The compatibility within a modular framework of emergent and dynamical processes in mind and brain

Abstract

Abstract In the light of the continuing controversy over evidence supporting emergentist and non-emergentist accounts of cognitive and brain development, this commentary compares the proposals for a neuroemergentist framework for studying cognition and the brain (Hernandez et al., in press) and compares it with the Modular Cognition Framework (MCF) also known as Modular Online Growth and Use of Language (Truscott & Sharwood Smith, 2004). Both approaches are intended to optimise the exploration of relationships between mind and brain. The purpose of this comparison is to show that evidence that suggests emergentist and dynamical traits in development and processing can equally be seen as the product of a modular mind with a stable set of independent systems each with its own properties and mode of operation, all basically in place at birth. The fluid dynamical character of performance and the flexible adaptive responses of the mind to a constantly shifting environment can, in other words, also be explained by the way modular systems collaborate and generally interact to solve a continuing flow of tasks. Some key aspects of the MCF are introduced to elaborate on this claim including the way in which structures of different types, created in different modular systems. are associated and used in different combinations to solve tasks during processing as also the effect of shifting resting levels of activation. The discussion concludes with an MCF perspective on bilingual development and behaviour with special reference to how more than one language can coexist in one mind and the cognitive advantages of bilingualism.