Modular Theory Of Mind
Until the last decades of the last century, the idea remained that the brain functioned as an “online” information processor. Through which the whole system calculated all incoming data, then resulting in output data. However, the Modular Theory of the Mind (TMM) supposed a rupture of this conception and a change of paradigm.
It was therefore thought that the brain was a kind of computer capable of processing only a finite set of information per unit of time. And that it couldn’t process new data until it had finished working on the previous information. However, TMM introduced the notion of parallel or simultaneous processing. And above all, he introduced the concept of a module.
Thus, we are faced with an alternative that has meant an insurmountable and positive schism in the advancement of the understanding of cognition, of the research of how our brain works. And this on the basis that it is composed of modules and that each of them is highly specialized.
However, each module should not be understood as a neuroanatomically demarcated area of the brain. The emphasis is on functional specialization. Therefore, a specific function runs in a modular fashion but may recruit different areas or different functional systems.
Basic concepts of modular theory of mind
Traditionally, mental functioning has been studied as a unitary process that comes into action before any kind of information. Thus, whatever the modality of the information (perceptual, logical, social, mathematical, etc.), the brain would activate as a whole. Based on the input information, it would produce output information already processed and resolved.
In the second half of the 1980s, Jerry Fodor, a renowned psycholinguist who is today considered the true father of cognitive science, hypothesized that the mind would be made up of a set of functional modules. Innate in nature, each would focus on a specific activity of high specialization.
The mind would no longer be an organ of calculation in series and unitary in its functioning. Rather, it is an integrated and coordinated set of specialized functions which, after having offered each of them a specific result which would eventually merge with the other results, would allow an efficient and separate distribution of mental sub-functions. Which would contribute to the procedural optimization of the brain.
Moreover, Fodor succeeded, with his postulates – which derived from modular theory of mind – to generate a position on mental processing intermediate between behaviorism and cognitivism. His proposition argues that the modules of the mind activate in a manner similar to a behavior or a reflex. But in an “inferential” way. In other words, they are able to provide more information. And in a more flexible way than what the specificity of a reflex requires.
Essential characteristics of the modules
Fodor (1983) states that any modular system must, totally or partially, meet certain criteria:
- Specificity of the field: each module specializes only in certain types of incoming information
- Informational encapsulation: modules do not depend, for their activation, on other mental systems
- Mandatory triggering: if a type of information reaches the cognitive system, the module specializing in processing this information will be activated. Necessarily and irrevocably
- High speed: the modules operate at high speed. Probably thanks to the gain in efficiency offered by the two previous points
- Superficiality of output information: The result of modular processing is a very simple and basic type of information. A kind of building block
- Limited accessibility
- Characteristic ontogeny: ontogenetic development of modules occurs approximately regularly in every human
- Pre-fixed neural architecture: it would support each module in a functional and structural way
A so-called Müller-Lyer illusion is an observable and reproducible mental phenomenon which, like many others, provides empirical support for this modular theory of mind. This illusion occurs when the person who perceives an illusory vision, even after realizing the falsity of visual information, is unable to stop perceiving it with its false attributes.
Conclusion
After the necessary extrapolations from the MMT, we can conclude that the diversity of mental modules corresponds to the enormous variety of needs that arise when the individual develops cognitively in a given context.
The widely accepted connectionist model of mental functioning, which holds that mental information is processed and stored in relatively separate neural circuits, would provide the neurophysiological foundation for the modular theory of mind.
Finally, this model also integrates the demonstrated phenomenon of brain plasticity. Indeed, it is by virtue of this neuroplasticity that the development of mental modules would take place, from a psychophysical point of view.
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