It's a Jungle in There: How Competition and Cooperation in the Brain Shape the Mind (41 page)

54
Neisser (1967).

55
Martin (2012).

56
Loftus and Palmer (1974).

57
Anderson and Schooler (2000).

58
Also see Benjamin (2011).

1
Poincaré (1929, p. 388).

2
One of the many appearances of this ad was in
Science
on May 6, 2011, page 643.

3
For a cognitive psychologist’s discussion of crossword puzzles, see Nickerson (2011).

4
The solution is to turn one of the 3-link segments into connectors for the other 3-link chains. Thus, each of the links in that to-be-disassembled segment is opened, costing 3 × 2 cents = 6 cents, and then each of the opened links is closed around two ends of the remaining 3-link segments, costing 3 × 3 cents = 9 cents.

5
Silveira (1971), reported in Anderson (2010).

6
Luchins (1942).

7
Bilalic, McLeod, and Gobet (2010).

8
Maier (1931).

9
For a picture, look up “Maier 1931 two string problem” in Google Images.

10
Cho and Proctor (2011).

11
Thomas and Lleras (2009).

12
Duncker (1945).

13
Tversky and Kahneman (1974). Only Kahneman received the Nobel Prize (in Economics) because of Tversky’s untimely death at age 59, six years before the Prize was awarded. The Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.

14
I learned about this from an editorial titled “The Unexamined Society,” by David Brooks of the New York Times (July 7, 2011).
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/opinion/08brooks.html?_r=1

15
For an image and further discussion, look up “Thinking outside the box” in Wikipedia.

16
When people are explicitly told that they can go outside the box, they are more likely to solve the problem than if they are not, as shown by Weisberg and Alba (1981). In deference to Weisberg and Alba, it should be noted that these authors argued that concepts like functional fixedness and insight are less useful for the analysis of problem-solving than many have said. I mean neither to show them right nor wrong, owing to the more broad-brush style of this presentation.

17
Bower (2012) or
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/338406/title/Vodka_delivers_shot_of_creativity
. Relatedly, mind-wandering while performing a cognitively undemanding task also promotes creativity (Baird et al., 2012).

18
Gick and Holyoak (1980).

19
I got this information by looking up “Velcro” in Wikipedia.

20
The invention of the rotary lawn mower is another interesting example. As reported by Greenbaum and Rubinstein on March 18, 2012, in
The New York Times Magazine
column,
Who Made That?
, “Before a British inventor named Edwin Beard Budding conceived of the mower, the cropped lawn was the province of the landed gentry, who employed teams of men to trim grass with scythes. But lawn care was far from Budding’s mind when he invented the push mower. His original brief was to solve a mechanical problem for a clothing mill regarding the production of guardsmen’s uniforms. Budding was asked to come up with a way to ‘cut all the tufts and bobbly bits off the nap of the cloth,’ writes Brian Radam in ‘Lawn Mowers and Grasscutters: A Complete Guide.’ Budding soon realized the device had other applications. In 1830, he filed a patent for a machine that, when pushed and pulled, would cause a cylindrical blade to rotate over a stationary shear, cutting grass and collecting the clippings. The mower may have put the scythe men out of work, but it enabled the English fashion for grass carpets.”

21
Limb and Braun (2008).

22
Campbell (1960). You can learn more about this man’s life and career by looking up Donald T. Campbell in Wikipedia. The opening section of this website says: “He coined the term ‘evolutionary epistemology’ and developed a selectionist theory of human creativity.”

23
For reviews, see Simonton (1999, 2003).

24
Holland (1975); Mitchell (1996).

25
Boden (2004).

26
Simonton (1999). Also see Simonton (2003).

27
Richards (1987).

1
Sometimes in my classes I go on for quite some time with unabashed attempts at inspiration, offering another saying I have hit upon: “I aspire to inspire.” I reveal to
the students that I grew up in a tiny row house in a very tough neighborhood in Philadelphia, that I had to jump through all the same hoops that they’ve had to, and that if I could succeed to whatever point I had, they could too. I say the same to you now, dear reader.

2
In case you don’t understand the reference, and you might not depending on the country where you were raised, I refer to a short tale by Hans Christian Andersen, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Here, tailors hired to make a new suit for a king present him with an invisible suit that, they say, is visible only to discerning viewers. The king, too embarrassed to admit that he sees nothing, parades down the street wearing his new invisible vestments. The fawning crowd applauds the king’s costume, hiding their true observations, until a young child, oblivious to how he is supposed to behave, blurts out “But he’s not wearing anything!” The jig is up at that point, and we are reminded by Hans Christian Andersen not take authority on faith alone.

3
Collins and Quillian (1969).

4
Conrad (1972).

5
Rosch (1973).

6
Rosch (1975).

7
Rosch (1977).

8
Armstrong, Gleitman, and Gleitman (1983).

9
Smith, Patalano, and Jonides (1998).

10
I have drawn upon a well-known argument in evolutionary biology called the “Precambrian rabbit.” Rabbits didn’t exist in the Cambrian period. During that time, the most advanced creatures were arthropods and chordates. So rabbits certainly should not have existed in the Precambrian era, according to Darwin’s evolutionary theory. See Angier (2007).

11
Quoting from an article in Wikipedia on Ohm’s Law, “Ohm’s law states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the potential difference across the two points.”

12
Pinker (1994).

13
Mandler (2001).

14
Keil (1979, 1981).

15
Warrington (1975).

16
Siegler (1996).

17
Rogers and McClelland (2004); Rumelhart, McClelland, and the PDP Research Group (1986).

18
Also see the discussion of Ribot’s Law and Jost’s Law in
Chapter 8
.

19
The PDP approach owes much to the thinking of Donald Hebb (1949), originator of the idea that neurons that fire together wire together. Hebb himself did not coin this catchy phrase. Instead, it has been attributed to Carla Shatz of Stanford University, according to a Wikipedia article entitled “Hebbian theory.”

20
Rosenbaum et al. (2009).

21
It might be that concept diversification differs from species diversification in that species evolved from a single proto-species whereas concepts evolve, within individuals, not from a single proto-concept but instead from some
set
of proto-concepts, pertaining, for example, to aspects of physical interactions among objects (Spelke, 1994), number (Dehaene, 1997), or other knowledge domains. Conversely, it is possible that there is, indeed, some single as-yet-unidentified proto-concept, some single “great idea” at the root of all ideas within individuals. Discovering such a single conceptual origin would be enormously exciting.

22
Darwin (1872/1965).

23
Maren (1999).

24
Landauer (1975); Logan (1988, 2002).

25
The classic reference to genetic algorithms is Holland (1975).

26
At least one author (Blechner, 2001) has suggested that dreaming might amount to creating random thoughts, some of which may be retained and prove useful.

27
See the Wikipedia article entitled “Torture.”

28
For example, the discussion of problem-solving in
Chapter 9
focused exclusively on lone-wolf problem-solvers. Many problems are solved through collaborative efforts (Johnson, 2010), though sometimes two heads are not better than one (Koriat, 2012).

29
Fiske (2011), reviewed by Tracy (2012).

30
Dennett (1992).

31
Hayes-Roth (2010).

32
I encourage you to look up “murmuration” on YouTube. The videos are astonishing.

33
For a wonderful article on the dynamics of starling flight formations, see Hayes (2010).

34
When people wake from anesthesia, primitive parts of the brain, such as the brainstem, come online before more advanced parts of the brain do, such as the neocortex (Gorman, 2012).

35
See the Wikipedia article entitled “Law of specific nerve energies.”

36
Sperry (1945).

37
Pinker (2007).

38
Alais and Burr (2004).

39
Eagleman (2011).

40
McGurk and MacDonald (1976).

41
I refer to Charles Goodyear, who found a way to make rubber tough enough for tires; hence the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.

42
Estes (1960).

43
Anderson and Lebiere (1998).

44
Associationism is traceable to Plato and Aristotle, and finds modern form in connectionism (Rumelhart, McClelland, and the PDP Research Group (1986)). For a recent treatment, see Mandler (2011).

45
I obtained this quote by clicking on Microsoft Word’s Look-Up function.

46
Miller, Tybur, and Jordan (2007).

47
Singh (1993).

48
Fisher (1994).

49
Nairne, Pandeirada, and Thompson (2008).

50
Also see Wilson, Darling, and Sykes (2011).

51
Angier (1999a).

52
Angier (199b, 2007).

53
Konner (2010).

54
Gopnik (2010, p. 321).

55
Arguably, the leading researcher in this domain is Elizabeth Spelke, who was profiled in
The New Yorker
(Talbot, 2006). Spelke’s lab webpage is
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~lds/index.html?spelke.html

56
Pinker (2002).

57
Miller (1956). Also see Simon (1974) and Cowan (2001).

58
Dawkins (1989).

59
Dennett (1995).

60
Michel et al. (2011).

61
Atkinson (2011).

62
The study of language origin reviewed here has had its critics. To see commentaries on it as well as responses to those commentaries, go to
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6027/346.full?sid=abfe3b52-c1b8-4751-8ca7-4550fa35fe74
.

63
I introduced this way of representing theory space elsewhere (Rosenbaum, 2010).

64
I am no exception. I have studied such narrowly focused topics as where people grasp handles of toilet plungers depending on where they plan to move the plungers (Cohen and Rosenbaum, 2004) or whether people choose to walk along the left or right side of a table to pick up a bucket (Rosenbaum, Brach, and Semenov, 2011; Rosenbaum, 2012). My colleagues and I studied these things to get at larger truths.

65
I was responsible for the 2000–2005 volumes. I served for the maximum term of six years allowed by the organization that publishes JEP: HPP, the American Psychological Association.

66
Bruner (1973).

67
That the germ of the idea I’ve laid out here has in fact been with us for a long time is conveyed in a passage of a book by a colleague of mine at Penn State, Bill Ray (2013). Describing a lecture given by William James to the Harvard Natural History Society, Ray wrote, “James…suggests that evolution occurs within individuals as much as it occurs between individuals and their environment. The implication is that our internal physiological processes and our current set of thoughts, feelings, and actions serve as an environment for natural selection in terms of spontaneously arising internal impulses” [pp. 65–66].

68
Neuroscientists who have embraced Darwin’s theory include Calvin (1987) and Edelman (1987). Psychologists who have embraced Darwin’s theory include Boakes (1984), Campbell (1960), Pinker and Bloom (1990), Simonton (1999), Skinner
(1957), and Thorndike (1927). A philosopher who has advocated the Darwinian perspective is Dennett (1995). An economist who has embraced the Darwinian perspective is Harford (2011), whose book on the application of Darwin’s theory to economics was reviewed by Rankin (2011).

69
An author who recognized the applicability of Darwin’s theory to a wide range of disciplines was Price (1971, 1995), whose contribution was reintroduced to the public by Frank (1995).

70
Theory fecundity is sometimes used as a measure of theory utility, particularly when theory provability is in question (Clarke and Primo, 2012; Nozick, 1981). I should add that it is, in principle, difficult to generate highly specific predictions from the present theoretical perspective because adaptations are, by their nature, haphazard: What sticks is what just happens to work. The result is a “kluge” (Marcus, 2008), not a system whose every detail can be predicted from “first principles.”

71
While I was in the final stages of completing this book, an article appeared in
Science
on “Multisensory Control of Hippocampal Spatiotemporal Selectivity” (Varassard et al., 2013). The question was: How does the hippocampus, a brain region with cells that fire differentially to where one is in a familiar environment, incorporate the range of sensory cues that inform spatial navigation? The last sentence of the abstract included this statement: “These results reveal cooperative and competitive interactions between sensory cues for control over hippocampal spatiotemporal selectivity…” [p. 1342].