culture is surely important in human learning. but the relation between culture and psychological mechanism needs clarification in three areas: (1) all learning takes place in real time and through real-time mechanisms; (2) social correlations are just a kind of learnable correlations; and (3) the proper frame of reference for cognitive theories is the perspective of the learner.

the dynamical category uses the sensory-motor coordination to do categorization. if categories are inevitably grounded in sensory-motor coordination, sharing categories may also share the same sensory-motor coordination. concerning this aspect, we discuss the color category as a dynamical categorization. additional to the converging effect of a category by communication, we discuss the diverging effect of communication that creates new categories.

Lewis describes the developmental core of dynamic systems theory. I offer recent data from developmental neuroscience on the sequential experience-dependent maturation of components of the limbic system over the stages of infancy. Increasing interconnectivity within the vertically integrated limbic system allows for more complex appraisals of emotional value. The earliest organization of limbic structures has an enduring impact on all later emotional processing.

we have found that the left side of faces displayed in rembrandt's portraits capture how humans rank male dominance, helping to coordinate avoidance behaviors among asymmetric individuals. moreover, the left side of faces may also coordinate approach responses, like attractiveness, in human females. therefore, adding sexual selection to dominance paints a more realistic picture of what the contralateral right hemisphere is doing.

Lewis makes a compelling case for a dynamical systems approach to emotion and neurobiology. These models involve both excitatory and inhibitory processes. It appears that a critical role for inhibitory processes is implied but not emphasized in Lewis's model. We suggest that a greater understanding of inhibitory processes both at the psychological and neurobiological levels might further enhance Lewis's model.

vallortigara & rogers's (v&r's) proposal that directional asymmetries evolved under social pressures raises questions about the ontogenetic mechanisms subserving the alignment of asymmetries in a population. neuro-ontogenetic principles suggest that epigenetic factors are decisively involved in the determination of individual lateralization and that genetic factors align their direction. clearly, directional asymmetry has an epigenetic trait.

Considered in relation to the component brain systems of appraisal-emotion interactions, dynamical systems theory blurs the divisions that seem obvious in a psychological analysis, such as between arousal, emotion, and appraisal. At the same time, the component brain mechanisms can themselves be seen to be incomplete as units of analysis, making sense only in the context of the whole organism.

Lewis proposes a solution for bridging the gap between cognitive-psychological and neurobiological theories of emotion in terms of dynamic systems modeling. However, an important brain network is absent in his account: the neuroendocrine system. In this commentary, the dynamic features of the cross-talk between the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and gonadal (HPG) axes are discussed within a triple-balance model of emotion.

steels & belpaeme (s&b) refer to the neural plausibility and evolutionary plausibility of their algorithms. although this is not central to their goal of effective artificial agents, their algorithms are not neurally or evolutionarily plausible. their communication games are interesting, and more complex games would lead to more effective agents. however, the algorithms could be improved either by using standard subsymbolic algorithms or by algorithms that are really neurally or evolutionarily plausible.

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.

A dynamic systems (DS) approach uncovers important connections between emotion and neurophysiology. It is critical, however, to include a developmental perspective. Strides in the understanding of emotional development, as well as the present use of DS in developmental science, add significantly to the study of emotion. Examples include stranger fear during infancy, intermodal perception of emotion, and development of individual emotional systems.

a mental heuristic is a shortcut (means) to a desired end. in the moral (as opposed to factual) realm, the means/end distinction is not self-evident: how do we decide whether a given moral intuition is a mere heuristic to achieve some freestanding moral principle, or instead a freestanding moral principle in its own right? i discuss sunstein's solution to that threshold difficulty in translating “heuristics” to the moral realm.

We present a dynamical model of interaction between recognition memory and affect, focusing on the phenomenon of “warm glow of familiarity.” In our model, both familiarity and affect reflect quick monitoring of coherence in an attractor neural network. This model parsimoniously explains a variety of empirical phenomena, including mere-exposure and beauty-in-averages effects, and the speed of familiarity and affect judgments.

Recent evidence in natural and semi-natural settings has revealed a variety of left-right perceptual asymmetries among vertebrates. These include preferential use of the left or right visual hemifield during activities such as searching for food, agonistic responses, or escape from predators in animals as different as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. There are obvious disadvantages in showing such directional asymmetries because relevant stimuli may be located to the animal’s left or right at random; there is no a priori association between the meaning of a stimulus (e.g., its being a predator or a food item) and its being located to the animal’s left or right. Moreover, other organisms (e.g., predators) could exploit the predictability of behavior that arises from populationlevel lateral biases. It might be argued that lateralization of function enhances cognitive capacity and efficiency of the brain, thus counteracting the ecological disadvantages of lateral biases in behavior. However, such an increase in brain efficiency could be obtained by each individual being lateralized without any need to align the direction of the asymmetry in the majority of the individuals of the population. Here we argue that the alignment of the direction of behavioral asymmetries at the population level arises as an “evolutionarily stable strategy” under “social” pressures occurring when individually asymmetrical organisms must coordinate their behavior with the behavior of other asymmetrical organisms of the same or different species.

direction of the embyro's head rotation is determined by asymmetrical expression of several genes (such as shh, nodal, lefty, and fgf8) in hensen's node. this genetically determined head-turning bias provides a base for light-aligned population lateralization in chicks, in which the direction of the lateralization is determined by genetic factors and the degree of the lateralization is determined by environmental factors.

The target article developed a dynamic systems framework that viewed the causal basis of emotion as a self-organizing process giving rise to cognitive appraisal concurrently. Commentators on the article evaluated this framework and the principles and mechanisms it incorporated. They also suggested additional principles, mechanisms, modeling strategies, and phenomena related to emotion and appraisal, in place of or extending from those already proposed. There was general agreement that nonlinear causal processes are fundamental to the psychology and neurobiology of emotion.

The Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI; Simpson & Gangestad 1991) is a self-report measure of individual differences in human mating strategies. Low SOI scores signify that a person is sociosexually restricted, or follows a more monogamous mating strategy. High SOI scores indicate that an individual is unrestricted, or has a more promiscuous mating strategy. As part of the International Sexuality Description Project (ISDP), the SOI was translated from English into 25 additional languages and administered to a total sample of 14,059 people across 48 nations. Responses to the SOI were used to address four main issues. First, the psychometric properties of the SOI were examined in cross-cultural perspective. The SOI possessed adequate reliability and validity both within and across a diverse range of modern cultures. Second, theories concerning the systematic distribution of sociosexuality across cultures were evaluated. Both operational sex ratios and reproductively demanding environments related in evolutionary-predicted ways to national levels of sociosexuality. Third, sex differences in sociosexuality were generally large and demonstrated cross-cultural universality across the 48 nations of the ISDP, confirming several evolutionary theories of human mating. Fourth, sex differences in sociosexuality were significantly larger when reproductive environments were demanding but were reduced to more moderate levels in cultures with more political and economic gender equality. Implications for evolutionary and social role theories of human sexuality are discussed.

moral heuristics are pervasive, and they produce moral errors. we can identify those errors as such even if we do not endorse any contentious moral view. to accept this point, it is also unnecessary to make controversial claims about moral truth. but the notion of moral heuristics can be understood in diverse ways, and a great deal of work remains to be done in understanding the nature of moral intuitions, especially those that operate automatically and nonreflectively, and in exploring the possibility of altering such intuitions through modest changes in context and narrative.

the experiments proposed in the article by steels & belpaeme (s&b) can be considered as a starting point toward a general methodology for the automatic learning of conceptual spaces.

By comparing alternative evolutionary models, the International Sexuality Description Project marks the transition of evolutionary psychology to the next level of scientific maturation. The lack of final conclusions might partly be a result of the composition of the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory and the sampled populations. Our own data suggest that correcting for both gives further support to the strategic pluralism model.