: Theory, Development, and Neural Foundations (Context & Content)

Politics & Social Sciences

Perner, Josef

Philosophy

Oxford University Press

Metacognition refers to the awareness an individual has of their own mental processes (also referred to as ' thinking about thinking'). In the past thirty years metacognition research has become a rapidly growing field of interdisciplinary research within the cognitive sciences. Just recently, there have been major changes in this field, stimulated by the controversial issues of metacognition in nonhuman animals and in early infancy. Consequently the question what defines a metacognitive process has become a matter of debate: how should one distinguish between simple minds that are not yet capable of any metacognitive processing, and minds with a more advanced architecture that exhibit such a capacity? Do nonhuman animals process the ability to monitor their own mental actions? If metacognition is unique to humans, then at what stage in development does it occur, and how can we distinguish between cognitive and metacognitive processes? The Foundations of Metacognition brings together leading cognitive scientists to consider these questions. It explores them from three different perspectives: from an evolutionary point of view the authors ask whether there is sufficient evidence that some non-human primates or other animals monitor their mental states and thereby exhibit a form of metacognition. From a developmental perspective the authors ask when children start to monitor, evaluate und control their own minds. And from a philosophical point of view the main issue is how to draw the line between cognitive and metacognitive processes, and how to integrate the different functions in which metacognition is involved into a single coherent picture of the mind. The foundations of metacognition - whatever they will turn out to be - have to be as complex as this pattern of connections we discover in its effects. Bringing together researchers from across the cognitive sciences, the book is valuable for philosophers of mind, developmental and comparative psychologists, and neuroscientists.

Foundations of Metacognition

Science & Math

Proust, Joëlle

Beran, Michael J.

Brandl, Johannes

Behavioral Sciences

A model of writing in cognitive development, Understanding the Representational Mind synthesizes the burgeoning literature on the child's theory of mind to provide an integrated account of children's understanding of representational and mental processes, which is crucial in their acquisition of our commonsense psychology.  Perner describes experimental work on children's acquisition of a theory of mind and representation, offers a theoretical account of this acquisition, and gives examples of how the increased sophistication in children's theory of mind improves their understanding of social interaction and how, in the case of autistic children, an impairment results in social ineptitude. He analyzes the concepts of representation and metarepresentation as they appear in current discussion in the philosophy of cognitive science and explains how the unfolding of mental representation enables infants to comprehend change over time, engage in pretence, and use representational systems like pictures and language. Perner goes on to show that around age four children become able to understand the representational nature of pictures and language and to distinguish appearance from reality.  Introducing basic distinctions in philosophy of mind for characterizing the mental, Perner discusses differences in how commonsense and cognitive psychology view the mind. Tracing the onset of a commonsense psychology in the social and emotional awareness of early infancy, he reveals how the child begins to take a cognitive, representational view of the mind with repercussions for children's episodic memory, self control, and their ability to engage in deception. Perner concludes by describing the observed developmental changes as a case of theory change And contrasts his thesis with competing proposals.

Understanding the Representational Mind (Learning, Development and Conceptual Change Series)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Bradford Books

Introducing basic distinctions in philosophy of mind for characterizing the mental, Perner discusses differences in how commonsense and cognitive psychology view the mind. He traces the onset of a commonsense psychology in the social and emotional awareness of early infancy, revealing how the child begins to take a cognitive, representational view of the mind with repercussions for children's episodic memory, self-control, and their ability to engage in deception.

Understanding the Representational Mind

MIT Press]

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