The nature of the relationship between language and thought has been quite elusive. We believe that its understanding is crucially dependent on the available notions of language and thought. Foundations of Language offers an unusually clear and complete account of both, providing a fruitful and much needed framework for future research. No doubt it will help us think better about these elusive complexities.

To avoid endless and futile debate, critics of an alternative paradigmatic hypothesis cannot simply state their own paradigmatic assumptions as if they were plain fact while dismissing those of the opposition as self-evidently absurd, because it is exactly those initial assumptions that are brought into question by the paradigmatic proposal. Perceived incredibility is no valid ground for rejection of a paradigm whose alternatives are at least equally incredible, and arguably more so.

Colman shows that normative theories of rational decision-making fail to produce rational decisions in simple interactive games. I suggest that well-formed theories are possible in local settings, keeping in mind that a good part of each game is the generation of a rational approach appropriate for that game. The key is rationality defined in terms of the game, not individual decisions.

Newell wanted a theory of cognition to abide by some explicit criteria, here called the Newell Test. The test differs from the Turing Test because it is explicit. The Newell Test will include the Turing Test if its characterization of cognition is complete. It is not. Its use here is open-ended: A system that does not pass it well invites improvement.

On top of the puzzles mentioned by Colman comes the puzzle of why rationality has bewitched classical game theory for so long. Not the smallest merit of evolutionary game theory is that it views rationality as a limiting case, at best. But some problems only become more pressing.

Smith et al.'s article provides a convincing argument for devoting increased research attention to comparative metacognition. However, this increased attention should be complemented with establishing links with comparative theory of mind (ToM) research, which are currently missing. I present a task in which pairs of subjects are presented with incomplete information in an object-choice situation that could be used to establish that link.

Byrne & Hilbert (B&H) conceive of color perception as the representation of a physical property “out there.” In our view, their approach does not only have various internal problems, but is also apt to becloud both the intricate and still poorly understood role that “color” plays within perceptual architecture, and the complex coupling to the “external world” of the perceptual system as an entirety. We propose an alternative perspective, which avoids B&H's misleading dichotomy between a purely subjective and a realist conception of “color.”

The notion of functionality is appropriately central to the Newell Test but is also critical at a lower level, in development of cognitive sub-theories. I illustrate, on one hand, how far this principle is from general acceptance among verbal theoreticians, and, on the other hand, how simulation models (here implemented within ACT-R) seem to drive the functional question automatically.

Jackendoff's account of relating linguistic structure and brain structure is too restricted in concentrating on formal features of computational requirements, neglecting the achievements of various types of neuroscientific modelling. My own approaches to neuronal models of syntactic organization show how these requirements could be met. The book's lack of discussion of a sound philosophy of the relation is briefly mentioned.

The E-Z Reader model (Reichle et al. 1998; 1999) provides a theoretical framework for understanding how word identification, visual processing, attention, and oculomotor control jointly determine when and where the eyes move during reading. In this article, we first review what is known about eye movements during reading. Then we provide an updated version of the model (E-Z Reader 7) and describe how it accounts for basic findings about eye movement control in reading. We then review several alternative models of eye movement control in reading, discussing both their core assumptions and their theoretical scope. On the basis of this discussion, we conclude that E-Z Reader provides the most comprehensive account of eye movement control during reading. Finally, we provide a brief overview of what is known about the neural systems that support the various components of reading, and suggest how the cognitive constructs of our model might map onto this neural architecture.

E-Z Reader's account of the interaction between oculomotor and cognitive processes depends critically on distinguishing between early and late stages of lexical processing, because this distinction allows saccadic programming to be decoupled from shifts of attention. Precisely specifying the nature of this distinction has important implications both for current models of lexical retrieval and for the development of E-Z Reader 8.

In this commentary I explore nonclassical connectionism (NCC) as a coherent framework for evaluation in the spirit of the Newell Test. Focusing on knowledge integration, development, real-time performance, and flexible behavior, I argue that NCC's “within-theory rank ordering” would place subsymbolic modeling in a better position. Failure to adopt a symbolic level of thought cannot be interpreted as a weakness.

We propose that a direct analogy can be made between optimal behaviour in animals and rational behaviour in humans, and that lessons learned by the study of the former can be applied to the latter. Furthermore, we suggest that, to understand human decisions, rationality must be considered within an evolutionary framework.

While color realism is endorsed, Byrne & Hilbert's (B&H's) case for it stretches the notion of “physical property” beyond acceptable bounds. It is argued that a satisfactory account of color should do much more to respond to antirealist intuitions that flow from the specificity of color experience, and a pointer to an approach that does so is provided.

Jackendoff's Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution attempts to reconnect generative linguistics to the rest of cognitive science. However, by minimally acknowledging decades of work in cognitive linguistics, treating dynamical systems approaches somewhat dismissively, and clinging to certain fundamental dogma while revising others, he clearly risks satisfying no one by almost pleasing everyone.

In this commentary, we raise two issues. First, we argue that in any species, the comparative study of metacognitive abilities must be approached from a developmental perspective and not solely from the adult end state. This makes it possible to explore the trajectories by which different species reach their phenotypic outcome and whether different cognitive systems interact over developmental time. Second, using our research comparing different genetic disorders in humans, we challenge the authors' claim that it is unparsimonious to interpret the same performance in humans and animals in qualitatively different ways, because even the same overt behaviour in different groups of humans can be sustained by different underlying cognitive processes.

Smith et al. present us with a false dichotomy in explaining their uncertainty data: Either the animals' responses are “under the associative control of stimulus cues,” or the animals must be responding “under the metacognitive control of uncertainty cues.” There is a third alternative to consider: one that is genuinely cognitive, neither associative nor stimulus driven, but purely first-order in character. On this alternative the metacognitive reports of humans in these situations reflect states that are interpretative rather than causal in character.

In designing stratified models of human language, understanding notions of logical consequence and validity of inference require separating the aspects of meaning that vary between models from logical constants. Modelling meaning requires choices regarding the primitives, where the Fregean program is still offering us the fundamental insights on the role of truth, judgement, and grasping or sharing of thoughts.

This commentary focuses on the parts of psychological game theory dealing with preference, as illustrated by team reasoning, and supports the conclusion that these theoretical notions do not contribute above and beyond existing theory in understanding social interaction. In particular, psychology and games are already bridged by a comprehensive, formal, and inherently psychological theory, interdependence theory (Kelley & Thibaut 1978; Kelley et al. 2003), which has been demonstrated to account for a wide variety of social interaction phenomena.

Evidence is presented for the notion that selection-for-perception and selection-for-action progress in parallel to become tightly coupled at the saccade target before the execution of the movement. Such a conception might be incorporated in the E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control in reading.