Cognitive science has evolved since early disputes between radical empiricism and radical nativism. The authors are reacting to the revival of radical empiricism spurred by recent successes in deep neural network (NN) models. We agree that language-like mental representations (language-of-thoughts [LoTs]) are part of the best game in town, but they cannot be understood independent of the other players.

Information seeking, especially when motivated by strategic learning and intrinsic curiosity, could render the new mechanism “incentive hope” proposed by Anselme & Güntürkün sufficient, but not necessary to explain how reward uncertainty promotes reward seeking and consumption. Naturalistic and foraging-like tasks can help parse motivational processes that bridge learning and foraging behaviors and identify their neural underpinnings.

Commentaries on the target article offer diverse perspectives on integrative experiment design. Our responses engage three themes: (1) Disputes of our characterization of the problem, (2) skepticism toward our proposed solution, and (3) endorsement of the solution, with accompanying discussions of its implementation in existing work and its potential for other domains. Collectively, the commentaries enhance our confidence in the promise and viability of integrative experiment design, while highlighting important considerations about how it is used.

Here I consider the possible role of the temporal updating system in the development of the temporal reasoning system. Using evidence from children's acquisition of time words, I argue that abstract temporal concepts are not built from primitive representations of time. Instead, I propose that language and cultural learning provide the primary sources of the temporal reasoning system.

Lankford criticizes the notion that suicide terrorists are “normal” and argues that they are suicidal. We have two misgivings about this. First, he puts sole focus on the personal side of suicidality and ignores the individual's context. Second, he fails to elaborate on the intent to harm others, which must also include the cultural, political, religious/ideological, and social-organizational factors of suicide terrorism.

Questions can be raised about the central status that evolutionarily ancient core knowledge systems are given in Spelke's otherwise very compelling theory. So, the existence of domain-general learning capacities has to be admitted, too, and no clear reason is provided to doubt the existence of uniquely human cognitive adaptations. All of these factors should be acknowledged when explaining human thought.

This review evaluates pros and cons of the schema theory as a general framework for expressing what Arbib et al. call “systems neuroscience.” We discuss the software/hardware duality of the schema concept and the relative neglect of the mechanical properties of muscles. We propose a computational alternative to the functional decomposition in terms of schemas.

Organisms don't explore for exploration's sake: exploratory psychology is regulated by inputs from multiple adaptations dedicated to processing information from different domains of ancestral adaptive relevance. As holistic representations of environments, imaginary worlds simulate multiple adaptive problems, solutions, and outcomes, thereby engaging numerous emotional systems and providing potentially useful information. Their popularity is thus best understood in terms of the full spectrum of information domains they comprise.

Rachlin's view of self-control as a sequence or chain of behaviors is contrasted with traditional behavioral analyses of self-control which emphasize a simplistic interpretation of the hyperbolic function relating small-sooner (SS) and larger-later (LL) reinforcers to specific behaviors. The validity of Rachlin's teleological analysis is examined in relation to the acquisition and steady-state performance of self-control behaviors. Central to an analysis of self-control is the functional difference between behavior under the control of SS and LL reinforcers, because SS-reinforced behavior is more complex due to temporal parameters.