Recent research
Research Projects for The National Scientific and Technical Research Council
An empirical test for syntactic recursion (2019)
In order to link the developments in cognitive psychology of linguistic information processing with neurosciences, this research aims to propose an initial characterization of what an empirical test should look like to determine that the syntactic processing system is recursive.
In generative grammar recursion is a central property of the generative system of language. Although this idea was initially proposed in the framework of theories of linguistic competence, it has also been accepted in many theories of performance in which the temporal restrictions of syntactic processes are specified. Although the relationship between theories of linguistic performance and the neuroscience of language is not clear, following Marr's methodological guidelines, it could be thought that the developments of information processing theories would guide theoretical developments at the level of neural implementation. The general hypothesis that guides this project is that clarifying what an empirical test for syntactic recursion at the representational level should look like would serve to restrict the search for syntax properties at the level of brain implementation. The few empirical tests for syntactic recursion that have been offered in the literature on the subject seem to have problems in achieving the mentioned objective. This idea is presented in the first two specific hypotheses. First, two of the most representative tests (i.e. focused on representational skills and semantic interpretation) have difficulty proving that syntactic processing is recursive. In relation to this hypothesis, the first specific objective is precisely to analyze some problematic aspects of the empirical test focused on representational skills. The second specific objective is also presented, according to which the difficulties of the empirical test based on semantic interpretation will be investigated. The last specific hypothesis is that there would be a way of understanding empirical tests for syntactic recursion that would be free of the problems analyzed in the critical part. In relation to this, the third specific objective is to investigate the idea that this type of test should focus on the computational operations of the syntax, which should be understood in terms of definition by induction.
Towards a new notion of neural representation (2018)
In order to link the developments in cognitive psychology of information processing with neurosciences, this research aims to propose a notion of neural representation that is fruitful for both areas of cognitive science. Thus, the general hypothesis that guides this project is that the notion of neural representation would allow cognitive psychology to be related to neuroscience. Explanations of cognitive psychology and most of the cognitive neurosciences models raise the need to appeal to representations. However, as presented in the literature on the subject, the available notions of neural representation seem to have problems in achieving the mentioned objective. This idea is presented in the first two specific hypotheses of this investigation. First, the most representative types of neural representations (i.e. detectors and internal models) have difficulty accounting for the linguistic capacity to generate syntactic structures. In relation to this hypothesis, the first specific objective is precisely to analyze some problematic aspects of neural representations understood as detectors. The second specific objective is also presented, according to which the difficulties of neural representations understood as internal models will be investigated. The last specific hypothesis is that there would be a way of understanding the notion of neural representation that would be free of the problems analyzed in the critical part. In relation to this, the third specific objective is to develop the particularities that this type of neural representation should have in terms of amodal and independent representations of the stimulus.
Computational notions in the explanations of cognitive psychology (2017)
This research aims to investigate certain computational notions of cognitive science, in order to link the developments in cognitive psychology of information processing with the evidence on neural activity. For this, the problems of certain types of computing such as digital computing, analog computing, canonical neural computing and the analog model will be analyzed. As a consequence of this critical evaluation, a concept of computing, "hybrid computing", will be proposed to avoid the problems in question.
The new challenges of the explanation in cognitive psychology (2016)
This research falls within the realm of the philosophy of cognitive psychology and its general purpose is to elucidate the relationships between the types of explanation of cognitive psychology of information processing and the growing evidence of brain activity. This research attempts to critically address some aspects of the classical and mechanistic approaches to psychological explanation in order to propose a new way of understanding the relationships between the cognitive explanation offered by the psychology of information processing and the evidence on brain.
Postdoctoral Research
Concepts and the mechanism of general domain structural alignment (2011)
This research falls within the scope of the philosophy of cognitive science and its general purpose is to elucidate some of the relationships between concepts and the general domain mechanism of structural alignment with the aim of offering an integrated approach, of representations and conceptual mechanisms, which allows solving four current problems of pluralist theories of concepts. According to these theories, concepts are heterogeneous bodies of information (prototypes, specimens, theories) about a category. Although they have advantages over theories that postulate that concepts possess only one type of information, they present difficulties in explaining how a concept is acquired from others, how the various conceptual information of a category is connected, what is the format of the concepts, and they have difficulties to establish generalizations that cross different types of conceptual representations (prototypes, examples and theories). There are psychological (Murphy 2010, 2002; Keil in press, 2008) and philosophical (Prinz 2005, 2004, 2002; Machery 2005, 2009) proposals that have attempted to solve the aforementioned problems. However, I will try to show that all these proposals present difficulties. Faced with these deficiencies, this research project aims to defend the idea that adopting a cognitive architecture that incorporates the general domain mechanism of structural alienation would facilitate the explanation of the four mentioned problems. Thus, the development of this research project would allow not only to overcome the analyzed philosophical and psychological proposals but also to propose a new and fruitful way of understanding the relationship between conceptual representations and the processing mechanisms that operate on them.