
First-person dimensions of mental agency in visual counting of moving objects
Author(s) -
Johannes Wagemann,
Jonas Raggatz
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
cognitive processing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1612-4790
pISSN - 1612-4782
DOI - 10.1007/s10339-021-01020-x
Subject(s) - action (physics) , introspection , trace (psycholinguistics) , object (grammar) , cognitive psychology , consciousness , agency (philosophy) , psychology , numerosity adaptation effect , mental image , sense of agency , cognitive science , cognition , artificial intelligence , computer science , social psychology , epistemology , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , neuroscience
Counting objects, especially moving ones, is an important capacity that has been intensively explored in experimental psychology and related disciplines. The common approach is to trace the three counting principles (estimating, subitizing, serial counting) back to functional constructs like the Approximate Number System and the Object Tracking System. While usually attempts are made to explain these competing models by computational processes at the neural level, their first-person dimensions have been hardly investigated so far. However, explanatory gaps in both psychological and philosophical terms may suggest a methodologically complementary approach that systematically incorporates introspective data. For example, the mental-action debate raises the question of whether mental activity plays only a marginal role in otherwise automatic cognitive processes or if it can be developed in such a way that it can count as genuine mental action. To address this question not only theoretically, we conducted an exploratory study with a moving-dots task and analyze the self-report data qualitatively and quantitatively on different levels. Building on this, a multi-layered, consciousness-immanent model of counting is presented, which integrates the various counting principles and concretizes mental agency as developing from pre-reflective to increasingly conscious mental activity.