The developmental trinity of mind: Cognizance, executive control, and reasoning

Associations between executive function and attention abilities and language and social communication skills in young autistic children

LAY ABSTRACT

Executive functioning describes a set of cognitive processes that affect thinking and behavior. Past research has shown that autistic individuals often have delays in the acquisition of executive function abilities. Our study explored how differences in executive function and attention abilities relate to social abilities and communication/language in 180 young autistic children. Data were gathered via caregiver report (questionnaires/interviews) and an assessment of vocabulary skills. The ability to sustain attention to a dynamic video was measured via eye tracking. We found that children with higher levels of executive function skills demonstrated lower levels of social pragmatic problems, a measure of having difficulties in social contexts. Furthermore, children who were able to sustain their attention longer to the video displayed higher levels of expressive language. Our results emphasize the importance of executive function and attention skills across multiple areas of functioning in autistic children, in particular those that involve language and social communication.

Developmental and multiple languages-of-thought

We agree with the target article that assuming language-of-thought (LoT) is useful for the development of cognitive and developmental theories. We note that the target article is weak in its assumptions about development of LoT and possible existence of multiple LoTs. In response to these weaknesses, we outline several developmental principles for LoT development, showing how a developmental theory of LoT springs from probabilistic LoT. We suggest a system 1.5 of reasoning allowing interchange between Bayesian and logical rules as it fits purposes or domain.

Changing priorities in the development of cognitive competence and school learning: A general theory

This paper summarizes a theory of cognitive development and elaborates on its educational implications. The theory postulates that development occurs in cycles along multiple fronts. Cognitive competence in each cycle comprises a different profile of executive, inferential, and awareness processes, reflecting changes in developmental priorities in each cycle. Changes reflect varying needs in representing, understanding, and interacting with the world. Interaction control dominates episodic representation in infancy; attention control and perceptual awareness dominate in realistic representations in preschool; inferential control and awareness dominate rule-based representation in primary school; truth and validity control and precise self-evaluation dominate in principle-based thought in adolescence. We demonstrate that the best predictors of school learning in each cycle are the cycle's cognitive priorities. Also learning in different domains, e.g., language and mathematics, depends on an interaction between the general cognitive processes dominating in each cycle and the state of the representational systems associated with each domain. When a representational system is deficient, specific learning difficulties may emerge, e.g., dyslexia and dyscalculia. We also discuss the educational implications for evaluation and learning at school.

Divergent thinking in Italian elementary school children: the key role of probabilistic reasoning style

Divergent thinking is widely recognised as an individual creative potential and an essential factor in fostering creativity since the early stages of life. Albeit previous research revealed that creativity could be pursued through controlled mental processes (e.g. reasoning), the debate about the impact of children's reasoning on divergent thinking and, ultimately, creativity is still open. The present study sought to deepen the relationships between probabilistic reasoning and divergent thinking in a sample of 106 Italian children (mean_age = 8.64, SD_age = 1.34; 58 F). The Beads Task was used to evaluate probabilistic reasoning, whereas the Alternative Uses Task was administered to assess divergent thinking. Results revealed that analytical, slow, and effortful forms of thought underpinned by high probabilistic competencies predict children's divergent production. These findings suggest that a higher score for divergence of thinking depends on a high involvement of reasoning style, which in this study relies on the ability to make probabilistic decisions in ambiguous situations. Future research directions were discussed.

Development of information integration in the visual working memory of preschoolers

Visual working memory (WM) plays a pivotal role in integrating fragments into meaningful units, but no study has addressed how visual WM integration takes place in children. The current study examined whether WM integration emerges once preschoolers master Gestalt cue and can retain two representations in WM (automatic integration hypothesis), or still needs time to mature (maturation-of-integration hypothesis). Four experiments (N = 168, 81 females, 4- to 6-year-olds, Chinese, in Hangzhou, China, from 2016.10 to 2021.11) were conducted. Although 4-year-olds can retain two objects in WM and benefit from Gestalt cues in simultaneous display (Cohen's ds >1.00), they failed when memory arrays were presented sequentially. Meanwhile, 5- and 6-year-olds consistently demonstrated WM integration ability (all Cohen's ds >0.69), supporting the maturation-of-integration hypothesis.

Large-Scale Functional Networks, Cognition and Brain Structures Supporting Social Cognition and Theory of Mind Performance in Prodromal to Mild Alzheimer's Disease

Impairment of social cognition (SC) skills such as recognition and attribution of intentions and affective states of others (Theory of Mind, ToM) has been evidenced in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). This study investigated the neuropsychological, neuroanatomical and brain-functional underpinnings of SC processing to obtain an understanding of the social neurophenotype in early probable AD. Forty-six patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild probable AD underwent SC assessment including emotion recognition (Ekman-60-faces task) and cognitive and affective ToM (Reading-the-Mind-in-the-Eyes test and Story-based Empathy task). Linear models tested the association between SC scores and neuropsychological measures, grey matter maps and large-scale functional networks activity. The executive domain had the most predominant association with SC scores in the cognitive profile. Grey matter volume of the anterior cingulate, orbitofrontal, temporoparietal junction (TPJ), superior temporal, and cerebellar cortices were associated with ToM. Social cognition scores were associated with lower connectivity of the default-mode network with the prefrontal cortex. The right fronto-parietal network displayed higher inter-network connectivity in the right TPJ and insula while the salience network showed lower inter-network connectivity with the left TPJ and insula. Connectivity coupling alterations of executive-attentional networks may support default mode social-cognitive-associated decline through the recruitment of frontal executive mechanisms.

How Wisdom Emerges from Intellectual Development: A Developmental/Historical Theory for Raising Mandelas

This paper invokes cognitive developmental theory as a means for preparing citizens to deal with and resolve conflicts within or across nations. We take the centuries-old Greek–Turkish dispute as an example. We first outline a theory of intellectual development postulating that mental changes emerge in response to changing developmental priorities in successive life periods, namely, interaction control in infancy, attention control and representational awareness in preschool, inferential control and cognitive management in primary school, and advanced forms of reasoning and self-evaluation in adolescence. Based on this model, we outline a control theory of wisdom postulating that different aspects of wisdom emerge during development as different levels of control of relations with others: trust and care for others in infancy, taking the other’s perspective, reflectivity, and empathy in preschool, rationality and understanding the rules underlying individual and group interactions in primary school, and understanding the general principles of societal operation explaining the differences in approach and interest between groups in adolescence and early adulthood. We also outline the educational implications of this theory for the education of citizens by capitalizing on intellectual strengths at successive developmental periods to comprehensively understand the world and to act prudently when dealing with interpersonal and social or national conflict. Finally, the paper discusses the political constraints and implications of this theory. This is the first attempt to derive wisdom from the development of cognitive and personality processes from infancy through early adulthood and to connect it to serious world problems.

Abstracting abstraction in development and cognitive ability

We focus on the theory of abstraction proposed by the target article. We suggest that abstraction varies at different levels of learning, cognitive development, or cognitive ability. We argue that this theory does not specify how abstraction is done at each of these levels. Because of these weaknesses, the theory cannot explicate how individuals differ in mental time travel at different phases of life or different levels of cognitive ability.

Mind-Personality Relations from Childhood to Early Adulthood

We present three studies which investigated the relations between cognition and personality from 7 to 20 years of age. All three studies showed that general cognitive ability and the general factor of personality are significantly related throughout this age span. This relation was expressed in several ways across studies. The first investigated developmental relations between three reasoning domains (inductive, deductive, and scientific) and Eysenck's four personality dimensions in a longitudinal-sequential design where 260 participants received the cognitive tests three times, and the personality test two times, covering the span from 9 to 16 years. It was found that initial social likeability significantly shapes developmental momentum in cognition and vice versa, especially in the 9- to 11-year period. The second study involved 438 participants from 7 to 17 years, tested twice on attention control, working memory, reasoning in different domains, and once by a Big Five Factors inventory. Extending the findings of the first, this study showed that progression in reasoning is affected negatively by conscientiousness and positively by openness, on top of attention control and working memory influences. The third study tested the relations between reasoning in several domains, the ability to evaluate one's own cognitive performance, self-representation about the reasoning, the Big Five, and several aspects of emotional intelligence, from 9 to 20 years of age (N = 247). Network, hierarchical network, and structural equation modeling showed that cognition and personality are mediated by the ability of self-knowing. Emotional intelligence was not an autonomous dimension. All dimensions except emotional intelligence influenced academic performance. A developmental model for mind-personality relations is proposed.