The transition of object to mental manipulation: beyond a species-specific view of intelligence

Bar-Hen-Schweiger, Moran; Henik, Avishai

doi:10.1007/s10071-020-01375-2

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…In the field of intelligence, researchers distinguish between g that describes human intelligence and G representing similar observed skills among other species. However, recently a description of intelligence was proposed (Bar-Hen-Schweiger & Henik, 2019, 2020Bar-Hen-Schweiger, Schweiger, & Henik, 2017) in which cognitive functions are an extension of biological skills that evolved from object manipulation into mental manipulation. The evolution of these skills appears in response to various environmental conditions (Parker, 2015;Piaget, 1971;Sternberg, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a domain-general construct, MM is composed of various processes (e.g., transformation, perspective taking, rotation), that serve cognitive functions studied under various titles such as mental object manipulation (e.g., Rosenbaum, Chapman, Weigelt, Weiss, & van der Wel, 2012;Shepard & Metzler, 1971), perspective taking (e.g., Decety & Grèzes, 2006;Goldman, 2012;Nichols & Stich, 2003), creativity (e.g., Chavez, 2016;Finke, 1996;Ribot, 1906) and language comprehension (e.g., Garnham, 1981;Van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983;Zwaan, 2016;Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998). The above implies that MM may best be described as essential to the very act of thinking (Bar-Hen-Schweiger & Henik, 2020;Byrne, 2016;Johnson-Laird, 1983;Kahneman & Miller, 1986). Importantly, different domains have focused on different aspects of MM.…”

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Henik

Bar-Hen-Schweiger²,

Milshtein³

et al. 2020

Mind Brain and Education

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The endless wealth of information on the internet sharpens the question: how much and what is really important for us to remember? This issue is related to questions regarding the core processes involved in reasoning and thinking. We present mental manipulation (MM) as the core of reasoning and examine the above-mentioned issue in light of MM's vital role in reasoning and problem-solving. WHAT IS MENTAL MANIPULATION? Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics (in 1965), tells the following story (Feynman & Leighton, 1997). When he was a kid, he was known for fixing radios. One day a guy asked him to fix a radio that made tremendous noise when it was turned on. Feynman turned on the radio, heard the noise, and started thinking as he walked back and forth. "I realize that one way it can happen is that the tubes are heating up in the wrong order-that is, the amplifier's all hot, the tubes are ready to go, and there's nothing feeding in, or there's some back circuit feeding in, or … and therefore it's making a lot of noise … " The guy said, "You come to fix the radio, but you're only walking back and forth!" Feynman responded "I'm thinking!" and continued to describe his thinking to himself: " … take the tubes out, and reverse the order completely in the set." So, he changed the tubes around, stepped to the front of the radio, turned the thing on, and it is as quiet as a lamb: it [the radio] waits until it heats up, and then plays perfectly-no noise. The guy got Feynman other jobs, and kept telling everybody what a tremendous genius he was, saying, "He fixes radios by thinking!" "The whole idea of thinking, to fix a radio … he never thought that was possible." (pp. 19-20). Feynman actually describes a classical exemplar of mental manipulation (MM); he

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Yes, Memorize

Henik

Bar-Hen-Schweiger²,

Milshtein³

et al. 2020

Mind Brain and Education

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“…Although comparative psychologists traditionally focused on domain-specific traits and abilities, they have more recently engaged in the pursuit of a better understanding of general intelligence in nonhuman animals (hereafter nonhumans; e.g., Arden & Adams, 2016;Bar-Hen-Schweiger & Henik, 2020;Burkart et al, 2017;Damerius et al, 2019). Intelligence is almost always viewed through an anthropocentric lens (de Waal, 2016; Leslie, 2018) that fails to appreciate the diverse learning challenges, sensory modalities, brain structures, and cognitive mechanisms of nonprimate species.…”

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confidence: 99%

It's Hard to Be Social Alone: Cognitive Complexity as Transfer Within and Across Domains

Vonk¹,

Vincent²,

O’Connor³

2021

CCBR

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The field of comparative cognition is intent on demarcating cognition into social and physical domains; however, we argue that it is not useful to differentiate between cognitive processes involving social versus physical (nonsocial) phenomena. We argue that similar cognitive mechanisms underly reasoning about social and physical information and that it is transfer of knowledge and skills within and across these "domains" that is most informative with regard to identifying cognitive flexibility. We argue that social complexity, typically defined as group size, although important, has no special influence over the evolution of social cognition. Likewise, foraging complexity, typically conceptualized as dietary breadth, extractive foraging, and patchy food distribution, has no special influence over the evolution of physical cognition. Instead, researchers should treat social and foraging complexity as continuous rather than dichotomous variables that interact with one another and with environmental unpredictability to predict domain-general cognition that can be applied flexibly across novel features, contexts, and experiences. To answer long-standing questions about the selection pressures for cognition, researchers must consider species that differ in various aspects of their ecology on analogous tasks within and across domains.

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“…For example, intelligence in humans has been based on the human 'g' factor, rather than a 'G,' representing observed skills among other species. Similar distinctions have limited the generalizability of the concept of intelligence and its application in biological and cultural contexts (see also Bar-Hen-Schweiger et al, 2017;Burkart et al, 2016;Sternberg, 2017).…”

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confidence: 99%