28th International Congress of Psychology August 8 ... - U-netSURF

etrieval, the cognitive resources needed to maintain their operation, and the nature and locus of
interference when attention is divided.
4006 INVITED SYMPOSIUM
Theories of thinking
Convener and Chair: E. Pöppel, Germany
Co-convener: A. von Mueller, Germany
4006.1 A hierarchical neurocognitive machinery of thinking, Ernst Poeppel, Institute for
Medical Psychology, Munich University, München, Germany
Mental processes being the necessary basis for thinking can be structured hierarchically: At first
special categories are defined within contextual frames. Next different categories are brought into
a relation allowing comparison with respect to quality or quantity. Comparisons allow selection
between alternatives, selection is basic to decisions, and decisions are the prerequisite for actions.
Thinking requires all these operations, and thinking disorders can arise on different levels of this
hierarchy. The driving force of thinking within this conceptual frame is a neurocognitive process
anticipating positive consequences of virtual actions.
4006.2 Towards an architecture of thinking operations, A. von Mueller, Parmenides Foundation,
München, Germany
High level thinking operations, like strategic reasoning and problem solving, are composed of
various layers of underlying constituent operations. To understand this architecture is crucial for
understanding the skill of thinking as such. How can innate capabilities be supported with tools?
The paper introduces a working hypothesis how to address and represents this architecture of
thinking operations drawing on both, phylogenetic and ontogenetic development. This includes an
identification of critical bottlenecks, especially in terms of working memory limitations leading to
constraints in dealing with complexity, and ways how to overcome these bottlenecks by
visualization techniques that externalise working memory functions.
4006.3 Prerational thinking, H. Ritter, Neuroinformatics, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld,
Germany
We usually conceive thinking as a controlled and rational process. However, it seems that
important elements of thinking happen outside our familiar sphere of direct conscious control and
explicit logical thought: the formation of associations, the springing up of ideas, the "smelling" of
a solution that directs further conscious search. This talk focuses on some of these "prerational"
elements of thinking and discusses conceptual approaches to model them, with an eye towards
implementing aspects of prerational thinking in computers or robots in order to create a basis for
machine intelligence beyond the mere linking of rules of logic.
4006.4 Taxonomies of thinking, B. Glatzeder, Parmenides Foundation, University of Munich,
University of Zurich, München, Germany
Although the study of thinking has been a topic for thousands of years, there is still no clear
classification or taxonomy of thinking. There have been attempts for classifications of thought
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