Cognitive Science Program

Folk Illusions: Children, Folklore, and Sciences of Perception (2019)
Brandon Barker, Clai Rice
Indiana University Press.

Abstract

Wiggling a pencil so that it looks like it is made of rubber, "stealing" your niece's nose, and listening for the sounds of the ocean in a conch shell– these are examples of folk illusions, youthful play forms that trade on perceptual oddities. In this groundbreaking study, K. Brandon Barker and Claiborne Rice argue that these easily overlooked instances of children's folklore offer an important avenue for studying perception and cognition in the contexts of social and embodied development. Folk illusions are traditionalized verbal and/or physical actions that are performed with the intention of creating a phantasm for one or more participants. Using a cross-disciplinary approach that combines the ethnographic methods of folklore with the empirical data of neuroscience, cognitive science, and psychology, Barker and Rice catalogue over eighty discrete folk illusions while exploring the complexities of embodied perception. Taken together as a genre of folklore, folk illusions show that people, starting from a young age, possess an awareness of the illusory tendencies of perceptual processes as well as an awareness that the distinctions between illusion and reality are always communally formed.

The Animal Question as Folklore in Science (2019)
Brandon Barker
Journal of Folklore Research, Special Issue, Folklore as (Unlikely) Frame for Science, The Aesop’s Fable Paradigm., 56 (2-3), 15-26

Abstract

Looking to answer ancient questions about the similarities and differences between humans and nonhuman animals, animal cognition scientists have deployed a traditional Aesopian fable, the Crow and the Pitcher, as narrative frame and structural precedent for experimental investigation. Herein, I consider the theoretical implications of this peculiar intersection between folklore and science in the contexts of Alan Dundes's notion of folk ideas (1971) and folkloristic genre theory. Ultimately, I gauge whether the so-called Aesop's Fable Paradigm is simply a folkloric cameo in science or a more complicated case of genuine scientific folklore.

Anthropomorphomania and the Rise of the Animal Mind: A Conversation (2019)
Brandon Barker, Daniel J. Povinelli
Journal of Folklore Research, Special Issue, Folklore as (Unlikely) Frame for Science, The Aesop’s Fable Paradigm., 56 (2-3), 71-90

Abstract

The conversation that follows concerns patterns of thinking. Comparative psychologist Daniel Povinelli, in conversation with folklorist Brandon Barker, argues that certain anthropomorphizing notions have impeded scientists' attempts to answer these questions: How are animals and humans the same? How are animals and humans different? This conversation supplements other considerations of the Aesop's Fable Paradigm in this special issue by articulating the perspective of an insider to both the science and the culture of comparative psychology, animal cognition, and their related disciplines.

Conclusion: Old Ideas and the Science of Animal Folklore (2019)
Brandon Barker, Daniel J. Povinelli
Journal of Folklore Research, Special Issue, Folklore as (Unlikely) Frame for Science, The Aesop’s Fable Paradigm., 56 (2-3), 113-23

Doctor Fomomindo’s Preliminary Notes for a Future Index of Anthropomorphized Animal Behaviors (2019)
Brandon Barker, Daniel J. Povinelli, Marissa Wieneke, Kristina Downs
Journal of Folklore Research, Special Issue, Folklore as (Unlikely) Frame for Science, The Aesop’s Fable Paradigm., 56 (2-3), 125-291

Folk Illusions as Emic, Educational Prompt (2018)
Brandon Barker
Journal of Folklore and Education, 5 42-48

Searching for Ratzinger (2016)
Brandon Barker
Turnip Trucks, 2 (2), 94-128

Folk Illusions: An Unrecognized Genre of Folklore (2012)
K. Brandon Barker, Claiborne Rice
Journal of American Folklore, 125 (498), 444-473

Abstract

Pulling from previous works on childlore, recently gathered adult remembrances, and systematic observations of children, the authors identify a heretofore unrecognized category of folklore we call folk illusions. Folk illusions are traditionalized, communicative performances that consistently effect an intended embodied illusion for one or more participants. Describing four types of folk illusions, the authors outline the salient features of the category—namely, director and actor roles, performance positions, priming periods, and verbal continuum. We argue that folk illusions are an under-studied aspect of embodiment and community in folkloristics and related epistemological fields. Ultimately, we contend that the study of folk illusions furthers our understanding of both illusions and folkloric intersubjectivity.

Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board (2011)
Daniel J. Povinelli
World Without Weight: Perspectives on an Alien Mind, 289-290