Imagery has played an important, albeit controversial, role in the study of memory psychophysics. In this commentary we critically examine the available data bearing on whether pictorial based depictions of remembered perceptual events are activated and scanned in each of a number of different psychophysical tasks.

The target article focuses on how attacker-defender conflicts are fought. This commentary complements it by considering how attacker-defender conflicts may be resolved at the bargaining table. I highlight multiple linkages between asymmetric intergroup conflict as modeled with the attacker-defender game and negotiation research and illustrate how the proposed model of attacker-defender conflicts can inspire new research on intergroup negotiation.

Although Penn et al. make a good case for the existence of deep cognitive discontinuity between humans and animals, they fail to explain how such a discontinuity could have evolved. It is proposed that until the advent of words, no species had mental representations over which higher-order relations could be computed.

Although we agree with Lake et al.'s central argument, there are numerous flaws in the way people use causal models. Our models are often incorrect, resistant to correction, and applied inappropriately to new situations. These deficiencies are pervasive and have real-world consequences. Developers of machines with similar capacities should proceed with caution.

The hypothesis that there is a 1:1 correspondence between LTP and learning is simplistic, and the correlation approach to testing it is therefore too limited. The alternative hypothesis that LTP plays a role in arousal is consistent with activity-dependent neuromodulation, but ignores the Hebbian properties of LTP. LTP may involve both types of mechanisms, suggesting a possible synthesis of the two hypotheses.

The debate on the origin of the locus equation is circular. In this commentary the locus equation is obtained by way of a theoretical model based on acoustics without recourse to articulatory knowledge or perceptual constraints. The proposed model is driven by criteria of minimum energy and maximum simplicity.

The extent to which early motor patterns represent antecedents to later communicative functions, and the emergence of gesture and/or sign as potential communicative acts in neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), are research questions that have received recent attention. It is important to keep in mind that different NDDs have different neurological underpinnings, with correspondingly different implications for their conceptualization, detection, and treatment.

This commentary argues the case for developmental psychopathology in understanding social learning. Informed by work on “epistemic disruption,” we have described difficulties with social learning associated with many forms of psychopathology. Epistemic disruption manifests in an inability to move between innovation and conformity, and arises from poor mentalizing, which generates difficulties in identifying social cues that trigger the correct stance.

I argue that Machery stacks the deck against hybrid theories of concepts by relying on an unduly restrictive understanding of coordination between concept parts. Once a less restrictive notion of coordination is introduced, the empirical case for hybrid theories of concepts becomes stronger, and the appeal of concept eliminativism weaker.

Gopnik's argument that instead of having privileged access we must develop a theory about our minds is criticized. First, the theory metaphor is too vague, and scientific concepts of what a theory is are left unexploited. Second, the studies Gopnik interprets as showing that children must develop a theory about their mental states are also compatible with the view that children have to develop these states.