This paper argues that fungal mycelial networks exhibit minimal cognition through memory-integrated adaptive regulation. Drawing on cybernetic and enactivist frameworks, I develop a non-representational account of memory as the organism's capacity to modulate behavior based on temporally extended environmental coupling. I propose four operational criteria for minimal cognition: feedback-guided regulation of behavior, maintenance of internal viability conditions, structural modulation based on past environmental interactions, and plasticity across time scales that supports anticipatory adaptivity. Empirical evidence demonstrates that fungi meet all four criteria through distributed memory mechanisms: fungal networks exhibit directional regrowth toward previously encountered resources even after spatial displacement, stress priming persists across multiple cell divisions, Spitzenkörper-mediated directional persistence in constrained environments, and transgenerational memory through spore imprinting. These findings challenge representationalist assumptions in cognitive science by showing that memory and cognition can emerge from morphodynamic, biochemical, and electrophysiological processes without necessary neural substrates or symbolic representations. Fungal cognition demonstrates that the organizational principles underlying cognition-feedback-driven adaptation, norm-preservation, and historical coupling-can be realized in radically different material substrates, expanding our understanding of what counts as a cognitive system.
Color's ultimate physical reality is continuous, and yet human beings "cut" this continuum into a rather small number of categories reflected in their languages' color lexicon. There are striking cross-linguistic differences in the color lexicon, which are primarily attributed to differences in communicative needs, but also striking commonalities, attributed to a common human perceptual system. Here, we challenge this notion of a uniform perceptual structure by experimentally comparing participants from two populations, French from France and Himba from Namibia. They differ in the amount of exposure to ultraviolet radiation, which influences color perception through its effects on eye physiology cumulatively during the individual's lifetime. We found, even after controlling for potential confounds at the individual, color-naming, and cultural levels, that color perception is affected by age significantly more in the Himba participants, suggesting that besides communicative needs, perceptual structure can play a dual role, contributing to both cross-linguistic universals and differences in the color lexicon.
For a model in cognitive science to adequately explain cognitive processes across different populations, empirical findings from diverse participant groups are essential. This paper selectively reviews studies that investigated prediction in different populations and discusses what they reveal about the mechanisms and role of language prediction. To build a generalizable model of prediction and to understand the role of prediction in language comprehension and learning, it is crucial to understand both the brain's potential and limits to prediction. Findings from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) populations have demonstrated the brain's remarkable ability to predict upcoming language. However, findings from diverse populations (e.g., second-language speakers, heritage speakers, low-literacy adults, children and older adults, adults from different socioeconomic backgrounds) highlight important limits to language prediction and suggest that prediction is modulated by individual differences beyond what has been found in WEIRD populations. I suggest that these individual differences can be explained by the currently proposed prediction models without assuming qualitatively different mechanisms for different populations.
Our ability to imagine alternatives to reality is central to everyday cognition. Our competence in reasoning depends not only on our capacity to envisage the relevant facts, but also on our proficiency in simulating alternatives to them. I discuss how our skill in making deductive inferences depends on imagining possibilities. To illustrate, I consider evidence on the suppression of inferences, the cognitive processes based on mental models that explain how we make inferences, and corroboration from studies of counterfactual reasoning. I also discuss how our ability to create alternatives to reality depends on identifying mutable aspects of mental simulations. To illustrate, I consider evidence on imagining alternatives to aspects of situations within our control, the cognitive processes based on simulation availability that explain how we create alternatives to reality, and corroboration from studies of moral decision-making. I conclude with an exploration of the imagination as the engine of the mind.
Individuals' use of co-speech gestures mostly parallels the verbal cross-linguistic patterns of spoken languages. In this review paper, we synthesize research findings and discuss individuals' co-speech gesture production across four concepts (space, time, event, and emotion) that are encoded and expressed differently across languages. These four concepts reflect the wide variation across spoken language encoding that may or may not be present in gesture use. We particularly focus on studies from non-Indo-European languages and non-WEIRD (Western, Education, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) samples to highlight the importance of diversity and inclusion in gesture research. Our review demonstrates that co-speech gestures involve both universal and language-specific patterns when individuals talk about these concepts. We discuss the role of gestures in the broader language-thought debate and offer directions for future research, particularly related to neurodiversity and individual differences. The review asks for new research lines that can specifically advance our knowledge on how gestures conceptualize and reflect cross-linguistic diversity and broadly add to the theoretical discussions on the language-thought interface.
The Chana Research Station for Language Sciences and Interculturality is a scientific initiative dedicated to exploring the linguistic, cultural, and cognitive diversity of the Peruvian Amazon. Building on long-standing local partnerships and collaborations, Chana facilitates research on cognition that extends beyond populations from industrialized democracies, traditionally overrepresented in behavioral sciences. Other populations-such as those in Amazonia-exhibit remarkable diversity. With this in mind, current Chana projects and collaborations encompass research on how Amazonian unique linguistic structures and culturally significant practices shape language processing and acquisition, as well as nonlinguistic cognition; studies on cognition focused on quantification practices in cultures with limited or unconventional numeral systems; and cross-cultural investigations of perception, building on prior research in other regions of the Amazon and the world. Beyond human cognition, the station has also supported experimental research on the relationship between domesticated dogs and their owners. Chana prioritizes inclusive and ethical research that benefits and includes local communities and their perspectives by engaging local and Indigenous researchers, and leading social and educational projects focused on cultural revitalization. Chana welcomes collaboration with researchers who are interested in advancing the understanding of Amazonian societies, languages, and knowledge systems.
When describing faces, people often struggle with verbalizing facial features. Free descriptions seem to focus predominantly on aspects of faces that are inferred, for example, psychological traits, age, attractiveness, and so on, whereas facial features themselves are often described in a limited and imprecise fashion. However, existing research relies heavily on large, industrialized societies of the West, so it is unclear if the peculiar characteristics of facial language are universal or limited to a narrow set of languages. As part of the ongoing effort to diversify cognitive sciences, we investigate this under-researched area through a verbal description task targeting a selection of 51 facial features in a small-scale nonindustrialized group of Maniq speakers (Austroasiatic) and an industrialized group of Polish speakers (Indo-European). Our results suggest facial appearance is poorly coded in both Maniq and Polish. In addition, while the major types of physical facial descriptors used across both languages are similar, Maniq speakers show a more uniform focus on directly observable aspects of faces, whereas Polish speakers are additionally inclined to infer socially relevant meaning from faces, even when not prompted to do so. All in all, although facial appearance is generally difficult to put into words, culture-specific factors shape the language of faces in distinct ways.
Cognitive Science and its allied disciplines have now accepted diversity as a core requirement for understanding human nature in its true essence. We propose here two types of diversity mindsets that reflect distinct individual-difference attributes or personality types specifically linked to bilingualism and its adaptability. We conceptualize diversity as one's past and current "immersive" strategies in any society, both as an individual and a member of a collective, with distinct practices, cognitive strategies, language behavior, and even consciousness. The two types are "broad" and "narrow," defined by a person's adaptive competence in linguistic, social, cognitive, emotional, and cultural life. In our framework, variables such as language proficiency, educational background, occupational and socioeconomic status, and ethnocultural background interact to modulate diversity mindsets. The framework predicts experimental outcomes in a wide range of tasks for individuals identified as either "broad" or "narrow" in their diversity mindset type. We draw from evolutionary psychology, cultural neuroscience, current theories of psycholinguistics, and cognitive science to argue that it is not enough to include the non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) populations into research designs, but it is critical to study how individuals in different cultures adapt to diversity given their own cognitive, linguistic, and social constraints. Our framework explains how people with these diversity mindsets automatically stratify themselves into distinct groups and engage in distinct cognitive processes that influences bi-multilingualism in any context.
People are highly sensitive to agents in their environment-individuals who can move, make choices, and cause things to happen. Cross-cultural and developmental research suggests that humans have evolved to expect an environment with agents. But just how broad is the agent category that enjoys this privileged role in cognition? Most research has focused on humans as possible agents, but many other entities can also be conceptualized as having agency. These include not only animals but also plants (e.g., a vine wedging itself between two pieces of wood), natural entities (e.g., a volcano erupting), and robots (a large language model being able to carry on a conversation). In this paper, I review the state of the literature concerning whether people conceptualize plants as having agency. While previous research demonstrates substantial cross-cultural and cross-linguistic variation regarding whether agency is extended to plants, it remains unknown whether these behaviors are shaped by universal biases. I sketch several pathways for cognitive scientists to address this critical gap in our understanding of ecological cognition.
Computational accounts of learning and decision-making in cognitive systems, and models thereof, such as reinforcement learning, typically assume that the behavior of individual agents is determined by an externally designated reward signal such that the agent's goal is the maximization of its expected accumulated reward under the state dynamics of the world. Such frameworks, therefore, struggle to explain how coordinated behavior emerges in collective contexts involving multiple agents with potentially shared goals. To address this gap, we draw on a recently proposed computational framework of preference-based representations in cognitive agents. We extend this framework from a single- to a multiagent setting to explain how coordinated behavior can emerge from agents' subjective preferences over self- or other-oriented simulated experiences. We argue that such experience simulation mechanisms offer a cognitively plausible account for describing the acquisition, refinement, and sharing of goal-directed representations in cognitively bounded agents. We situate our proposed framework within current debates in artificial intelligence and cognitive science concerning notions of individual and collective agency.
How do minds differ across cultures? According to one long-standing perspective in the social sciences, people from Chinese cultures think less abstractly than people from Western cultures. Here, we argue that previous studies of attention, perception, and memory suggest that East Asians may think more abstractly than Westerners due to their greater sensitivity to social and physical contexts. We tested these competing hypotheses in studies focused on two operationalizations of abstract thought: event construal and analogical reasoning. In the first three studies (N = 1797), participants chose whether events were best described abstractly or concretely. Across six independent national samples, Chinese participants were more likely than U.S. participants to construe events abstractly. In the next study (n = 965), participants from a more context-sensitive Chinese subculture were more likely to construe events abstractly than those from a less context-sensitive subculture. In the final two studies, participants attempted to solve analogical reasoning problems. Across four independent national samples (N = 677), Chinese participants were more likely than U.S. participants to solve the analogical reasoning problems correctly. Together, these results challenge the claim that Westerners think more abstractly than Chinese people and suggest that context-sensitivity may be an engine of abstract cognition.
Psychedelic drugs have shown promise as a novel therapeutic for a variety of health conditions, yet the mechanisms underlying their clinical benefits remain unclear. A leading hypothesis suggests that psychedelics may enhance cognitive flexibility, a trait impaired in many of these conditions. While existing data from self-report and qualitative-interview studies support this hypothesis, data from experimental studies are limited and inconsistent. Here, we propose a novel cognitive development model that allows us to more precisely define cognitive flexibility as a mechanism underlying the effects of psychedelics. Considering children-a population known to be more cognitively flexible than adults-as a proxy psychedelic group, we identify three specific behaviors that could be used to empirically test this account: (1) changing the strength of, or reliance on, one's priors; (2) changing one's search and sampling strategies; and/or (3) changing one's allocation of attentional resources. Finally, we highlight preliminary findings from a pilot study supporting this framework and providing guidance for future work.
Research on language and olfaction presents a paradox. Language appears to support the formation of odor categories, yet it can also hinder odor recognition through verbal interference, highlighting that different olfactory processes get affected in distinct ways. The question, then, is not about whether language and odor processing in humans are inevitably linked, but about understanding the circumstances under which language either promotes or hinders olfactory processing, particularly in the domains of odor categorization and memory. To unmask the nature of this delicate balance, this article reviews empirical studies that point to a verbal enhancement of forming new odor categories and contextualizes it alongside experimental outcomes showing how odor memories can get verbally skewed. Findings from both angles are nested within prominent theories, including attribute differentiation, dual coding, ad hoc cognition and attentional tuning. The research reviewed here sits at the crossroads of language and olfaction. It offers fresh insights into how language scaffolds the organization of the mind, and it also outlines promising directions for future research. The main aim is to bring together two contrasting strands of research to investigate how language both facilitates and disrupts olfactory processing. The designs of studies in this article were inspired by Asifa Majid's outstanding contributions to cognitive science and honor her dedication to community building, particularly in exploring how diverse linguistic and cultural contexts affect olfactory cognition.
Previous work has shown that humans make consistent associations between odor and color. However, neurodiverse individuals, especially those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), perceive and interpret sensory information differently from their neurotypical peers. Their sensory perceptual experiences can involve hypersensitivity or hyposensitivity, as well as deficits in multisensory integration, especially among younger individuals. In this study, we evaluated olfactory-visual associations among verbal individuals with ASD, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and a comparison group of children without neurodevelopmental disorders by means of an odor-color association task. We found that youth with ASD, ADHD, and without neurodevelopmental disorders experience olfactory perception in a similar manner, showing similar inconsistencies in terms of (verbal) odor identification and odor-color associations, while rating odors similarly in terms of (un)pleasantness, specifically for sour, salty, and spicy odors and sweet and fruity odors. This supports the notion that neurodivergent youth present individual variation in olfaction, but less so in perceived odor pleasantness, results that promote further exploration of odor-color associations within and across diverse populations.
Kin terms appear among infants' earliest words, yet a full mastery of kin concepts typically emerges only in late childhood. This prolonged developmental trajectory reflects not only children's acquisition of an abstract relational system of words, but also their growing understanding of social relationships and interactional norms. In this paper, we review research on kin term acquisition from three perspectives: word learning, language socialization, and social learning. We then outline the problem space for a contemporary study of kin term acquisition, highlighting the most urgent barriers to understanding the nature of kin representations and their development. We close by introducing findings from two pilot studies that shed light on how social, cultural, and linguistic experience shapes kin term acquisition. By bringing together insights from psycholinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and infant social cognition, we aim to capture the richness of kin concepts in development and to offer a framework that can inspire future research across these fields.
In two studies, we test preschoolers' ability to compare abstract relationships across sets. In Experiments 1a-1d, we show that both older (4- and 5-year-olds) and younger (3-year-olds) preschoolers successfully match both monotonic and symmetric relationships in visual patterns and succeed both in direct relational matches and inverted ones (e.g., the target was a big circle, a small circle, big circle and the match was a small square, big square, small square). In Experiment 2, we show that 4- to 6-year-olds can compare more complex abstract relationships among sets, including relative set size, proportions, means, and modes. These results are consistent with the view that some of the culturally acquired epistemic practices used for scientific inquiry emerge, in their simplest forms, in early childhood.
Wanting composes flexibly with knowing: we can want to know, want to know what someone wants, and so on. In this paper, we develop a goal representation that allows for this type of rich integration between goals and other theory-of-mind concepts. We extend the memo programming language, which is specialized for theory-of-mind reasoning, with a new syntactic construct called "wants" that represents goals. To implement "wants," we borrow an idea from programming language theory: the notion of a "continuation," which allows reasoning about possible future states of a program. We show that the new "wants" construct can be composed with other memo primitives to represent a wide variety of interesting goals, and we discuss what the design of this construct can teach us about the concept of desire more broadly.
I argue that the current proliferation of generative artificial intelligence (AI) represents a new stage in a longer historical process of distancing humans from their unique individual psyches and of reducing participation and cultural diversity in music. The argument consists of six parts: (1) reiterating the uniqueness of individual psyches, which are often obscured by cultural norms, but are in the fact a vital source of cultural variation, and require for their proliferation that humans commune with their own psyches and enter into meaningful interaction with others; (2) presenting the presentational/participatory axes of music-making and music ontology, and arguing that the underlying psychology of music is participatory; (3) introducing a new rhetorical device, PECULIAR, which like WEIRD points at presentational forms of music-making as the outlier rather than the norm; (4) describing in brief the historical process through which music-making became less participatory, initially through elitist institutions and later through trade and commerce, and how mass media endangers musical diversity; (5) considering how generative AI technologies detach humans from their individual psyches and lead to the loss of cultural diversity; (6) arguing that AI will accelerate the reduction in musical participation and diversity, and suggesting ways for researchers to investigate the effects of these new technologies on cultures and minds. Finally, I suggest we should be mindful of the substantial social and spiritual benefits of musical participation, and find creative ways to encourage it.
