Browsing by Subject "Mental representation"
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Item Open Access Computationalism: Still the only game in town-A reply to Swiatczak's "Conscious representations: An intractable problem for the computational theory of mind"(Springer Netherlands, 2012-02-18) Davenport, D.Mental representations, Swiatczak (Minds Mach 21:19-32, 2011) argues, are fundamentally biochemical and their operations depend on consciousness; hence the computational theory of mind, based as it is on multiple realisability and purely syntactic operations, must be wrong. Swiatczak, however, is mistaken. Computation, properly understood, can afford descriptions/explanations of any physical process, and since Swiatczak accepts that consciousness has a physical basis, his argument against computationalism must fail. Of course, we may not have much idea how consciousness (itself a rather unclear plurality of notions) might be implemented, but we do have a hypothesis-that all of our mental life, including consciousness, is the result of computational processes and so not tied to a biochemical substrate. Like it or not, the computational theory of mind remains the only game in town. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.Item Open Access From an unknown other to an attachment figure: How do mental representations change as attachments form?(Springer, 2015) Günaydın, Gül; Zayas, V.; Shoda, Y.Mental representations are the building blocks that guide affect, thought, and behaviors within adult attachment relationships. To date, research has focused on how individual differences in mental representations meaningfully relate to a person’s chronic attachment style and the attachment dynamics of a specific relationship, as well as their effects on perception, behavior, physiology, well-being, and other consequential outcomes. In the present chapter, we address a fundamentally different question: How do mental representations change as two individuals develop an attachment bond in adulthood? We propose a social cognitive framework for understanding how mental representations of others and self change over time as a function of various relationship turning points and lead to the formation of a full-fledged attachment bond. We propose that the positive psychological and physical outcomes, as well as the emotion regulatory effects, observed in pair bonds occur as a result of the two people forming over time a linked or “coupled” cognitive system. This “coupled” or “interlocked” system reflects enduring changes at the level of mental representations in the minds of both individuals, including elaboration and increased chronic accessibility of the partner mental representation, increased interconnectedness between self and partner representation, and automaticity of behavioral scripts. We review literature from diverse fields, including social and cognitive psychology and neuroscience, and integrate it within this social cognitive approach. We end by identifying questions and avenues for future research.