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Kalis A, Pascoe J, Segundo Ortin M. Running away from the marshmallow: the relevance of behaviour settings for a situated science of self-control. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2024; 379:20230289. [PMID: 39005035 PMCID: PMC11338581 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2023.0289] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2023] [Revised: 01/27/2024] [Accepted: 02/11/2024] [Indexed: 07/16/2024] Open
Abstract
The behaviour settings approach was introduced as a means to study the variability of human beings' behaviour outside the lab. More recently, it has been argued that it also provides a fruitful avenue for developing situated accounts of cognition. This article will provide a proof of concept for the latter suggestion, focusing on the science of self-control. Self-control is the ability of individuals to pursue goals they value in the face of conflicting motivations. The hypothesis we bring forward is that this ability should be understood as a set of skills by which individuals modulate their relation to their environment, more specifically the behaviour settings they inhabit. With this conception of self-control in hand, we will take a critical look at well-known experiments involving delayed gratification tasks and propose concrete suggestions on how to improve them. This will bring us to the conclusion that the behaviour settings framework might have a valuable role to play in developing a situated science of self-control. This article is part of the theme issue 'People, places, things and communities: expanding behaviour settings theory in the twenty-first century'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Annemarie Kalis
- Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht3512 BL, The Netherlands
| | - Josephine Pascoe
- Department of Philosophy, University of Murcia, Murcia30100, Spain
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Rooney M. The ecological dynamics of trumpet improvisation. Cogn Process 2024; 25:163-171. [PMID: 37740141 PMCID: PMC10827878 DOI: 10.1007/s10339-023-01159-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/11/2021] [Accepted: 08/29/2023] [Indexed: 09/24/2023]
Abstract
The nature of music improvisation continues to provide an interesting showcase of the multifaceted and skilful ways we engage with and act within our environments. Improvising musicians are somehow able to generate musical material in real time that adaptively navigates musical situations. In this article I explore the broader aspects of improvised activity-such as our bodily interactions with the instrument and environment-as they relate to improvised music-making. I do so by drawing upon principles from the embodied cognitive sciences, namely ecological and dynamical systems approaches. Firstly, I introduce the concept of affordances to illustrate the bidirectional relationship between improvisor and environment. I then take a dynamical view, exploring the ways that a trumpet player coordinates their body with their instrument and engages with trumpet affordances in order to navigate musical situations. I continue this dynamical view, taking the improviser to be an adaptive system whose behaviours are self-organised responses to a set of constraints. To conclude, I situate my research within the wider 4E approach. I advocate that 'E' approaches, which take seriously the role of the body-instrument-environment relationship, provide an insightful perspective on the nature of improvisation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Miles Rooney
- Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
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3
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Vaz DV, Stilwell P, Coninx S, Low M, Liebenson C. Affordance-based practice: An ecological-enactive approach to chronic musculoskeletal pain management. Braz J Phys Ther 2023; 27:100554. [PMID: 37925996 PMCID: PMC10632936 DOI: 10.1016/j.bjpt.2023.100554] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/05/2022] [Revised: 08/16/2023] [Accepted: 10/04/2023] [Indexed: 11/07/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND The biomedical understanding of chronic musculoskeletal pain endorses a linear relationship between noxious stimuli and pain, and is often dualist or reductionist. Although the biopsychosocial approach is an important advancement, it has a limited theoretical foundation. As such, it tends to be misinterpreted in manners that lead to artificial boundaries between the biological, psychological, and social, with fragmented and polarized clinical applications. OBJECTIVE We present an ecological-enactive approach to complement the biopsychosocial model. In this approach, the disabling aspect of chronic pain is characterized as an embodied, embedded, and enactive process of experiencing a closed-off field of affordances (i.e., shutting down of action possibilities). Pain is considered as a multi-dimensional, multicausal, and dynamic process, not locatable in any of the biopsychosocial component domains. Based on a person-centered reasoning approach and a dispositional view of causation, we present tools to reason about complex clinical problems in face of uncertainty and the absence of 'root causes' for pain. Interventions to open up the field of affordances include building ability and confidence, encouraging movement variability, carefully controlling contextual factors, and changing perceptions through action according to each patient's self-identified goals. A clinical case illustrates how reasoning based on an ecological-enactive approach leads to an expanded, multi-pronged, affordance-based intervention. CONCLUSIONS The ecological-enactive perspective can provide an overarching conceptual and practical framework for clinical practice, guiding and constraining clinicians to choose, combine, and integrate tools that are consistent with each other and with a true biopsychosocial approach.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniela Virgínia Vaz
- Faculty of Physical Therapy Department and Graduate Program in Rehabilitation Sciences, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
| | - Peter Stilwell
- Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
| | - Sabrina Coninx
- Department of Philosophy, VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Matthew Low
- Christchurch Hospital, Fairmile Road, Dorset, United Kingdom; Visiting Fellow, Orthopaedic Research Institute, Bournemouth University, United Kingdom; Consultant Physical Therapist, University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, England
| | - Craig Liebenson
- Founder of First Principles of Movement, Director of L.A. Sports & Spine, Los Angeles, and Continuing Education faculty with Parker University, Dallas, United States
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Araújo D, Roquette J, Davids K. Ubiquitous skill opens opportunities for talent and expertise development. Front Sports Act Living 2023; 5:1181752. [PMID: 37206951 PMCID: PMC10189132 DOI: 10.3389/fspor.2023.1181752] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/07/2023] [Accepted: 04/20/2023] [Indexed: 05/21/2023] Open
Abstract
In this article we aim to define and present the complementary nature of talent, skill and expertise. Human daily life is replete with expressions of skillful behaviours while interacting with the world, which in specific socio-culturally defined domains, such as sport and work, demand a specialization of such ubiquitous skill. Certain manifestations of ubiquitous skill are identified by experts from the specialized domain of sport with the label of "talent". In this paper we propose that "talent" is thus socially defined, considered identifiable at an early age and forms the basis for selection and entry at the starting point in domains like sport. Once an individual, defined as "talented" enters the "pathway" for participating in the sport domain, there begins an intense socialization process where training, evaluation, institutionalization and framing takes place for continued development of such talent. This is the formalised process of working on ubiquitous skills refining and changing them into specialized skills in sport. An ecological dynamics rationale is used to explain that this specialization approach is developed through a process of expert skill learning, which entails the stages of exploration and education of intention stabilization and perceptual attunement, and exploitation and calibration. Skill learning aims to develop potentiality and its expression in actuality, i.e., how learning is expressed in contextualized expert performance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Duarte Araújo
- CIPER, Faculdade de Motricidade Humana, Universidade de Lisboa, Cruz Quebrada, Portugal
- Correspondence: Duarte Araújo
| | - João Roquette
- CIPER, Faculdade de Motricidade Humana, Universidade de Lisboa, Cruz Quebrada, Portugal
| | - Keith Davids
- Sport & Human Performance Group, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, United Kingdom
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Kelty-Stephen DG, Mangalam M. Turing's cascade instability supports the coordination of the mind, brain, and behavior. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2022; 141:104810. [PMID: 35932950 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104810] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/15/2022] [Revised: 06/09/2022] [Accepted: 08/01/2022] [Indexed: 10/16/2022]
Abstract
Turing inspired a computer metaphor of the mind and brain that has been handy and has spawned decades of empirical investigation, but he did much more and offered behavioral and cognitive sciences another metaphor-that of the cascade. The time has come to confront Turing's cascading instability, which suggests a geometrical framework driven by power laws and can be studied using multifractal formalism and multiscale probability density function analysis. Here, we review a rapidly growing body of scientific investigations revealing signatures of cascade instability and their consequences for a perceiving, acting, and thinking organism. We review work related to executive functioning (planning to act), postural control (bodily poise for turning plans into action), and effortful perception (action to gather information in a single modality and action to blend multimodal information). We also review findings on neuronal avalanches in the brain, specifically about neural participation in body-wide cascades. Turing's cascade instability blends the mind, brain, and behavior across space and time scales and provides an alternative to the dominant computer metaphor.
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Affiliation(s)
- Damian G Kelty-Stephen
- Department of Psychology, State University of New York at New Paltz, New Paltz, NY, USA.
| | - Madhur Mangalam
- Department of Physical Therapy, Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.
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An ecological dynamics approach to motor learning in practice: Reframing the learning and performing relationship in high performance sport. ASIAN JOURNAL OF SPORT AND EXERCISE PSYCHOLOGY 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.ajsep.2022.04.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
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The stimulus-response crisis. Behav Brain Sci 2022; 45:e39. [PMID: 35139967 DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x21000285] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Abstract
Yarkoni correctly recognizes that one reason for psychology's generalizability crisis is the failure to account for variance within experiments. We argue that this problem, and the generalizability crisis broadly, is a necessary consequence of the stimulus-response paradigm widely used in psychology research. We point to another methodology, perturbation experiments, as a remedy that is not vulnerable to the same problems.
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Raja V, Valluri D, Baggs E, Chemero A, Anderson ML. The Markov blanket trick: On the scope of the free energy principle and active inference. Phys Life Rev 2021; 39:49-72. [PMID: 34563472 DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2021.09.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/09/2021] [Accepted: 09/10/2021] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
Abstract
The free energy principle (FEP) has been presented as a unified brain theory, as a general principle for the self-organization of biological systems, and most recently as a principle for a theory of every thing. Additionally, active inference has been proposed as the process theory entailed by FEP that is able to model the full range of biological and cognitive events. In this paper, we challenge these two claims. We argue that FEP is not the general principle it is claimed to be, and that active inference is not the all-encompassing process theory it is purported to be either. The core aspects of our argumentation are that (i) FEP is just a way to generalize Bayesian inference to all domains by the use of a Markov blanket formalism, a generalization we call the Markov blanket trick; and that (ii) active inference presupposes successful perception and action instead of explaining them.
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Affiliation(s)
- Vicente Raja
- Rotman Institute of Philosophy, Western University, Canada.
| | - Dinesh Valluri
- Department of Computer Science, Western University, Canada
| | - Edward Baggs
- Rotman Institute of Philosophy, Western University, Canada
| | - Anthony Chemero
- Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, USA; Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati, USA
| | - Michael L Anderson
- Rotman Institute of Philosophy, Western University, Canada; Department of Philosophy, Western University, Canada; Brain and Mind Institute, Western University, Canada
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Dotov D, Trainor LJ. Cross-frequency coupling explains the preference for simple ratios in rhythmic behaviour and the relative stability across non-synchronous patterns. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2021; 376:20200333. [PMID: 34420377 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0333] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Rhythms are important for understanding coordinated behaviours in ecological systems. The repetitive nature of rhythms affords prediction, planning of movements and coordination of processes within and between individuals. A major challenge is to understand complex forms of coordination when they differ from complete synchronization. By expressing phase as ratio of a cycle, we adapted levels of the Farey tree as a metric of complexity mapped to the range between in-phase and anti-phase synchronization. In a bimanual tapping task, this revealed an increase of variability with ratio complexity, a range of hidden and unstable yet measurable modes, and a rank-frequency scaling law across these modes. We use the phase-attractive circle map to propose an interpretation of these findings in terms of hierarchical cross-frequency coupling (CFC). We also consider the tendency for small-integer attractors in the single-hand repeated tapping of three-interval rhythms reported in the literature. The phase-attractive circle map has wider basins of attractions for such ratios. This work motivates the question whether CFC intrinsic to neural dynamics implements low-level priors for timing and coordination and thus becomes involved in phenomena as diverse as attractor states in bimanual coordination and the cross-cultural tendency for musical rhythms to have simple interval ratios. This article is part of the theme issue 'Synchrony and rhythm interaction: from the brain to behavioural ecology'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dobromir Dotov
- LIVELab, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S4K1.,Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada
| | - Laurel J Trainor
- LIVELab, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S4K1.,Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada.,Rotman Research Institute, Toronto, Canada
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Affiliation(s)
- Edward Baggs
- Rotman Institute of Philosophy, University of Western Ontario
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