FOR 2718:  Modal and Amodal Cognition: Functions and Interactions

The question of how humans represent the internal and external world is central to many theories of human cognition. Central to this question is the distinction between modal and amodal representational formats. It is often assumed that one or the other of these two representational formats underlies cognitive processing in a particular domain of cognition. In contrast, we believe that both formats play important roles in most subfields of psychology. Traditionally, the distinction between modal and amodal representations has been particularly relevant and theoretically fruitful in research on perception and language. In other subfields of psychology, this distinction has so far played a rather subordinate role. In the first funding period, the research interest of this research group was to find out whether evidence for modal and amodal representations can also be found in other subfields of psychology. This appeared to be the case in most subfields investigated. In the second funding period, the corresponding results will be substantiated and refined. Emotion psychology and event cognition will be added as further subfields. Overall, the present research group thus aims to develop a solid understanding of the different representational formats and their functional role for human cognition, their developmental course, and their role in dysfunctional behavior. We believe that such an endeavor, bringing together scattered research on representational formats from different subfields of psychology, will help to unravel common functional principles and their interactions in human cognition.

DFG Programme Research Units

• Abstraction Processes in Associative Learning (Applicants Hütter, Mandy ;  Kaup, Barbara ;  Ramscar, Michael )
• Amodal and modal representations in planning and control of human action (Applicants Franz, Volker ;  Janczyk, Markus )
• Coordination Funds (Applicant Kaup, Barbara )
• Distance-dependent representational format (Applicants Kaup, Barbara ;  Mallot, Hanspeter A. ;  Ulrich, Rolf )
• Executive functions: Are Amodal Representations Involved in Proactive Control? (Applicants Dudschig, Carolin ;  Janczyk, Markus ;  Leuthold, Hartmut )
• From Event Models to Event Schemata: Modal and Amodal Event Representations and the Role of Meta-Cognition for Dynamic Event Comprehension (Applicants Huff, Markus ;  Said, Nadia )
• Interplay of amodal and modal encodings underlying directional space-metric associations (Applicants Butz, Martin ;  Nürk, Hans-Christoph )
• Modal and Amodal Representations Across Development (Applicants Bryce, Donna ;  Friedrich, Claudia )
• Representational Format of Emotional Stimuli (Applicant Dignath, David )
• The Representational Format of Stimulus Intensity (Applicants Heller, Jürgen ;  Ulrich, Rolf )
• The role of modal and amodal representations in uncontrolled eating (Applicants Gawrilow, Caterina ;  Svaldi, Ph.D., Jennifer )

Spokesperson Professorin Dr. Barbara Kaup