Sperber and Wilson (1987) have criticised Fodor's (1983) pessimistic view about the possibility of a science of central systems. Fodor's pessimism stems from the holistic nature of central systems – people can access anything that they know when engaging in belief fixation. It is argued that Sperber and Wilsons theory of how relevance is realized during verbal comprehension fails to elucidate this crucial aspect of central processes. Their claims about how a context is selected are shown to presuppose the ability to realize relevance.

Wright & Liley provide an advance in addressing the interaction of multiple scales of processing in the brain. It should address in more detail the biological evidence that underlies the models it proposes to replace.

Impoverished resources may direct the pathologic central nervous system toward local solutions during ontogeny. The resultant motor behavior can be systemically optimal without being functionally optimal. Therapeutic intervention should focus on facilitating function (rather than “normalcy”) by encouraging behavioral exploration through appropriate combinations of task and environmental variations with respect to individual capabilities. Some health professions have already adopted this philosophy.

Issues concerning UG access for L2 acquisition as formulated by Epstein et al. are misleading as well as poorly discussed. UG accessibility can only be fully evaluated with respect to the steady state gram mar reached by the learner. The steady state for LI learners is self evidently the adult grammar in the speech community. For L2 learners, however, the steady state is not obvious. Yet, without its clear characterization, debates concerning stages of L2 acquisition and direct and indirect UG accessibility cannot be resolved.

Using movement disorders to understand the central nervous system's goals for motor behaviour may be easier in neurological models with a focal lesion of sudden onset, because the distinction between primary and adaptive changes may be clearer than in slowly progressive and/or diffuse neurological disease.

Much second language acquisition (SLA) research confuses the representational and the developmental problems of language acquisition, assuming that attributes of a property theory will explain the transitions between the stages of a psychogrammar, or that induction will explain the properties of the representational systems which encode language. I argue that Principles and Parameter-setting theory deals only with the representational problem, and that induction must play a role in explaining the developmental problem. The conclusion is that both Epstein et al. and the papers they criticize are right; they are just not right about the same issues.

Chiappe & Kukla argue that relevance theory fails to solve the frame problem as defined by Fodor. They are right. They are wrong, however, to take Fodor's frame problem too seriously. Fodor's concerns, on the other hand, even though they are wrongly framed, are worth addressing. We argue that relevance theory helps address them.

Two hypotheses concerning nonlinear elements in complex systems are contrasted: that neurons, intrinsically unstable, are stabilized through embedding in networks and populations; and, conversely, that cortical neurons are intrinsically stable, but are destabilized through embedding in cortical populations and corticostriatal feedback systems. Tests are made by piecewise linearization of nonlinear dynamics at nonequilibriumoperating points, followed by linear stability analysis.

Researchers and clinicians have different goals and constraints in trying to understand and treat movement disorders. Research on primary and secondary aspects of disorders may lead to effective treatment aimed at restoring functional movements even if the primary disorder cannot be cured. Similarly, movement patterns may be maladaptive and hence need therapeutic intervention to restore functional movement skills.

Peer review poses many challenges for journals. A downside of high rejection rates and sometimes delayed responses in publication decision by journals is a long time period between original submission of a manuscript and its ultimate acceptance and publication. One way of accelerating the process which might be worth considering is multiple submission. This commentary addresses that issue.

Although this is an impressive piece of modeling work, I worry that the two models that Wright & Liley have created do not yet provide us with useful empirical information regarding brain processing.

We argue that the model developed in Epstein et al.'s target article does not explain differences between child first language (LI) acquisition and adult second language (L2) acquisition. We therefore sketch an alternative view, originally developed in Clahsen and Muysken (1989), in the light of new empirical findings and theoretical developments.

I examine the target articles hypothesis in light of pidginization and creolization (P/C) phenomena. L1-to-L2 transfer has been argued to be the “central process” in P/C via relexification. This seems incompatible with the view that UC sans Li plays the central role in L2A. I sketch a proposal that reconciles the hypothesis in the target article with, inter alia, the effects of transfer in P/C.

We start with a number of philosophical and theoretical issues related to motor control, proceed through a spectrum of problems related to the role of adaptive changes in the central nervous system (CNS) in response to a primary disorder, and end with tentative practical recommendations. We consider the hierarchical and dynamic approaches to motor control not as incompatible alternatives but as ways of approaching two equally important issues, those of control and coordination. Professionals working in the area of physical therapy and rehabilitation should make use of the adaptive abilities of the CNS, identify goals, provide tools, and allow the CNS to develop optimal strategies. Therapists should intervene if they suspect that the CNS settles down in a local rather than a global optimum because of such factors as pain or the lack of a long-term predictive ability. Adaptive changes within the CNS may be important not only in pathologies but also in cases of specialized training, normal growth, and normal ageing.

The work in progress reported by Wright & Liley shows great promise, primarily because of their experimental and simulation paradigms. However, their tentative conclusion that macroscopic neocortex may be considered (approximately) a linear near-equilibrium system is premature and does not correspond to tentative conclusions drawn from other studies of neocortex.

Rl In response to Somit & Peterson's call for multiple journal manuscript submissions, and consistent with Cicchetti (1991a and 1991b), counterarguments are presented. The policy for multiple submissions is difficult to defend scientifically ana would place an unwarranted burden on both reviewers and journal editors. As such the policy is again rejected. R2 As earlier hypothesized, referee agreement on manuscripts submitted to a major journal in chemistry was significantly higher for acceptance than for rejection. This is consistent with the high acceptance rate (>70%) of this journal. There is significantly more referee agreement on rejection than on acceptance for manuscripts submitted to major journals, in behavioral science and medicine. These journals have high rejection rates (often >70%).

Organisms engage in various activities that are directed at objects, whether real or imagined. Such activities may be termed “intentional relations.” We present a four-level framework of social understanding that organizes the ways in which social organisms represent the intentional relations of themselves and other agents. We presuppose that the information available to an organism about its own intentional relations (or first person information) is qualitatively different from the information available to that organism about other agents’ intentional relations (or third person information). However, through the integration of these two sources of information, it is possible to generate representations of intentional relations that are uniformly applicable to the activities of both self and other. The four levels of the framework differ in the extent to which such integration occurs and in the degree to which imagination is involved in generating these representations. Most animals exist at the lowest level, at which integration of first and third person sources of information does not occur. Of nonhuman species, only great apes exhibit social understanding at intermediate levels, at which integration of these sources of information provides uniform representations of intentional relations. Only humans attain the highest level, at which it is possible to represent intentional relations with mental objects. We propose that with the development of the imagination, children progress through three stages, equivalent to the later three levels of the framework. The abnormalities in social understanding of autistic individuals are hypothesized to result from a failure to develop integrated representations of intentional relations.

To model the organization of levels' of cortical dynamics, at least some general scheme for hierarchy, functional diversity, and proper intrinsic control must be provided. Rhythmic control forces the system to iterate its state by short trajectories, which makes it much more stable and predictable without discarding the desirable ability of chaotic systems to make rapid phase transitions. Rhythmic control provides a fundamentally different systems dynamics, one not provided by models that allow the emergence of continuous trajectories in the systems state space.

Velmans (1991a; 1991b) proposed that consciousness plays a minor explanatory role in the information processing approach and that unconscious mechanisms process stimuli and responses and intervene between them. In contrast, the present commentary describes a thought experiment suggesting that, although input information is initially processed unconsciously, subsequent processing involves consciousness, and consciousness plays an important role in the explanation of behavior.

In this commentary, I examine the experiment reported by Epstein et al. in section 5. What I show here is that the experiment is so poorly executed that little, if anything, can be concluded from it regarding the role of UG in L2 acquisition.