Be able to explain central processing in Fodor’s idea of modularity • Be able to

Question

Be able to explain central processing in Fodor’s idea of modularity

• Be able to explain why some modules proposed in the context of massive modularity are more controversial than others (e.g., the example of face-specific mechanisms in infancy)

• Be able to explain two arguments proposed by Cosmides and Tooby against domain-general mechanisms

• Be able to explain what makes ACT-R a hybrid architecture

• Understand the differences between anatomical, functional, and effective connectivity

• Be able to explain neuroanatomical methods and brain imaging methods  

• Understand the key limitations of different brain imaging methods

• Be able to explain what the small world architecture implies about the brain connectivity

• Understand the nature and the solutions to the early-late debate in cognitive psychology and the corresponding locus of selection problem in neuroscience

• Be able to explain what the research using ERP recordings suggests about the nature of attention

• Be able to explain to role of the parietal cortex in attention

• Understand what the temporal dimension of attention is

• Understand the core idea behind dynamical systems modeling of cognition

• Be able to explain why the dynamical systems approach offers a better explanation for A-not-B error than other accounts

Explanation / Answer

Modularity of mind is the idea that the human mind is composed of innate discrete structures or ‘modules’ which have evolved over time and help in adaptation of the species. Several competing views have been proposed regarding the functional capacity of the mind such as the horizontal view which looks at the interactions between faculties such as memory, imagination,judgement, and perception, and the contradictory vertical view that focuses on distinguishing between the mental functions on the basis of domain specificity of independent neurological structures. According to the early view on modularity proposed by Frank Joseph Gall, mental faculties are localised and they are present in a corresponding relationship with specific physical structure of the brain which make it possible to estimate about a person’s intellectual capacity based on the actual size of a particular brain structure.

However, in the1980s, Jerry Fodor revived the idea of modularity using a combination of the behaviourist and cognitive set views of lower level mental processes. Borrowing from the behaviourist emphasis on reflexes instead of abstract mental processes, Fodor argued that low level precesses are unlike reflexes since the mind perceives objects in three dimensional states while the retinal cells actually receive the two dimensional image as sensations. This indicates that simple perception and attention involves some form of inference and is thus not a reflex behaviour.

Furthermore, Fodor used Chomsky’s conceptualisation of structural linguistics to argue that low level processes such as perception of illusions are inferential much like the higher level cognitive processes like beliefs, but they are different from higher order processes and the latter are not modular but function in continuity with other functions. According to Fodor, the modular system is marked by the following properties:

1. Modules operate on certain kinds of specialised informational inputs.

2. They encapsulate information in themselves are thus independent of other psychological systems.

3. Modules function on the basis of an obligatory firing of neurons which makes their processing of the incoming input as a mandatory action.

4. Modular functions occur at a rapid rate as they are independent of the involvement of any other data system.

5. The information produced as the output is simple.

6. Each module has a distinct and fixed neological circuit.

Fodor’s concept of mental modularity presents a crucial theoretical development in the understanding of the mental faculty and it attempted to bridge the gap between the behaviourist and the cognitive viewpoints and present a case of how certain visual illusions may persist beyond rectification in the perceptual understandings sine the modules operate in an independent manner.

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