Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Cognitive Science

Hannula, Deborah E.; Minor, Greta N.; Slabbekoorn, Dana

doi: 10.1002/wcs.1648pmid: 37012615

The term “memory” typically refers to conscious retrieval of events and experiences from our past, but experience can also change our behaviour without corresponding awareness of the learning process or the associated outcome. Based primarily on early neuropsychological work, theoretical perspectives have distinguished between conscious memory, said to depend critically on structures in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), and a collection of performance‐based memories that do not. The most influential of these memory systems perspectives, the declarative memory theory, continues to be a mainstay of scientific work today despite mounting evidence suggesting that contributions of MTL structures go beyond the kinds or types of memory that can be explicitly reported. Consistent with these reports, more recent perspectives have focused increasingly on the processing operations supported by particular brain regions and the qualities or characteristics of resulting representations whether memory is expressed with or without awareness. These alternatives to the standard model generally converge on two key points. First, the hippocampus is critical for relational memory binding and representation even without awareness and, second, there may be little difference between some types of priming and explicit, familiarity‐based recognition. Here, we examine the evolution of memory systems perspectives and critically evaluate scientific evidence that has challenged the status quo. Along the way, we highlight some of the challenges that researchers encounter in the context of this work, which can be contentious, and describe innovative methods that have been used to examine unconscious memory in the lab.

Pelkey, Jamin

doi: 10.1002/wcs.1649pmid: 37186163

The findings of cognitive linguistics demonstrate the thoroughly embodied grounding of linguistic constructions and linguistic meaning ranging from abstract thought to interactive communication. A historical survey and updated summary of work in this area illustrates the many layers of bodily meaning that we rely on when thinking and communicating as human beings. Key distinctions, definitions, and clarifications, plus an overview of key works on embodied cognition in cognitive linguistics provide necessary context for understanding specific aspects of linguistic embodiment, including schemas and iconicity, mapping and metaphor, categories and projections, embodied grammar and abstract thought, intersubjectivity, and textual meaning. Realigning philosophical presuppositions with the findings of cognitive linguistics has important consequences: Body and mind can be reunited in lived experience. Both imaginative thought and rational thought can be understood as reliant on the same movement and memory structures. Even the most habituated form‐content relationships in language can be understood as growing out of vital networks of real‐world experiential relations, from the personal to the interpersonal. And instead of being understood as the narrow purview of semantics and pragmatics, the study of meaning can be embraced as the purpose and function of linguistics. These consequences have potential for revolutionizing scientific inquiry and theory building across a wide array of disciplines.

Sullivan, Karen

doi: 10.1002/wcs.1651pmid: 37186459

A sociologist and a linguist, unaware of each other's work, each assigned a technical meaning to the term frame around 1970, based on separate usages of the word frame from the 1950s. Each researcher instigated a theory of frame analysis. Over the following decades, the two approaches to framing became intertwined as followers of both Goffman and Fillmore studied metaphoric framing, examined factors affecting the communication of frames, and became particularly interested in politics and the mass media. Years later, many theorists complain about the fragmented field of frame studies. The paper suggests that some of the fragmentation can be resolved by recognizing the dual origins of framing studies, and classifying instances of framing in either the Goffman or the Fillmore tradition as occurring at the level of language, thought, or communication. These three levels are termed semantic framing, cognitive framing, and communicative framing.

Danks, David; Davis, Isaac

doi: 10.1002/wcs.1650pmid: 37032464

Causal inference is a key step in many research endeavors in cognitive science and neuroscience, and particularly cognitive neuroscience. Statistical knowledge is sufficient for prediction and diagnosis, but causal knowledge is required for action and intervention. Most statistics courses and textbooks emphasize the difficulty of causal inference, focusing on the maxim that “correlation does not mean causation”: there can be multiple causal possibilities, often many of them, consistent with given observed statistics. This paper focuses instead on the conceptual issues and assumptions that confront causal and other kinds of inference, primarily focusing on cognitive neuroscience. We connect inference methods with goals and challenges, and provide concrete guidance about how to select appropriate tools for the scientific task.

doi: 10.1002/wcs.1608pmid: N/A

Robins, Sarah

doi: 10.1002/wcs.1653pmid: 37177850

The search for the engram—the neural mechanism of memory—has been a guiding research project for neuroscience since its emergence as a distinct scientific field. Recent developments in the tools and techniques available for investigating the mechanisms of memory have allowed researchers to proclaimed the search is over. While there is ongoing debate about the justification for that claim, renewed interest in the engram is clear. This attention highlights the impoverished status of the engram concept. As research accelerates, the simple characterization of the engram as an enduring physical change is stretched thin. Now that the engram commitment has been made more explicit, it must also be made more precise. If the project of 20th century neurobiology was finding the engram, the project of the 21st must be supplying a richer account of what's been found. This paper sketches a history of the engram, and a way forward.