It is a prevailing theoretical claim that path integration is the primary means of developing global spatial representations. However, this claim is at odds with reported difficulty to develop global spatial representations of a multiscale environment using path integration. The current study tested a new hypothesis that locally similar but…

Humans have a uniquely sophisticated ability to see past superficial features and to understand the relational structure of the world around us. This ability often requires that we compare structures, finding commonalities and differences across visual depictions that are arranged in space, such as maps, graphs, or diagrams. Although such visual…

The validity of the linguistic relativity principle continues to stimulate vigorous debate and research. The debate has recently shifted from the behavioural investigation arena to a more biologically grounded field, in which tangible physiological evidence for language effects on perception can be obtained. Using brain potentials in a colour…

A model of mental representations is developed and shown to provide a framework for interpreting research. The content of awareness is characterized as a model of the world capable of simulating future events, anticipating present events, and thereby formulating appropriate actions. Properties of awareness and of underlying processes are…

Wernicke (1900, as cited in G. H. Eggert, 1977) suggested that semantic knowledge arises from the interaction of perceptual representations of objects and words. The authors present a parallel distributed processing implementation of this theory, in which semantic representations emerge from mechanisms that acquire the mappings between visual…

Neglect is an acquired cognitive disorder characterized by a lack of processing of one side of a stimulus or representational space. There are hemispheric asymmetries in its cause and in its effects, but implemented computational models of neglect have tended not to incorporate this fact. The authors report a series of neural network simulations…