Albert Newen
Biographic Data
| ID | 5911162 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Albert Newen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Albert |
| FAMILY NAME | Newen |
| SIGNATURE | NEWEN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ruhr University Bochum |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5906-6061 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 21 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A Pattern Theory of Scaffolding
With great(er) power comes great(er) responsibility
This paper investigates the relevance of social roles and hierarchies for the attribution of blame and causation in five culturally different countries, namely China, Germany, Poland, the United Arabic Emirates, and the United States of America. We demonstrate that in all these countries, hierarchical differences between the social roles occupied by two agents and associated differences in duties to care for others affect how these two agents are…
The multidimensional profile methodology (MPM) for comparative cognition
How can we develop an adequate scientific understanding of the minds of nonhuman animals? We argue for a methodology based on multi-dimensional profile accounts. Such accounts are already used for the comparative study of norm cognition, consciousness, empathy and causal cognition, among others. This methodology demands that a cognitive capacity is characterized by a set of independent dimensions where each dimension is connected to operationaliz…
Try to See it My Way
Visual perspective taking (VPT) is a fundamental process of social cognition. To date, however, only a handful of studies have investigated whether humans also take the perspective of humanoid robots. Recent findings on this topic are conflicting as one study found no evidence for level 1 VPT (i.e., which object is seen by the agent) and a different study has found evidence for level 2 VPT (i.e., how is the object seen by the agent). The latter s…
Selfless Memories
Many authors claim that being conscious constitutively involves being self-conscious, or conscious of oneself . This claim appears to be threatened by reports of ‘selfless’ episodes, or conscious episodes lacking self-consciousness, recently described in a number of pathological and nonpathological conditions. However, the credibility of these reports has in turn been challenged on the following grounds: remembering and reporting a past conscious…
Negative (but not positive) affective episodic future thinking enhances proactive behavior in 5-year-old children
Envisioning the future and how you may feel (affective episodic future thinking [EFT]) helps adults to act in favor for their future self, according to manifold experiments. The current study tested whether and how affective EFT also helps children to behave more proactively, that is, to self-initially prepare for an upcoming event. Five-year-old ( N = 90) children (data collected from 2021 to 2022) were instructed to mentally imagine how they wo…
If looks could talk
We investigated how apparent threat of an ambiguous stimuli modulates infants’ looking to interaction partners of varying familiarity (mother, familiar experimenter, unfamiliar experimenter). We hypothesized a preference for familiar informants under higher apparent threat, but a preference for unfamiliar informants under lower apparent threat. The informant encouraged infants ( N = 104, 8–13 months) to cross a visual cliff in one of two apparent…
I expect you to be happy, so I see you smile
Constructivist theories of emotions and empirical studies have been increasingly stressing the role of contextual information and cultural conventions in emotion recognition. We propose a new account of emotion recognition and attribution that systematically integrates these aspects, and argue that emotion recognition is part of the general process of person impression formation. To describe the structural organization and the role of background …
Constructing the Past
Episodic memories can no longer be seen as the re-activation of stored experiences but are the product of an intense construction process based on a memory trace. Episodic recall is a result of a process of scenario construction. If one accepts this generative framework of episodic memory, there is still a be big gap in understanding the role of the narrative self in shaping scenario construction. Some philosophers are in principle sceptic by cla…
Visual perspective in autobiographical memories of self-incongruent episodes
It is widely assumed that autobiographical memory relies on an integration of episodic memory with the self-model. We hypothesise that self-memory integration depends critically on self-congruence. More specifically, self-incongruent experiences such as those that elicit shame or guilt may be more difficult to integrate. Self-incongruence may affect both the semantic reports of memories and their phenomenological characteristics, in particular th…
Rethinking Integration of Epistemic Strategies in Social Understanding
In recent years, theories of social understanding have moved away from arguing that just one epistemic strategy, such as theory-based inference or simulation constitutes our ability of social understanding. Empirical observations speak against any monistic view and have given rise to pluralistic accounts arguing that humans rely on a large variety of epistemic strategies in social understanding. We agree with this promising pluralist approach, bu…
Profiles of animal consciousness
The science of animal consciousness investigates (i) which animal species are conscious (the distribution question) and (ii) how conscious experience differs in detail between species (the quality question). We propose a framework which clearly distinguishes both questions and tackles both of them. This two-tier account distinguishes consciousness along ten dimensions and suggests cognitive capacities which serve as distinct operationalizations f…
Situated authenticity in episodic memory
A recalled memory is deemed authentic when it accurately represents how one experienced the original event. However, given the convincing research in cognitive science on the constructive nature of memory, this inevitably leads to the question of the ‘bounds of authenticity’. That is, how similar does a memory have to be to the original experience to still count as authentic? In this paper we propose a novel account of ‘Situated Authenticity’ whi…
Self-deception in the predictive mind
In this article, we show how the phenomenon of self-deception when adequately analyzed, can be incorporated into a predictive processing framework. We describe four strategies by which a subject may become self-deceived to account for typical cases of self-deception. We then argue that the four strategies can be modeled within this framework, under the assumption that a satisfying account of motivation is possible within predictive processing. Fi…
How to ascribe beliefs to animals
In this article, we analyze and reject two versions of the content‐argument against animal beliefs, namely, the ontological argument from Davidson and the epistemological argument from Stich. One of the main defects of the strongest version of the argument is that it over‐intellectualizes belief ascriptions in humans and thus sets the comparative bar for belief ascriptions in animals too high. In the second part of the article, we develop a gradu…
The Situational Mental File Account of the False Belief Tasks
How can we solve the paradox of false-belief understanding: if infants pass the implicit false belief task (FBT) by nonverbal behavioural responses why do they nonetheless typically fail the explicit FBT till they are 4 years old? Starting with the divide between situational and cognitive accounts of the development of false-belief understanding, we argue that we need to consider both situational and internal cognitive factors together and descri…
The Person Model Theory and the Question of Situatedness of Social Understanding
Humans are hyper-social beings, highly dependent on others and on successfully interacting with them. Which theory can adequately describe our ability to understand others? In the literature we have an intense debate among proponents of theory-theory, simulation theory, and interaction theory. I argue first that none of these accounts is adequate but that we need to go in the direction of what I call the “person model theory.” The second importan…
E Cognition
The Introduction starts with offering definitions of the central 4E features, that is, the features of embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended cognition. To set the stage, we sketch the conceptual distinction that characterizes the role of these features: are they only causally influencing a mental phenomenon or are some of them constituting it? We suggest that we can no longer presuppose a common understanding of X being constitutive for P as …
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition provides a systematic overview of the state of the art in the field of 4E cognition: it includes chapters on hotly debated topics, for example, on the nature of cognition and the relation between cognition, perception and action; it discusses recent trends such as Bayesian inference and predictive coding; it presents new insights and findings regarding social understanding including the development of false bel…
Why cognitive penetration of our perceptual experience is still the most plausible account
What are cognitive processes? An example-based approach
Defending the liberal-content view of perceptual experience
Intentional action processing results from automatic bottom-up attention
Social stimuli grab our attention. However, it has rarely been investigated how variations in attention affect the processing of social stimuli, although the answer could help us uncover details of social cognition processes such as action understanding. In the present study, we examined how changes to bottom-up attention affects neural EEG-responses associated with intentional action processing. We induced an increase in bottom-up attention by u…
Whom to blame and whom to praise
Increasing a company’s short-term profit seems to be still the primary responsibility of business leaders, but profit-oriented decision strategies may also elicit long-term side effects. While positive side effects might be considered as an additional benefit, negative side effects are a crucial problem calling for social responsibility. One central question is how the public evaluates managerial decisions based on an indifferent attitude toward …
Varieties of cognitive penetration in visual perception
Classifying emotion
The Role of Bodily Perception in Emotion
In this paper, we develop an impure somatic theory of emotion, according to which emotions are constituted by the integration of bodily perceptions with representations of external objects, events, or states of affairs. We put forward our theory by contrasting it with Prinz's (2004) pure somatic theory, according to which emotions are entirely constituted by bodily perceptions. After illustrating Prinz's theory and discussing the evidence in its …
The developmental paradox of false belief understanding
Situated authenticity in episodic memory
A recalled memory is deemed authentic when it accurately represents how one experienced the original event. However, given the convincing research in cognitive science on the constructive nature of memory, this inevitably leads to the question of the ‘bounds of authenticity’. That is, how similar does a memory have to be to the original experience to still count as authentic? In this paper we propose a novel account of ‘Situated Authenticity’ whi…
What are cognitive processes? An example-based approach
Defending the liberal-content view of perceptual experience
Direct Reference, Indexicality, and Propositional Attitudes
Preface Part I. Indexicals and Names: Reflexivity, indexicality and names John Perry Tensed thoughts James Higginbotham First person propositions: a Fregean account Wolfgang Kunne First-Person Reference, Representational independence and self-knowledge Christopher Peacocke The logic of indexical attitudes and the metaphysics of the self Albert Newen The address puzzle Thomas Zimmerman The mechanics of the counterpart relation Henk Zeevat Names, i…
Reply to Dorothée Legrand
Self-representation
Beyond the comparator model
Social cognition, emotion and self-consciousness
The “sense of agency” and its underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms
I move, therefore I am
Classifying emotion
Reply to Carruthers
Visuospatial perspective taking in a dynamic environment
Self-deception as pseudo-rational regulation of belief
Self, other and memory
Seele, Denken, Bewusstsein
Hypnotic ingroup–outgroup suggestion influences economic decision-making in an Ultimatum Game
The Role of Bodily Perception in Emotion
In this paper, we develop an impure somatic theory of emotion, according to which emotions are constituted by the integration of bodily perceptions with representations of external objects, events, or states of affairs. We put forward our theory by contrasting it with Prinz's (2004) pure somatic theory, according to which emotions are entirely constituted by bodily perceptions. After illustrating Prinz's theory and discussing the evidence in its …
Varieties of cognitive penetration in visual perception
The developmental paradox of false belief understanding
Intentional action processing results from automatic bottom-up attention
Social stimuli grab our attention. However, it has rarely been investigated how variations in attention affect the processing of social stimuli, although the answer could help us uncover details of social cognition processes such as action understanding. In the present study, we examined how changes to bottom-up attention affects neural EEG-responses associated with intentional action processing. We induced an increase in bottom-up attention by u…
Whom to blame and whom to praise
Increasing a company’s short-term profit seems to be still the primary responsibility of business leaders, but profit-oriented decision strategies may also elicit long-term side effects. While positive side effects might be considered as an additional benefit, negative side effects are a crucial problem calling for social responsibility. One central question is how the public evaluates managerial decisions based on an indifferent attitude toward …
Why cognitive penetration of our perceptual experience is still the most plausible account
What are cognitive processes? An example-based approach
Defending the liberal-content view of perceptual experience
The Person Model Theory and the Question of Situatedness of Social Understanding
Humans are hyper-social beings, highly dependent on others and on successfully interacting with them. Which theory can adequately describe our ability to understand others? In the literature we have an intense debate among proponents of theory-theory, simulation theory, and interaction theory. I argue first that none of these accounts is adequate but that we need to go in the direction of what I call the “person model theory.” The second importan…
E Cognition
The Introduction starts with offering definitions of the central 4E features, that is, the features of embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended cognition. To set the stage, we sketch the conceptual distinction that characterizes the role of these features: are they only causally influencing a mental phenomenon or are some of them constituting it? We suggest that we can no longer presuppose a common understanding of X being constitutive for P as …
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition provides a systematic overview of the state of the art in the field of 4E cognition: it includes chapters on hotly debated topics, for example, on the nature of cognition and the relation between cognition, perception and action; it discusses recent trends such as Bayesian inference and predictive coding; it presents new insights and findings regarding social understanding including the development of false bel…
Psychology (40 works) · Cognitive psychology (28 works) · Cognitive science (24 works) · Cognition (23 works) · Epistemology (23 works) · Social Psychology (23 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Philosophy (16 works) · Neuroscience (13 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (11 works)