Modular man – an analysis of brain and body adaptation to the technology in the context of the theories of extended mind and embodied cognition

The ability to adapt to new and ever changing environment has always been one of the primary human skills. In fact, the capacity of using tools has been of upmost importance. The advancement of technology greatly improved the process of adaptation. It had a remarkable impact on the development of human nature, stepping into its inner structure. The technological evolution of mankind has been happening right before our eyes. People are becoming symbiotic with machines, and to various extents becoming cyborgs themselves.
The main point of interest of this paper is to show how the embodied cognition theory and the extended mind theory are able to illustrate the phenomenon of cyborgization. Moreover, we consider how the concepts related to the modular structure of mind and body explain the technological adaptation of humans.
 

This article discusses coaching as a problem solving method and adopts an innovative linguistic perspective. Reducing the psychological aspect to the minimum the author promotes language to its deserved status presenting it as the basic coach’s tool and initial reason for the effectiveness of coaching itself in instigating behavioral, attitudinal and emotional change. This is done by resorting to the philosophy of language (theories of relevance, speech acts and communication). It appears that a coaching conversation occurs on two levels of communication and by using two main linguistic devices, reflective language and powerful questions, the coach can provoke client’s change with little intervention.
 

Cognition of other minds in perspective of mental representations resonance theory

The goal of the article is to investigate the connection between naturalization of mental representations and cognition of other minds. It presents arguments for the thesis that delineating relations between physical states of the brain and mental content may be a key to understanding the issues of mental representation and a starting point for empirically validated inferences about other’s subjective experience. The paper discusses possibilities of applying across brains resonance theory in predicting phenomenal and conceptual content of other minds. Outlining conditions for establishing objective knowledge about subjectivity, it sketches the interdisciplinary research program of neurophenomenology.
 

Arming and disarming. Metaphorical expressions in political discourse

According to Cognitive Metaphor Theory, metaphorical expressions are considered to be a projection of a clearer and more easily comprehensible cognitive structure on a more abstract or complicated target domain. In other words, metaphorical expressions explain complicated and more abstract notions in terms of easier and less abstract phenomena. However, the choice of a source and a target domain often imposes a certain point of view and sanctions specific interpretations. This characteristic of metaphorical expressions makes them an extremely useful device for political persuasion.
Since the emergence of Cognitive Metaphor Theory there has been a growing number of research focused on the relations between figurative language, power and ideology. This paper focuses on processes of arming and disarming metaphorical expressions in political discourse. The author outlines basic tenets of Cognitive Metaphor Theory, as well as some of its implications on the relations between figurative language, persuasion and ideology. This paper gives also a very concise overview of previous research on arming and disarming metaphorical expressions by Teresa Dobrzyńska [1994] and a study on metaphorical expressions and ideology by Michael Billig and Katie Macmillan [2005].
 

In the world of Western musicology music is regarded as possessing two main divisions. The first being performance features which consist of traits such as dynamics, and tempo, and a second known as structural features such as the arrangement of notes in time. The main differences between these divisions is that performance features are evolutionarily ancient, indiscrete and present in many sound expressions, whereas structural features are evolutionarily younger, discrete and music-specific. Performance features are tightly connected with motor activity and emotional processing. Despite the fact that performance features carry information about emotional states, they can also be used as tools of manipulation. It has been proposed that one biological function of these tools is to affect the minds of other animals in order to arouse the need for cooperation in them. It has also been suggested that music performance features are homologous with some prosodic features of speech which evolved as a communicative tool before language and music.
 

One of the functions of cognitive control is to detect difficulties in information processing and adjust the level of performance. This article presents study on confl ict adaptation in which we investigated how detection of cognitive conflict influences behaviour on a subsequent trial. In two experiments we aimed to find out whether the adjustment can be carried out across two kinds of cognitive conflicts: between competing responses and requirements of two tasks. The modified version of the flanker task in switching paradigm was used so that participants had to switch between two tasks that shared the same stimulus set. The results showed that the two kinds of confl icts did not interact with each other. Furthermore, each conflict evoked conflict adaptation, but this adaptation did not occurred across conflicts. This suggests that conflict adaptation covers a set of mechanisms functioning uniquely in one domain.

Anomalous experience – a key for explanation of process of delusions’ formation?

The aim of this article is a problem of anomalies which occur in experience of delusional patients. This problem is mentioned in cognitive theories of delusions. The author characterizes such theories, but concentrates on bottom-up theories which treat delusion as
a rational answer to anomalous experience. She suggests that they are insufficient for making an explanation of delusions. She tries to emphasize some elements of such theories which can be helpful in explaining and understanding the phenomenon of delusions.
 

Suppression of unwanted feelings and thoughts: towards a metacognitive aproach

In the context of processing unwanted thoughts, memories or emotion, the main cognitive goal of individual is to suppress such undesired contents by keeping them out of consciousness. This paper provides an overview of empirical and clinical studies as well as theoretical models regarding suppression mechanisms of unwanted contents. Our main focus was to clarify controversial aspects related to efficiency of suppression in regulating behaviour. In particular, we emphasised significance of metacognition for suppression claiming that successful suppression requires concordant combination of both control and monitoring processes.
 

The aim of the following study was to answer the question whether multimodal grammar learning would improve classification accuracy as compared with a unimodal learning. To test this hypothesis, an experimental procedure was constructed based on the research conducted by Conway and Christiansen [2006]. Their study regarded modality-specific Artificial Grammar Learning task (AGL). The grammatical sequence that was used in the study presented here was based on an algorithm with a finite number of results. Two additional sets of ungrammatical sequences were generated in a random manner. One of them was used in the learning phase in the control group while the second one, in the classification phase, in both, control and experimental groups. The obtained results showed that participants performed classification task above the chance level. These findings supported the hypothesis, which stated that grammar learning would occur [Conway and Christiansen 2006; Reber 1989]. We did not observe any effect regarding the hypothesized accuracy enhancement in a multimodal learning condition.