Sieghard Beller
Biographic Data
| ID | 111941 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sieghard Beller |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sieghard |
| FAMILY NAME | Beller |
| SIGNATURE | BELLER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bergen |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Cognition and Cognitive Science
Cognition refers to activities of the mind and is involved in perception and attention, memory, learning, categorization, thinking and reasoning, evaluations and judgments, decision‐making, problem solving, and communication, including the use of language. It is the main target of research in the cognitive sciences, a cross‐disciplinary endeavor traditionally comprising philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, anthropology, a…
The Cultural Fabric of Human Causal Cognition
Causal cognition emerges early in development and confers an important advantage for survival. But does this mean that it is universal in humans? Our cross-disciplinary review suggests a broad evolutionary basis for core components of causal cognition but also underlines the essential role of culturally transmitted content as being uniquely human. The multiple ways in which both content and the key mechanisms of cultural transmission generate cul…
Cognition, Causal
Causality is a core concept of human cognition, which is essential for our attempts to understand the world—from our physical environment to social interactions. While causal perception and most types of learning processes may be independent of cultural upbringing, other components of causal cognition appear to be saturated by culture. Cultural influences affect not only how but even whether people engage in causal explanations—by shaping the set…
Cognition and Emotion
Emotions are fundamental psychological phenomena, best understood as episodes or sequences of responses. They are set off by an event that is perceived as relevant to the person. Depending on the event's cognitive appraisal along several dimensions, a subjective feeling is then elicited, often accompanied by typical expressive patterns and physiological changes, which prepare the organism for an event‐specific, actual behavior. One of the major c…
Ethnomathematics and Numerical Cognition
Mathematics is concerned with logic, chance, quantity, structure, change, spatial relationships, and their combination into systems. The various ways in which these ideas and principles are interconnected with culture take center stage in the interdisciplinary field of ethnomathematics. Numerical cognition refers to one of the subfields of ethnomathematics (i.e., quantity and numbers) but, more specifically, focuses on how people represent and pr…
The mutual challenge of anthropology and cognitive science
Culture or language
Although investigations of linguistic relativity originated in cultural anthropology, the role of culture in the interplay of language and cognition has rarely been addressed. The debate on whether the grammatical gender of nouns affects how people represent the entity denoted by the respective noun is a typical example of this. A common research strategy has been to compare the gender associations for non-animate entities as a function of their …
Cultural Variation in Numeration Systems and Their Mapping Onto the Mental Number Line
The ability to exactly assess large numbers hinges on cultural tools such as counting sequences and thus offers a great opportunity to study how culture interacts with cognition. To obtain a more comprehensive picture of the cultural variance in number representation, this article argues for the inclusion of cross-linguistic analyses. It scrutinizes the specific counting systems of Polynesian and Micronesian languages that were once derived from …
Temporal Frames of Reference
Despite a close correspondence between spatial and temporal cognition, empirical approaches to the two domains have used distinct theoretical conceptions: frames of reference for the former, and moving perspectives and reference-point metaphors for the latter. Our analysis reveals that these conceptions can ‐ and should ‐ be related more closely to each other. Mapping spatial frames of reference (FoRs) onto temporal relations, we obtain a taxonom…
Weighing Up Physical Causes
Cross-cultural differences in cognition are often related to one single cultural dimension. Whether this suffices even for simple tasks is examined in the context of causal attribution. Culture-specific attribution biases are well-established for the social domain, but under dispute for the physical domain. In order to identify and assess possible impacts on assigning physical causation, we conducted a cross-cultural experiment with participants …
Conditional Promises and Threats in Germany, China, and Tonga
Conditional promises and threats are speech acts that aim at changing another person's behavior according to one's own goals. They combine several components on different levels: goals and incentives/penalties on the motivational level, formulations on the linguistic level, obligations on the deontic level, action sequences on the behavioral level, and affective responses on the emotional level. In a cross-cultural study – comparing Germany, Chin…
Counting in Tongan
Is the application of more than one number system in a particular culture necessarily an indication of not having abstracted a general concept of number? Does this mean that specific number systems for certain objects are cognitively deficient? The opposite is the case with the traditional number systems in Tongan, where a consistent decimal system is supplemented by diverging systems for certain objects, in which 20 seems to play a special role.…
Temporal Frames of Reference
Despite a close correspondence between spatial and temporal cognition, empirical approaches to the two domains have used distinct theoretical conceptions: frames of reference for the former, and moving perspectives and reference-point metaphors for the latter. Our analysis reveals that these conceptions can ‐ and should ‐ be related more closely to each other. Mapping spatial frames of reference (FoRs) onto temporal relations, we obtain a taxonom…
Culture or language
Although investigations of linguistic relativity originated in cultural anthropology, the role of culture in the interplay of language and cognition has rarely been addressed. The debate on whether the grammatical gender of nouns affects how people represent the entity denoted by the respective noun is a typical example of this. A common research strategy has been to compare the gender associations for non-animate entities as a function of their …
The Cultural Fabric of Human Causal Cognition
Causal cognition emerges early in development and confers an important advantage for survival. But does this mean that it is universal in humans? Our cross-disciplinary review suggests a broad evolutionary basis for core components of causal cognition but also underlines the essential role of culturally transmitted content as being uniquely human. The multiple ways in which both content and the key mechanisms of cultural transmission generate cul…
Cultural Variation in Numeration Systems and Their Mapping Onto the Mental Number Line
The ability to exactly assess large numbers hinges on cultural tools such as counting sequences and thus offers a great opportunity to study how culture interacts with cognition. To obtain a more comprehensive picture of the cultural variance in number representation, this article argues for the inclusion of cross-linguistic analyses. It scrutinizes the specific counting systems of Polynesian and Micronesian languages that were once derived from …
Conditional Promises and Threats in Germany, China, and Tonga
Conditional promises and threats are speech acts that aim at changing another person's behavior according to one's own goals. They combine several components on different levels: goals and incentives/penalties on the motivational level, formulations on the linguistic level, obligations on the deontic level, action sequences on the behavioral level, and affective responses on the emotional level. In a cross-cultural study – comparing Germany, Chin…
Counting in Tongan
Is the application of more than one number system in a particular culture necessarily an indication of not having abstracted a general concept of number? Does this mean that specific number systems for certain objects are cognitively deficient? The opposite is the case with the traditional number systems in Tongan, where a consistent decimal system is supplemented by diverging systems for certain objects, in which 20 seems to play a special role.…
Counting in Tongan
Is the application of more than one number system in a particular culture necessarily an indication of not having abstracted a general concept of number? Does this mean that specific number systems for certain objects are cognitively deficient? The opposite is the case with the traditional number systems in Tongan, where a consistent decimal system is supplemented by diverging systems for certain objects, in which 20 seems to play a special role.…
Weighing Up Physical Causes
Cross-cultural differences in cognition are often related to one single cultural dimension. Whether this suffices even for simple tasks is examined in the context of causal attribution. Culture-specific attribution biases are well-established for the social domain, but under dispute for the physical domain. In order to identify and assess possible impacts on assigning physical causation, we conducted a cross-cultural experiment with participants …
Conditional Promises and Threats in Germany, China, and Tonga
Conditional promises and threats are speech acts that aim at changing another person's behavior according to one's own goals. They combine several components on different levels: goals and incentives/penalties on the motivational level, formulations on the linguistic level, obligations on the deontic level, action sequences on the behavioral level, and affective responses on the emotional level. In a cross-cultural study – comparing Germany, Chin…
Temporal Frames of Reference
Despite a close correspondence between spatial and temporal cognition, empirical approaches to the two domains have used distinct theoretical conceptions: frames of reference for the former, and moving perspectives and reference-point metaphors for the latter. Our analysis reveals that these conceptions can ‐ and should ‐ be related more closely to each other. Mapping spatial frames of reference (FoRs) onto temporal relations, we obtain a taxonom…
Cultural Variation in Numeration Systems and Their Mapping Onto the Mental Number Line
The ability to exactly assess large numbers hinges on cultural tools such as counting sequences and thus offers a great opportunity to study how culture interacts with cognition. To obtain a more comprehensive picture of the cultural variance in number representation, this article argues for the inclusion of cross-linguistic analyses. It scrutinizes the specific counting systems of Polynesian and Micronesian languages that were once derived from …
The mutual challenge of anthropology and cognitive science
Culture or language
Although investigations of linguistic relativity originated in cultural anthropology, the role of culture in the interplay of language and cognition has rarely been addressed. The debate on whether the grammatical gender of nouns affects how people represent the entity denoted by the respective noun is a typical example of this. A common research strategy has been to compare the gender associations for non-animate entities as a function of their …
Cognition, Causal
Causality is a core concept of human cognition, which is essential for our attempts to understand the world—from our physical environment to social interactions. While causal perception and most types of learning processes may be independent of cultural upbringing, other components of causal cognition appear to be saturated by culture. Cultural influences affect not only how but even whether people engage in causal explanations—by shaping the set…
Cognition and Emotion
Emotions are fundamental psychological phenomena, best understood as episodes or sequences of responses. They are set off by an event that is perceived as relevant to the person. Depending on the event's cognitive appraisal along several dimensions, a subjective feeling is then elicited, often accompanied by typical expressive patterns and physiological changes, which prepare the organism for an event‐specific, actual behavior. One of the major c…
Ethnomathematics and Numerical Cognition
Mathematics is concerned with logic, chance, quantity, structure, change, spatial relationships, and their combination into systems. The various ways in which these ideas and principles are interconnected with culture take center stage in the interdisciplinary field of ethnomathematics. Numerical cognition refers to one of the subfields of ethnomathematics (i.e., quantity and numbers) but, more specifically, focuses on how people represent and pr…
The Cultural Fabric of Human Causal Cognition
Causal cognition emerges early in development and confers an important advantage for survival. But does this mean that it is universal in humans? Our cross-disciplinary review suggests a broad evolutionary basis for core components of causal cognition but also underlines the essential role of culturally transmitted content as being uniquely human. The multiple ways in which both content and the key mechanisms of cultural transmission generate cul…
Cognition and Cognitive Science
Cognition refers to activities of the mind and is involved in perception and attention, memory, learning, categorization, thinking and reasoning, evaluations and judgments, decision‐making, problem solving, and communication, including the use of language. It is the main target of research in the cognitive sciences, a cross‐disciplinary endeavor traditionally comprising philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, anthropology, a…
Psychology (11 works) · Cognition (10 works) · Cognitive psychology (7 works) · Cognitive science (7 works) · Linguistics (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Mathematics (5 works) · Categorization, perception, and language (4 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (4 works)