Animacy In Cognition Effects Mechanisms And Theories

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Animacy in Cognition: Effects, Mechanisms, and Theories

Author: Michael J. Serra
language: en
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Release Date: 2024-11-19
People and animals – broadly, “animates” – are important, dynamic forces in the natural world. They represent social targets such as friends and enemies, economic and romantic partners, predators and prey, and companions. Most importantly, unlike inanimate objects, animate agents have internal goals and drives that cause them to act on the world, rather than simply be acted on. In short, animates fill our world with novel causes, and have been a consistent selection pressure over the course of evolution – human and nonhuman. Cognitive scientists have long acknowledged the importance of animacy, investigating it as a perceptual phenomenon, as a component of language, a natural category, a demand on attention, a dimension of neurological organization, and more recently as an important factor in memory. Although animacy has been a dimension of interest in cognitive science for quite some time, cognitive scientists from different subdisciplines interested in animacy (e.g., perception, attention, language, and memory) rarely talk with one another to synthesize findings across subfields. A major goal of this research topic is to solicit articles from across cognitive science (in a broad sense) that investigate the role that animacy plays in cognition, in the hopes that authors and readers may begin to see the “bigger picture” regarding how animacy influences the mind. We hope that by bringing together researchers from across cognitive science we will hear from a diverse set of perspectives regarding animacy, representing a variety of research questions and methodologies within this larger topic. Likewise, we hope that the finished research topic will lead to an increased and more varied exploration of the role of animacy in our thoughts and actions and will appeal to readers across fields.
The Theory of Evolution and Its Impact

Author: Aldo Fasolo
language: en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date: 2011-11-27
Year 2009 was the triumph of Darwin as a global superstar, spinning from the pop icon to the actual understanding to what make him a great innovator, able to give a turn to whole modern culture. Does all this activity mean evolution has lost its ability to excite fear and opposition? After such a deluge of books, conferences, reviews, gadgets, what is today our vision on theory of Evolution and its Impact? These are the questions asked at an inter-academy conference held in Torino (May 27-29, 2010) among the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. The present book collects the contributions from the meeting, mixing styles, arguments, topics, history and philosophy of science, modern biology and epistemology . This kind of inter-disciplinary approach may appear erratic, but it conveys flashes of lights on the changing scene where the theory of evolution plays. This is in line with the idea to reopen the file of the Two Cultures, looking at shared problems, which are not yet really the Third Culture invoked by Charles Percy Snow half a century ago, but they can foster it, at least in such a pivotal domain as evolution. According to the philosopher Michael Ruse, the conclusion is “that in fifty years or a hundred years we will still have the theory of the Origin around. Great, precisely because it does not stand still, but remakes itself and grows and changes by virtue of the fact that it gives such a terrific foundation. Is Darwinism past its sell-by date? Not by a long chalk yet!”
Handbook of Gestalt-Theoretical Psychology of Art

The Handbook of Gestalt-Theoretic Psychology of Art synthesizes contemporary research in the psychology of perception, cognition, language and hearing to reassess the Gestalt approach to studying the arts. Since Rudolf Arnheim’s death in 2007, the field has seen a resurgence, with scientists revisiting and reinventing previously articulated points of view. For the first time, this new work is gathered in a single comprehensive resource. Beginning with a history of the field, the book considers meta-theoretic issues before discussing the various senses. It explores topics including aesthetics, space, poetry, literature, music, and film, bringing together leading researchers from across the discipline. It will be an essential read for all students and researchers of the psychology of art, the psychology of perception, or Gestalt Theory.