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On the role of contextual factors in cognitive neuroscience experiments: a mechanistic approach

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Abstract

Experiments in cognitive neuroscience build a setup whose set of controlled stimuli and rules elicits a cognitive process in a participant. This setup requires researchers to decide the value of quite a few parameters along several dimensions. We call ‘’contextual factors’’ the parameters often assumed not to change the cognitive process elicited and are free to vary across the experiment’s repetitions. Against this assumption, empirical evidence shows that many of these contextual factors can significantly influence cognitive performance. Nevertheless, it is not entirely clear what it means for a cognitive phenomenon to be context-sensitive and how to identify context-sensitivity experimentally. We claim that a phenomenon can be context-sensitive either because it is only triggered within a specific context or because different contexts change its manifestation conditions. Assessing which of these forms of context-sensitivity is present in a given phenomenon requires a criterion for individuating it across contextual variations. We argue that some inter-level experiments that, within the mechanistic approach to explanation, are required to identify relations of constitutive relevance between a phenomenon and a mechanism, are also necessary for individuating the phenomenon across its contextual variations. We articulate a criterion according to which behavioral variations across contexts indicate different phenomena if and only if the mechanistic activities, components and/or organizational properties recruited in each context are different. We support this approach by showing how it is applied in paradigmatic studies addressing cognitive performance differences resulting from contextual variations of task features, such as stimulus type and response modality. Finally, we address the challenge that a form of context-sensitivity possessed by the so-called ‘multifunctional mechanisms’ is incompatible with our proposal because it entails that the same mechanism can be recruited in different contexts to produce different phenomena. We examine key cases of multifunctionality and argue that they are consistent with our proposal because a single mechanism can have different components, activities and/or organizational properties in different contexts. Thus, these modifications may not affect the identity of a mechanism, and they could explain how it produced different phenomena in those contexts.

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Notes

  1. see Burnston (2020) for an alternative approach showing that context-sensitivity is consistent with decomposition.

  2. See Wajnerman Paz (2018) for a discussion of a more fine-grained (neural-coding level) approach to the mechanistic basis of grounded cognition.

  3. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this observation.

  4. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this observation.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico Fondecyt, Proyecto 11190604, awarded to DRL. AWP receives funding from Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico Fondecyt, Proyectos 11220327 (IR: Abel Wajnerman Paz), 1210091 (IR: Juan Manuel Garrido) and 1200197 (IR: Francisco Pereira). AWP thanks members of the Fondecyt project 1210091(specially Juan Manuel Garrido, José Tomás Alvarado, Jorge Fuentes Muñoz) for their generous and ongoing feedback on different versions of this manuscript. Also, a very special thanks to the reviewers from Synthese for a really insightful and constructive discussion that was critical for arriving at the final version of the manuscript. Finally, he would like to thank DRL for a very rewarding and enjoyable co-authoring process. DRL would like to thank Francisco Parada, Alejandra Rossi, and Christian Salas for enriching and insightful discussions and for making the CENHN an inspiring place to do neuroscience. He also warmly thanks to AWP for his enthusiasm and dedication to a delightful co-thinking and co-writing process. Finally, DRL also thanks the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments.

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  1. Departamento de Filosofía, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, Chile

    Abel Wajnerman-Paz

  2. Centro de Neurociencia Humana y Neuropsicología, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile

    Daniel Rojas-Líbano

  3. Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Diego Portales, Vergara 275, Santiago, Chile

    Daniel Rojas-Líbano

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  1. Abel Wajnerman-Paz
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AWP and DRL contributed to the study’s conception and development. AWP and DRL wrote the first draft of the manuscript and revised all subsequent versions. AWP and DRL read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Daniel Rojas-Líbano.

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Wajnerman-Paz, A., Rojas-Líbano, D. On the role of contextual factors in cognitive neuroscience experiments: a mechanistic approach. Synthese 200, 402 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03870-0

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