This commentary suggests that the general population has much less reasoning skill than is claimed by Mercier & Sperber (M&S). In particular, many studies suggest that the skills of understanding, evaluating, and producing arguments are generally poor in the population of people who have not had specific training.

Evidence for the contribution of the neocortex to memory is overwhelming. However, the theory proposed by Ruchkin et al. does not only ignore subcortical contributions, but also introduces an unnecessary and empirically unsupported division between the posterior cortex, assumed to represent information, and the prefrontal cortex, assumed to control activation. We argue instead that the representational power of the neocortex is not restricted to its posterior part.

the implications that steels & belpaeme's (s&b's) models have for memetics are discussed. the results demonstrate the power of memes (in this case colour words) to influence both concept formation, and the creation of innate concepts. they provide further evidence for the memetic drive hypothesis, with implications for the evolution of the human brain and for group differences in categorisation.

As Kline envisages, there is an important relationship between cultural attraction and teaching. The very function of teaching is to make the content taught an attractor. Teaching, moreover, typically fulfills its function by exploiting a variety of factors of cultural attraction that help make its content learnable and teachable.

Barresi & Moore's account predicts that infants deprived of visual input will be delayed in achieving social understanding, a hypothesis that receives some support from studies of language use. by blind children. It is proposed that recently developed false belief and appearance/reality tasks be used to explore this issue further. Three possibly distracting conceptual issues are also discussed.

Some data concerning visual illusions are hardly compatible with the perception–action model, assuming that only the perception system is influenced by visual context. The planning–control dichotomy offers an alternative that better accounts for some controversy in experimental data. We tested the two models by submitting the patient I. G. to the induced Roelofs effect. The similitude of the results of I. G. and control subjects favoured Glover's model, which, however, presents a paradox that needs to be clarified.

Clahsen reports the results from two sets of word-recognition experiments with adult native speakers of German supporting the notion that the processing of regular (or default) inflection differs from the processing of irregular inflection. My commentary points to shortcomings in stimulus selection and inconsistencies in the pattern of results, revealing that the empirical support for the proposed dual mechanism is much weaker than Clahsen suggests.

The target article discusses a model of how brain circuits mediate social behaviors such as imitation and mindreading. Hurley suggests potential mechanisms for development of shared circuits. We propose that empirical studies can be designed to differentiate the influence of genetic and learning-based factors on the development of shared circuits. We use the mirror neuron system as a model system.

The self-organizing consciousness (SOC) is not sufficient to account for young children's ability to acquire complex rules and word-object mappings. First, the attention-association cycles suggested by the SOC are unlikely to happen because recurrence of particular stimulus properties usually disengages the attention of an observer. Second, “primitive processors” preinstalled in the system make the SOC unnecessarily complex.

Carruthers claims that global workspace theory implies that sensory states, unlike propositional attitudes, are introspectible in a non-interpretative fashion. I argue that this claim is false, and defend a strong version of the “mindreading is prior” model of first-person access, according to which the self-ascription of all mental states, both propositional and sensory, is interpretative.

Although many simulations draw upon only one level of abstraction, the process for generating rich simulations requires a dynamic interplay between abstract and concrete knowledge. A complete model of simulation must account for a mind and brain that can bridge the perceptual with the conceptual, the episodic with the semantic, and the concrete with the abstract.

There is “something more” to money, as this incisive review shows. The target article's shortcoming is its overextension of the “drug” metaphor as a blend of features that do not fit the rationalistic economics and behavioral psychologies summarized as tool theories, but this may be resolved by viewing money as a particular case of the more general evolutionary phenomenon of emergent subsystem autonomy.

This paper points to the need in ape language research to shift from experimentation to ethnography. We cannot determine what goes on inside the head of an ape when it communicates with a human being, but we can learn about the nature and content of the communication that occurs in such face-to-face interaction. This information is fundamental for establishing a baseline for the abilities of an ape-human common ancestor.

Scientists should, above all else, value the truth. To do this effectively, scientists should separate their identities from the data they produce. It will be easier to make replications mainstream if scientists are rewarded based on their stance toward the truth – such as when a scientist reacts positively to a failure to replicate – as opposed to a particular finding.

Aggleton & Brown predict that recognition and episodic recall depend on different brain systems and can thus be dissociated from one another. However, intact recall with impaired recognition has not yet been demonstrated if the same type of information is used in both tests. Current evidence suggests that processes underlying familiarity-based recognition are redundant with processes underlying episodic memory.