Francis F. Steen

Literature and the Cognitive Revolution: An Introduction

Literary studies and the cognitive sciences, pursuing common interests in language, mental acts, and linguistic artifacts, have developed markedly different approaches to similar phenomena of reading, imaginative involvement, and textual patterning. Until quite recently, the distance between them has drawn more attention than their possible convergence (Franchi and Guzeldere ). A number of literary theorists and critics, however, have steadily been producing work that finds its inspiration, its methodology, and its guiding paradigms through a dialogue with one ormore fields within cognitive science: artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, postChomskian linguistics, philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. Reuven Tsur () has been developing his ‘‘cognitive poetics’’ since the s; the prominent psychoanalytic critic Norman Holland (: ) demonstrated the advantages of attending to the ‘‘more powerful psychology’’ emerging from cognitive neuroscience in ; Mark Turner (: viii) advanced his far-reaching project of a ‘‘cognitive rhetoric’’ in ; and Ellen Spolsky (: ) trenchantly brought a theory of ‘‘cognitive instability’’ to bear on literary interpretation in . These and likeminded critics respond to the limitations (or, in Spolsky’s case, missed opportunities) of poststructuralist conceptions of meaning and interpretation by questioning the reigning models in the field, whether in the interest of

Evolution's Pedagogy: An Adaptationist Model of Pretense and Entertainment

The portrayal of the actions of fictive characters for purposes of entertainment is a familiar phenomenon. Theories that seek to explain why we are attracted to such fictions and whether we learn from them have produced no consensus and no adequate overall account. In this paper, we present the hypothesis that entertainment relies on cognitive adaptations for pretend play. As a simplified model system, we draw on our field study of childrens chase play, which is characterized by an elementary form of pretense. The children pretend, at first without consciously representing their pretense, to be chased by predators. The details of this behavior, widespread among mammals, indicate that the biological function of the game may be to train predator-evasion strategies. Chase play, we suggest, evolved in early mammals because it enabled cheap and plentiful resources to be used to train strategies for events that are rare, dangerous, and expensive. More generally, we argue that pretense is used to access spaces of possible actions in order to locate and practice new strategies. It relies on the creation of a simulated scenario and requires sophisticated source monitoring. The simulation is experienced as intrinsically rewarding; boredom is a design feature to motivate the construction of a more appropriate pedagogical situation, while the thrill of play signals optimal learning conditions. The conscious narrative elaboration of chase games involves an elementary form of role play, where we propose a virtual agent is created that tracks and acts on the memories required for coherent action within the simulation. These complex if familiar design features, we suggest, provide a minimalist functional and adaptationist account of the central features of entertainment: that it is fun, that it involves us imaginatively and emotionally, and that it has a tacit pedagogical effect. The model provides a principled and testable account of fiction-based entertainment grounded in evolutionary and cognitive processes.

Reframing the Adjustment: A Response to Adler and Gross

We admire the seriousness of purpose evident throughout ‘‘Adjusting the Frame,’’ the substantive response by Hans Adler and Sabine Gross to our coedited special issue of Poetics Today (, no. ), ‘‘Literature and the Cognitive Revolution.’’ Responding in turn, we also wish to acknowledge the extensive scholarship that informs their response, not least their close acquaintance with primary and critical texts in German that clearly ought to play a greater role in the growing area of cognitive literary and cultural studies. Not least, we appreciate the spirit of hospitality that marks especially the first section of ‘‘Adjusting the Frame.’’ Adler and Gross make a point of welcoming the new work in cognitive criticism that we sought at once to feature, challenge, and extend in the special issue. They find it ‘‘refreshing’’ and admire its ‘‘inclusionary’’ ethos and the resulting ‘‘heterogeneous’’ mix of essays, positions, and objects of critical interest (Adler and Gross : –).Given the suspicion, hostility, or (perhapsworst) indifference that a novel critical field may sometimes provoke, we relish the significant common ground that Adler andGross establish with the critics and theorists represented in the special issue. In fact, we have still more in common with Adler and Gross than they seem to allow, as we hope to demonstrate in the course of this rejoinder. At the same time, we have found

Red Hen Lab: Dataset and Tools for Multimodal Human Communication Research

Researchers in the fields of AI and Communication both study human communication, but despite the opportunities for collaboration, they rarely interact. Red Hen Lab is dedicated to bringing them together for research on multimodal communication, using multidisciplinary teams working on vast ecologically-valid datasets. This article introduces Red Hen Lab with some possibilities for collaboration, demonstrating the utility of a variety of machine learning and AI-based tools and methods to fundamental research questions in multimodal human communication. Supplemental materials are at http://babylon.library.ucla.edu/redhen/KI.

Toward an infrastructure for data-driven multimodal communication research

Abstract Research into the multimodal dimensions of human communication faces a set of distinctive methodological challenges. Collecting the datasets is resource-intensive, analysis often lacks peer validation, and the absence of shared datasets makes it difficult to develop standards. External validity is hampered by small datasets, yet large datasets are intractable. Red Hen Lab spearheads an international infrastructure for data-driven multimodal communication research, facilitating an integrated cross-disciplinary workflow. Linguists, communication scholars, statisticians, and computer scientists work together to develop research questions, annotate training sets, and develop pattern discovery and machine learning tools that handle vast collections of multimodal data, beyond the dreams of previous researchers. This infrastructure makes it possible for researchers at multiple sites to work in real-time in transdisciplinary teams. We review the vision, progress, and prospects of this research consortium.

Grasping Philosophy by the Roots

eductionism has a tattered reputation; its promise of simplicity is suspect. Yet the power of an explanation lies precisely in identify- ing that level of analysis at which simplicity is genuinely illuminating. Philosophy may seem an unlikely candidate for such a project; it cultivates abstruseness as a measure of sophistication, and surely its unwieldy subject matter deserves no less. There is, then, something refreshingly shameless about Lakoff and Johnsons Philosophy In the Flesh, extravagantly subtitled The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. It sets out to give us a clear window into the structure of philosophical thinking itself, into the spreading lines of reasoning that have patterned this millennial search for a truth that can be formulated. Can it deliver? The hidden engines that construct philosophical edifices, the au- thors suggest, are not the ones that spring first to mind. Philosophical ideas are not systematically assembled out of meticulous observations, drawn up within a mathematical order of abstract reason, or serendipitously manifested in an unmediated glimpse of truth. Nor are our ideas of the mind and of the cosmos, of causality and morality, arbitrary inventions ex nihilo, acts of the creative will. Nor yet are they simply cultural constructions, pawns of concealed political agendas.