It's a Jungle in There: How Competition and Cooperation in the Brain Shape the Mind (39 page)

26
Tipper (1985).

27
Stroop (1935).

28
Kiesel et al. (2010).

29
For reviews of work on task switching, see Monsell (2003) and Kiesel et al. (2010).

30
One anti-inhibition paper was by Mahon et al. (2007). For a response, see Starreveld, La Heij, and Verdonschot (2013).

31
Miller and Ulrich (2003).

32
Another illustration of a racehorse model is an influential model of visual word recognition known as the two-route model. According to this model, defended by Coltheart, Curtis, Atkins, and Haller (1993), there are two routes to recognizing a word. One is based on whether the visual appearance of the letter arrangement looks familiar. The other is based on whether the way the word sounds to one’s “inner ear” is familiar.

33
Duncan and Desimone (1995).

34
Usher and McClelland (2001).

35
Another overarching view of RT that dovetails with the jungle view and, in broad terms, is consistent as well with the model of Usher and McClelland (2001) has been offered by Michael Spivey (2007). Another leading RT theorist is Roger Ratcliff, whose general model can be thought of in similar terms (e.g., Ratcliff, Van Zandt, and McKoon, 1999).

1
Ratliff and Hartline (1959).

2
For more information about Mach bands, see Eagleman (2001).

3
For more information about the neural basis of the grid illusion, see Eagleman (2001).

4
For a discussion of this topic, see Schiller and Carvey (2005).

5
Hurvich and Jameson (1957). The Wikipedia article on “opponent process” provides a lot of useful information and leads on this topic.

6
The Wikipedia article on color vision is very useful. A good textbook on this and other topics in perception is by Mather (2006).

7
The Wikipedia article on “color blindness” provides a lot of useful information and leads to this topic. Also see Mather (2006).

8
For a video of the waterfall aftereffect, search for “The Waterfall Effect” on YouTube.

9
Huk, Rees, and Heeger (2001).

10
Videos can be found on YouTube using the search phrase “spiral aftereffect.”

11
These interpretations, or ones that can be expressed more precisely, have been confirmed through physiological recordings (Barlow and Hill, 1963).

12
Once again, Wikipedia is a good place to learn more. Use “Helmholtz” as the search term.

13
More information about Ames and pictures of the Ames room can be found on the web. Videos showing the Ames room are available via YouTube.

14
Binocular rivalry is reviewed in Wikipedia, or see Blake (2001).

15
Some influential scholars who have endorsed the inferential approach to perception are Gregory (1973), Hochberg (1981), and Rock (1983).

16
Consistent with this interpretation, if instead of holding up your extended thumb, which is a relatively narrow object, you hold up an object that is significantly wider than your thumb, you won’t be able to find your blind spot. For more information, look up “blind spot (vision)” in Wikipedia.

17
For research on the proofreader’s error, see Healy (1981). I should add that to the best of my knowledge, Healy (1981) did not address the hypothesis that proofreaders are more proficient when they return to text than when they first deal with that same text. I am reporting my own impression that this is the case, echoing anecdotes from friends and colleagues that it is for them as well.

18
Warren (1970).

19
I offer this particular example because of a photo I saw in the sport pages of my local newspaper. A baseball player had blown a big bubblegum bubble that covered most of his face. I had no trouble recognizing that a face was behind the bubble. The thought did occur to me that I might have had a bit more trouble recognizing that a face was behind the bubble if it had been an executive dressed in a jacket and tie.

20
Lindsay and Norman (1977).

21
Reicher (1969); Wheeler (1970).

22
This model was introduced by McClelland and Rumelhart (1981) and Rumelhart and McClelland (1982). When it was introduced, it was widely acclaimed as a major step in the understanding of perception and mental function more generally. The model instantiated a general approach to cognition called
parallel distributed processing
(McClelland, Rumelhart, and the PDP Research Group, 1986; Rumelhart, McClelland, and the PDP Research Group, 1986). The picture of information processing it offered was more chaotic than the neat and tidy model of perception that prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s, where perception was depicted as a series of information processing stages, each waiting (respectfully, one might say) for output from the stage before.

23
Pirates, or at least pirates of yore, wore a patch over one eye not just to cover injuries sustained in sword fights but also to enter the dark hulls of captured ships. The patched eye was dark-adapted, so yanking the patch off the eye let the pirate, who may have just been out in the sun, plunder the dark innards of the invaded ship.

24
For reviews, see Hubel and Wiesel (1979) and Barlow (1982).

25
Weisstein (1973).

26
Neisser (1964).

27
Treisman (1986).

28
Hubel and Wiesel (1963).

29
Similar logic is used to treat patients who have reduced use of a limb due to stroke or other brain damage. If such a patient has trouble moving one arm, the treatment may involve binding the other, more mobile arm (Gordon, 2011; Taub and Uswatt, 2006).

30
Critical periods were discussed in
Chapter 2
in connection with the founder effect in evolutionary biology.

31
Barry (2009).

32
Also see Bavelier, Levi, Ri, Dan, and Hensch (2010) and Sinha (2013).

33
Hirsch and Spinelli (1970, 1971).

34
Fahle and Edelman (1993).

35
Weiss, Edelman, and Fahle (1993).

1
Cohen and Rosenbaum (2004).

2
Rosenbaum, Marchak, Barnes, Vaughan, Slotta, and Jorgensen (1990).

3
For a review, see Rosenbaum, Chapman, Weigelt, Weiss, and van der Wel (2012).

4
Lashley (1951).

5
Freud (1901/1971).

6
Garrett (1975).

7
Many examples of action slips like this have been documented, and a taxonomy of action slips has been developed (Norman, 1981). Another example of a common action slip that illustrates the tendency of actions with common features to substitute for one another comes from touch typing. If you touch-type, you may often make the mistake of typing “k” instead of “d” or “s” instead of (the letter) “l.” These letter pairs are typed with the same finger in the middle row of the QWERTY typewriter. The letters “k” and “d” are both typed with the middle finger. The letters “s” and “l” are both typed with the ring finger. The fact that “s” and “l” are often confused, and the fact that “d” and “k” are often confused, suggests that homologous fingers on the two hands tend to compete, with the outcome of the competition being erroneous (see Rosenbaum, 2010,
Chapter 9
). These mistakes may be likened to illusory conjunctions in vision, as discussed in the “Features” section of
Chapter 6
. Of course, the larger point is that, fundamentally, the same dynamic is playing out.

8
Dell (1986).

9
Aglioti, Cesari, Romani, and Urgesi (2008).

10
Rabbitt (1978).

11
Gehring, Goss, Coles, Meyer, and Donchin (1993).

12
Beilock, Carr, MacMahon, and Starkes (2002)

13
Beilock and her coworkers reached a similar conclusion in another experiment. They asked soccer players to dribble a soccer ball through a slalom course. While doing the dribbling, the players engaged in the same kinds of attention-demanding tasks as did the golfers. In one condition, the soccer players attended to extraneous stimuli that diverted attention from their dribbling. In the other condition, they directed attention to the step-by-step nature of their foot movements. The soccer players, like the golfers, did worse when they focused on the
main
task than when they focused on the extraneous task.

14
Georgopoulos, Caminiti, Kalaska, and Massey (1983); Georgopoulos, Schwartz, and Kettner (1986).

15
Erickson (1984); Chaisanguanthum and Lisberger (2011).

16
For those with a mathematical bent, note that this outcome is a direct consequence of vector summation.

17
All the neurons in the nervous system can be said to contribute to every arm movement and, for that matter, to every kind of movement all the time. The weights assigned to the neurons’ activations simply become vanishingly small when the neurons’ preferences are remotely related to the task at hand. Hence, no divisions are needed among sectors of the nervous system to account for the specificity of movement or, for that matter, the specificity of any behavior, thought, or emotion. Thus, you can say that all neurons contribute to all behavior all the time, just to varying degrees. The generality of the population coding scheme has been demonstrated in perception as well as action (Erickson, 1984). Population coding has been used in brain-computer interfaces to help paralyzed individuals transmit their intentions to robots (Veeliste, Perel, Spalding, Whitford, and Schwartz, 2008). An episode of
60 Minutes
was devoted to this. The episode was called “Breakthrough: Robotic Limbs Moved by the Mind.” It aired December 30, 2012, and can be watched on the web via
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50137987n
.

18
Forssberg, Grillner, and Rossignol (1975, 1977).

19
Abbs, Gracco, and Cole (1984).

20
If you try to touch your index finger and thumb of the same hand, a tug on your thumb by a device like the one used in the lip-lowering experiment just described causes your index finger to race more forcefully in the thumb direction. However, that same tug has little or no effect on the index finger if you are
not
engaged in a pinching task (Abbs, Gracco, and Cole, 1984).

21
Aruin and Latash (1995).

22
This model was introduced by Rosenbaum (2010).

23
Saying that learning works by trial and error is a weak criterion for a Darwinian process, but as I said earlier in this book, I am using Darwinism here in weak form, synonymously with
selectionism
—that is, referring to the idea that fitter solutions tend to survive while less fit solutions tend not to survive. A claim that would adhere more closely to Darwin’s claim would insist on a single origin for learning, some primitive perception-action relation that provides a seed for others. The reflex has been thought by some to be that relation.

24
Goldfield, Kay, and Warren (1993).

25
Goldfied, Kay, and Warren (1993) showed that, with experience, babies in Jolly Jumpers become less variable in their bounce periods but better able to achieve large jumps.

26
Adolph, Vereijken, and Denny (1998).

27
The maturation perspective was the prevailing view of motor development before Adolph and others (Thelen, 1995) came along. A chief proponent of the maturation view was McGraw (1943).

28
Others have made similar arguments about the ad hoc, opportunistic nature of motor development (Thelen, Kelso, and Fogel, 1987; Thelen, 1995).

29
Sutton and Barto (1998).

30
These examples are mentioned because they are all backed up by research. For summaries, see Rosenbaum (2010) and Schmidt and Lee (2011).

31
Baddeley and Longman (1978).

32
Skinner (1957).

33
Chomsky (1959).

34
Brown (1973).

35
Elman, Karmiloff-Smith, Bates, Johnson, Parisi, and Plunkett (1996).

36
Pinker (1994).

37
Of course, as an advocate of a Darwinian perspective, I certainly am not opposed to the idea that genes play a role in shaping form and function.

38
Bayes’ Rule can be expressed in terms of four terms: the probability, p(S), that a source of data is present; the probability, p(D), of the data; the probability, p(D|S), of the data given the source; and the probability, p(D|S), of the source given the data. Bayes’ Rule can be written as
. The two terms on the left often go by two special terms. The denominator, p(S), is often called the
prior
, which is short for the prior odds of the source. The numerator, p(S|D), is often called the
posterior
, which is short for the posterior or after-the-fact odds of the source given the data. An entire book has been written about the history and applications of Bayes’ Rule (McGrayne, 2011).