The mind has a mind of its own: Developing knowledge about mental uncontrollability

Five-year-olds, 9-year-olds, 13-year-olds, and adults were tested for their understanding that people have only limited control over their mental activity. The adolescents and adults understood much better than the children that a child who sees a shot needle while awaiting a shot will automatically think about getting a shot, and that a child who hears a strange noise will automatically wonder what it is, even if these children did not want to think or wonder about anything. There were also significant increases with age in the recognition that a person would not be able to go for three days without thinking or wondering about anything, that one sometimes has thoughts one does not want to have, and that unwanted thoughts one tries to get rid of often come back. Arguments were made for the adaptive value of learning that the mind has a mind of its own.     

Hume and the enactive approach to mind

An important part of David Hume’s work is his attempt to put the natural sciences on a firmer foundation by introducing the scientific method into the study of human nature. This investigation resulted in a novel understanding of the mind, which in turn informed Hume’s critical evaluation of the scope and limits of the scientific method as such. However, while these latter reflections continue to influence today’s philosophy of science, his theory of mind is nowadays mainly of interest in terms of philosophical scholarship. This paper aims to show that, even though Hume’s recognition in the cognitive sciences has so far been limited, there is an opportunity to reevaluate his work in the context of more recent scientific developments. In particular, it is argued that we can gain a better understanding of his overall philosophy by tracing the ongoing establishment of the enactive approach. In return, this novel interpretation of Hume’s ‘science of man’ is used as the basis for a consideration of the current and future status of the cognitive sciences.

The mind of global human society. A new approach to investigating the future

In this essay, I present a new approach, called “ideometry,” which may lead to a new way of integrating knowledge and investigating the future of scientific conceptions. Conceptions are examined in themselves, independently of the reality they are supposedly describing. This is done formally by means of a new concept, “alterity.” A consequence of this formal consideration is a possible “super‐mind” of global human society, a very large and complex, growing system, analogous to a child's brain.     

A family-based approach to adult mental disorders

Recent research studies have provided strong support for a collaborative approach between families and mental health services in the clinical management of major mental disorders. A comprehensive approach to adult mental health care that employs cognitive-behavioural family therapy as the basis for clinical assessment and treatment is described. This model emphasizes home-based intervention, collaboration with primary care, targeted specific interventions, achievement of the personal goals of index patients and their family members, long-term rehabilitation, and assessment of benefits and costs.     

A multidimensional scaling approach to mental multiplication

Adults consistently make errors in solving simple multiplication problems. These errors have been explained with reference to the interference between similar problems. In this paper, we apply multidimensional scaling (MDS) to the domain of multiplication problems, to uncover their underlying similarity structure. A tree-sorting task was used to obtain perceived dissimilarity ratings. The derived representation shows greater similarity between problems containing larger operands and suggests that tie problems (e.g., 7 x 7) hold special status. A version of the generalized context model (Nosofsky, 1986) was used to explore the derived MDS solution. The similarity of multiplication problems made an important contribution to producing a model consistent with human performance, as did the frequency with which such problems arise in textbooks, suggesting that both factors may be involved in the explanation of errors.     

Limits of morality: A sociological approach to higher moral stages

Grounded in the wider framework of Kohlberg's (1984) stage theory of moral development and Habermas' (1981; Habermas &; Luhmann, 1971) theory of discourse, this article addresses the question: Is a moral stage 6 society possible? Toward answering this question, a sociological approach to moral stage 6 is employed that complements the usual psychological approach to moral development. The article posits that a moral stage 6 society is impossible. Therefore, lower-stage institutions cannot be abolished; they have to be controlled and supervised. This calls for a new and structurally different type of discourse, the metadiscourse. The article postulates that such metadiscourse has the property of moral stage 7 according to the general stage model (Commons &; Richards, 1984a, 1984b). Finally, several strategies for controlling lower-stage institutions are considered, with bureaucracy serving as example of a lower-stage institution.     

A self-contained mental health outpost: An automated approach to prevention

This paper describes the application of a microcomputer system as a mental health outpost. The outpost contains a psychological screening inventory, a relaxation training and educational session, and a consumer-satisfaction questionnaire. A study to assess the validity of the decision making algorithm of the mental health outpost is reported. The implications of an automated delivery system for first-level preventive and promotional mental health services are discussed.     

The role of prediction in mental processing: A process approach

Although prediction plays a prominent role in mental processing, we have only limited understanding of how the brain generates and employs predictions. This paper develops a theoretical framework in three steps. First I propose a process model that describes how predictions are produced and are linked to behavior. Subsequently I describe a generative mechanism, consisting of the selective amplification of neural dynamics in the context of boundary conditions. I hypothesize that this mechanism is active as a process engine in every mental process, and that therefore each mental process proceeds in two stages: (i) the formation of process boundary conditions; (ii) the bringing about of the process function by the operation – within the boundary conditions – of a relatively ‘blind’ generative process. Thirdly, from this hypothesis I derive a strategy for describing processes formally. The result is a multilevel framework that may also be useful for studying mental processes in general.     

Networks of meaning and the bicultural mind: A structural equation modeling approach

The paper examines cultural frame-switching among bicultural participants at the level of associated meanings. Bicultural participants of Greek descent who live in the Netherlands were randomly primed with either Greek or Dutch cultural symbols and language. A monocultural Dutch group in the Netherlands and a monocultural Greek group in Greece, were involved as control groups. Structural equation modeling indicated that the Greek participants in Greece and the bicultural participants primed with Greek culture had a similar pattern of associations. This pattern differed from that of the Dutch participants and the participants primed with Dutch culture. Thus, the two different monocultural association patterns were replicated among bicultural individuals. The findings show that meanings are affected by cultural frame-switching, and provide further support for the dynamic constructivist approach.     

The group-member mind trade-off: attributing mind to groups versus group members

People attribute minds to other individuals and make inferences about those individuals' mental states to explain and predict their behavior. Little is known, however, about whether people also attribute minds to groups and believe that collectives, companies, and corporations can think, have intentions, and make plans. Even less is known about the consequences of these attributions for both groups and group members. We investigated the attribution of mind and responsibility to groups and group members, and we demonstrated that people make a trade-off: The more a group is attributed a group mind, the less members of that group are attributed individual minds. Groups that are judged to have more group mind are also judged to be more cohesive and responsible for their collective actions. These findings have important implications for how people perceive the minds of groups and group members, and for how attributions of mind influence attributions of responsibility to groups and group members.     

The mental representation of lexical form: a phonological approach to the recognition lexicon

We propose a psycholinguistic model of lexical processing which incorporates both process and representation. The view of lexical access and selection that we advocate claims that these processes are conducted with respect to abstract underspecified phonological representations of lexical form. The abstract form of a given item in the recognition lexicon is an integrated segmental-featural representation, where all predictable and non-distinctive information is withheld. This means that listeners do not have available to them, as they process the speech input, a representation of the surface phonetic realisation of a given word-form. What determines performance is the abstract, underspecified representation with respect to which this surface string is being interpreted. These claims were tested by studying the interpretation of the same phonological feature, vowel nasality, in two languages, English and Bengali. The underlying status of this feature differs in the two languages; nasality is distinctive only in consonants in English, while both vowels and consonants contrast in nasality in Bengali. Both languages have an assimilation process which spreads nasality from a nasal consonant to the preceding vowel. A cross-linguistic gating study was conducted to investigate whether listeners would interpret nasal and oral vowels differently in two languages. The results show that surface phonetic nasality in the vowel in VN sequences is used by English listeners to anticipate the upcoming nasal consonant. In Bengali, however, nasality is initially interpreted as an underlying nasal vowel. Bengali listeners respond to CVN stimuli with words containing a nasal vowel, until they get information about the nasal consonant. In contrast, oral vowels in both languages are unspecified for nasality and are interpreted accordingly. Listeners in both languages respond with CVN words (which have phonetic nasality on the surface) as well as with CVC words while hearing an oral vowel. The results of this cross-linguistic study support, in detail, the hypothesis that the listener's interpretation of the speech input is in terms of an abstract underspecified representation of lexical form.     

A dimensional approach to maternal attachment state of mind: relations to maternal sensitivity and maternal autonomy support

The aim of this study was to examine the developmental significance of the newly developed dimensional approach to attachment state of mind by investigating its capacity to predict individual differences in the quality of two caregiving behaviors-maternal sensitivity and maternal autonomy support-that are linked to numerous important child outcomes. Seventy-one upper-middle-class, predominantly French-speaking and Caucasian dyads participated in 3 home visits (34 girls). The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) was administered when the infants were 8 months old, maternal sensitivity was assessed when they were 12 months old, and maternal autonomy support was assessed at 15 months. The results revealed that, above and beyond SES, maternal sensitivity was negatively related to the dismissing dimension of the AAI, whereas maternal autonomy support was negatively linked to the preoccupied/unresolved dimension. In contrast, the traditional AAI categories were not significantly linked to parenting. These results speak to the relevance of using a continuous approach to attachment state of mind when predicting individual differences in specific caregiving behaviors.     

How to share a mind: Reconsidering the group mind thesis

Standard accounts in social ontology and the group cognition debate have typically focused on how collective modes, types, and contents of intentions or representational states must be construed so as to constitute the jointness of the respective agents, cognizers, and their engagements. However, if we take intentions, beliefs, or mental representations all to instantiate some mental properties, then the more basic issue regarding such collective engagements is what it is for groups of individual minds to share a mind. Somewhat surprisingly, this very issue has not received much attention in the respective debates and when it has, typically the outlook has been skeptical or outright negative. In this paper, I argue that it is epistemologically possible for a group of individuals to literally share a single mental unit. In particular, I will put forward and defend what I shall call the zombie conception of group minds.     

The Infant mental health specialist in newborn pediatric rounds: A systems approach

This article describes a special program wherein infant mental health specialists participate in hospital rounds with pediatric residents. The purpose of the program is described in terms of medical awareness of psycho-social needs of the family and improved clinical services. Examples are given of the way in which “rounding” contributes to the meeting of infants' and families' medical and psychological needs. Note is made of the multilevel impact of this collaboration.