Section 6.1
• What is the central claim of the dynamical systems hypothesis? How plausible do you find it?
• How does the example of the Watt governor make Van Gelder’s point?
• Can you think of another example he might have used?
Section 6.2
• Dynamical models seem suited for examining the development of skills like walking. Will dynamical modeling prove fruitful for other phenomena of interest in cognitive science?
• Are there any other plausible cognitive explanations of the A-not-B error?
• Is Van Gelder right to think that the dynamical approach to cognitive science will replace more traditional ones?
Centrifugal Governor (video from YouTube)
A Typical 10-month-old on Piaget’s A-not-B task (video from YouTube)
PBS documentary on motor development, featuring Esther Thelen (video from YouTube)
Lecture on infant development by Linda Smith (video from YouTube American Psychological Association channel)
6.1 Cognitive Science and Dynamical Systems
Dynamical systems (from Scholarpedia)
Tim van Gelder (personal website, with links to publications)
The dynamical challenge (paper by Clark, 1997, in Cognitive Science)
Representations and cognitive explanations: Assessing the dynamicist’s challenge in cognitive science (paper by Bechtel,1998, in Cognitive Science)
6.2 Applying Dynamical Systems: Two Examples from Child Development
Infant perseveration and implications for object permanence theories: A PDP model of the A-not-B task (paper by Munakata, 1998, in Developmental Science)
Knowing in the Context of Acting: The Task Dynamics of the A-Not-B Error (paper by Smith et al., 1999, in Psychological Review)
Dynamical approaches to cognitive science (paper by Beer, 2000, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
The promise of dynamic systems approaches for an integrated account of human development (paper by Lewis, 2000, in Child Development)
The dynamics of embodiment: A field theory of infant perseverative reaching (paper by Thelen et al., 2001, in Behavioral and Brain Sciences)
Development as a dynamic system (paper by Smith and Thelen, 2003, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
Young infants reach correctly in A-not-B tasks: On the development of stability and perseveration (paper by Clearfield et al., 2006, in Infant Behavior and Development)
The third contender: a critical examination of the dynamicist theory of cognition (paper by Eliasmith, 1996, in Philosophical Psychology)
Cue salience and infant perseverative reaching Cue salience and infant perseverative reaching: tests of the dynamic field theory (paper by Clearfield et al., 2009, in Developmental Science)
Twenty Years and Going Strong: A Dynamic Systems Revolution in Motor and Cognitive Development (paper by Spencer et al., 2011, in Child development perspectives)
Contributions of Dynamic Systems Theory to Cognitive Development (paper by Spencer et al., 2012, in Cognitive development)
Dynamics of cognition (paper by Riley and Holden, 2012, in WIREs Cognitive Science)
Grounding Cognitive-Level Processes in Behavior: The View from Dynamic Systems Theory (paper by Samuelson et al., 2015, in Topics in cognitive science)
Representation Wars: Enacting an Armistice Through Active Inference (paper by Constant et al., 2021, in Frontiers in Psychology)
