The project of coordinating perception, comprehension, and motor control is an exciting one, but I found it hard to follow some of Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) arguments as presented. Consequently, my comment is not so much a disagreement with P&G but a query about the logic of forward models: It is not clear how they are supposed to work, nor why they are needed in this (or many other) contexts, and toward that end I present an alternative idea.

Bering's work provides new insight into the child's concept of the self. For his results indicate that children don't regard bodily identity as required for identity of self across time. Bering's methodology for investigating afterlife beliefs might also be exploited to explore the extent to which children think that psychological similarity is required for sameness of self.

Although Redish et al. have pulled together a large number of approaches to understanding decision-making and common errors in cognition, they have outlined neither the necessary nor the sufficient attributes of addiction. They are correct in claiming that addiction is multifaceted and probably more akin to a syndrome than a genuine disease. But grasping what that multifaceted syndrome is still eludes us.

We heartily agree with the target article and focus on how positive sociocultural change can be accelerated through the systematic use of scenario planning – what we call sociotecture. Scenario planning is a design process for the creation and selection of symbotypes that make a positive difference. It cuts through complexity by integrating cognitive and affective processes across multiple scales.

In line with my model of object motion perception (Wertheim 1994) and in contradistinction to what Stoffregen (1994) states, Sauvan's data suggest that percepts of motion are not sense specific. It is here argued that percepts of object- or self-motion are neither sense specific nor do they necessarily stem from what Stoffregen calls “kinematic events.” Stoffregen's error is in believing that we can only perceive object- or self-motion relative to other objects, which implies a failure to realise that percepts of absolute object- or self-motion in space (relative to the earth's surface) do exist as well, even when the earth's surface itself is not perceived.

Contrary to prevailing views, productivity and propositional construal are not problematic for perceptual views of representation. Glenberg's embodied representations contribute to our understanding of how these two important processes might be implemented perceptually.

The absence of a clear influence of the responses modified by new connections created by LTP on the development of these connections casts doubt on an essential role of LTP in learning and memory formation without any association with reinforcement. The evidence for the involvement of the monoaminergic systems in synaptic potentiation in the cerebral cortex during learning is adduced, and their role in reinforcement system function is discussed.

Rachlin basically marshals three reasons behind his unconventional claim that altruism is a subcategory of self-control and that, hence, the prisoner's dilemma is the appropriate metaphor of altruism. I do not find any of the three reasons convincing. Therefore, the prisoner's dilemma metaphor is unsuitable for explaining altruism.

Imagination and rational thought may be guided by identical principles, and Byrne's (2005) analysis expertly synthesizes a diverse literature on counterfactual thinking. Further attention should be paid to metacognitive experiences, like ease or difficulty of thought generation, which accompany the imaginative process. Only by considering metacognitive experiences along with the content of what people imagine can we fully understand imagination.

Cleansing (separation) inductions reduce the impact of negative and positive reactions, whereas connection manipulations magnify them. We suggest that grounded procedures can produce these effects by affecting the perceived validity of thoughts. In accord with the self-validation theory, we also note the importance of considering how moderators, such as the meaning of the action and the timing of inductions, affect outcomes.

Nevin & Grace identify a difference between the predictions of delay reduction theory and the contingency-ratio account underlying behavioral momentum approaches to choice. This is shown not to be a true difference. The role of the overall context of reinforcement must be carefully incorporated by any theory of choice.

Despite close scrutiny in recent years, the traditional properties of LTP are holding up remarkably well, and they remain a credible influence on the belief that LTP has something to do with learning and information storage.

The theoretical debate in linguistics during the past half-century bears an uncanny parallel to the politics of the (now defunct) Communist Bloc. The parallels are not so much in the revolutionary nature of Chomsky's ideas as in the Bolshevik manner of his takeover of linguistics (Koerner 1994) and in the Trotskyist (“permanent revolution”) flavor of the subsequent development of the doctrine of Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG) (Townsend & Bever 2001, pp. 37–40). By those standards, Jackendoff is quite a party faithful (a Khrushchev or a Dubcek, rather than a Solzhenitsyn or a Sakharov) who questions some of the components of the dogma, yet stops far short of repudiating it.