{"title":"Learning by thinking in natural and artificial minds.","authors":"Tania Lombrozo","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.07.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.07.007","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Canonical cases of learning involve novel observations external to the mind, but learning can also occur through mental processes such as explaining to oneself, mental simulation, analogical comparison, and reasoning. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) reveal that such learning is not restricted to human minds: artificial minds can also self-correct and arrive at new conclusions by engaging in processes of 'learning by thinking' (LbT). How can elements already in the mind generate new knowledge? This article aims to resolve this paradox, and in so doing highlights an important feature of natural and artificial minds - to navigate uncertain environments with variable goals, minds with limited resources must construct knowledge representations 'on demand'. LbT supports this construction.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"1011-1022"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142299474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The forgotten body: the emergence of conscious experiences in early life.","authors":"Anna Ciaunica","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.06.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.06.009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"967-968"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142146677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Response to Goddu et al.: new ways of characterizing and acquiring knowledge.","authors":"Ilker Yildirim, L A Paul","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.08.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.08.004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"965-966"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142299476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"LLMs don't know anything: reply to Yildirim and Paul.","authors":"Mariel K Goddu, Alva Noë, Evan Thompson","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.06.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.06.008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"963-964"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142299475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mathias Osvath, Pavel Němec, Stephen L Brusatte, Lawrence M Witmer
{"title":"Thought for food: the endothermic brain hypothesis.","authors":"Mathias Osvath, Pavel Němec, Stephen L Brusatte, Lawrence M Witmer","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.08.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.08.002","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The evolution of whole-body endothermy occurred independently in dinosaurs and mammals and was associated with some of the most significant neurocognitive shifts in life's history. These included a 20-fold increase in neurons and the evolution of new brain structures, supporting similar functions in both lineages. We propose the endothermic brain hypothesis, which holds that elaborations in endotherm brains were geared towards increasing caloric intake through efficient foraging. The hypothesis is grounded in the intrinsic coupling of cognition and organismic self-maintenance. We argue that coevolution of increased metabolism and new forms of cognition should be jointly investigated in comparative studies of behaviors and brain anatomy, along with studies of fossil species. We suggest avenues for such research and highlight critical open questions.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"998-1010"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142146678","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bilingualism modifies cognition through adaptation, not transfer.","authors":"Ellen Bialystok","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.07.012","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.07.012","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The standard explanation for bilingual effects on cognition is that an aspect of language processing transfers to nonverbal cognitive performance, leading to improvements in executive functioning. However, much evidence is incompatible with that view, and transfer across those domains seems unlikely. The present argument is that bilingual experience modifies cognition through an adaptation to the underlying attention system, making attention more efficient. 'Transfer' focuses on the overlap of specific processes, so task similarity predicts outcomes. By contrast, 'adaptation' focuses on recruitment of the modified resource, so the degree of attention required predicts outcome. In this view, bilinguals require less attentional effort than monolinguals for similar levels of performance, and outperform monolinguals on tasks with high attention demands regardless of task similarity.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"987-997"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11540729/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142009780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Franziska Bröker, Lori L Holt, Brett D Roads, Peter Dayan, Bradley C Love
{"title":"Demystifying unsupervised learning: how it helps and hurts.","authors":"Franziska Bröker, Lori L Holt, Brett D Roads, Peter Dayan, Bradley C Love","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.09.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.09.005","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Humans and machines rarely have access to explicit external feedback or supervision, yet manage to learn. Most modern machine learning systems succeed because they benefit from unsupervised data. Humans are also expected to benefit and yet, mysteriously, empirical results are mixed. Does unsupervised learning help humans or not? Here, we argue that the mixed results are not conflicting answers to this question, but reflect that humans self-reinforce their predictions in the absence of supervision, which can help or hurt depending on whether predictions and task align. We use this framework to synthesize empirical results across various domains to clarify when unsupervised learning will help or hurt. This provides new insights into the fundamentals of learning with implications for instruction and lifelong learning.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"974-986"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142367187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Analogies for modeling belief dynamics.","authors":"Henrik Olsson, Mirta Galesic","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.07.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.07.001","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Belief dynamics has an important role in shaping our responses to natural and societal phenomena, ranging from climate change and pandemics to immigration and conflicts. Researchers often base their models of belief dynamics on analogies to other systems and processes, such as epidemics or ferromagnetism. Similar to other analogies, analogies for belief dynamics can help scientists notice and study properties of belief systems that they would not have noticed otherwise (conceptual mileage). However, forgetting the origins of an analogy may lead to some less appropriate inferences about belief dynamics (conceptual baggage). Here, we review various analogies for modeling belief dynamics, discuss their mileage and baggage, and offer recommendations for using analogies in model development.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"907-923"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141789622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"To test the boundaries of consciousness, study animals.","authors":"Simon A B Brown, Elizabeth S Paul, Jonathan Birch","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.06.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.06.003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"874-875"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142047376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tracking dynamic social impressions from multidimensional voice representation.","authors":"Xiaoming Jiang, Marc D Pell","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.08.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.08.005","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recent research by Lavan et al. explores how individuals form complex impressions from voices. Using electroencephalography and behavioral measures, the study identifies distinct time courses for discerning traits, with early acoustic processing preceding higher-order perception. These findings shed light on the temporal dynamics of voice-based person perception and its neural underpinnings.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"878-880"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142299478","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}