大学生数字运算能力对贝叶斯推理的影响

本文采用两个贝叶斯推理问题和一个数字运算能力量表对102个大学生进行了调查,结果表明:(1)数字运算能力对贝叶斯推理有影响,具体表现为高数字运算能力被试比低数字运算能力被试的贝叶斯推理成绩要好;(2)自然频数表征对贝叶斯推理的影响是有条件的,只有高数字运算能力被试才出现自然频数表征促进效应,而低数字运算能力被试并没有出现自然频数表征促进效应。这可能表明,即使是对自然频数的理解和操纵也需要一定程度的数字运算能力,而且自然频数表征促进效应并没有以前认为的那么普遍。     

概率的不同表征对贝叶斯推理的影响的研究

该研究以贝叶斯推算、判断为实验任务,探讨了三种概率表征(百分比、自然频率、概率词)、三种概率规则认识水平对贝叶斯推理的影响,结果表明:1)概率词表征的贝叶斯推算实质是判断过程。2)在三种概率表征中,频率表征更适合于正确完成贝叶斯推理,但存在学科背景的差异。3)贝叶斯推理使用的策略有正确规则、错误规则、命题知识、概率简捷式、直觉和个人意愿六种。4)贝叶斯判断的正确率高于贝叶斯推算,个体在贝叶斯判断上使用的正确规则多于贝叶斯推算过程。     

目标推理的加工方式及其神经基础

目标推理是知觉者根据个体的行为推理其目标的过程,是理解人们行为的一种重要方式。现有的研究证明目标推理发生在信息编码阶段,且具有无意识性和无意图性,其加工过程可以通过贝叶斯逆向规划模型来表征。与目标推理有关的脑区有镜像神经系统和心理理论系统。未来的研究需要考察目标推理的高效性和不可控性,探讨不同目标推理的加工阶段,改进贝叶斯逆向规划模型,进一步考察影响目标推理的因素。     

条件推理的集合映射模型再探

把条件推理命题作为一种观点置入一种具体的情境中[1],考察了"自己"与"作者"两种不同立场下,说服、劝阻与中性三种效价下的命题后件以及个体持有的内隐观点对大学生被试推理结果的影响.实验结果表明:(1)对大前提的语义表征取决于个体所持有的内隐观点.(2)就说服与劝阻两种效价而言,人类的思维绝不是简单的对于积极的结果表现出"趋向",对消极的结果表现出"回避".(3)就两种立场而言,在作者的立场下,并没有得到更符合逻辑的推理结果,因此双加工理论还存在着不足.     

推理表征影响整体推理的实验研究

本研究采用５个实验探讨了推理表征对整体推理的影响。研究结果表明，读者在演绎推理和类比推理的条件下可以保持课文的整体连贯即整体推理，只是由于工作记忆容量有限，推理表征对于保持整体推理具有弱化作用。     

涵义语义与关于概称句推理的词项逻辑

概称句推理具有以词项为单位的特征并且词项的涵义在其中起到了重要的作用。已有的处理用A一表达式表达涵义,不够简洁和自然。亚里斯多德三段论是一种词项逻辑,但它是外延的和单调的。这两方面的情况使得有必要考虑新的词项逻辑。涵义语义的基本观点是：语词首先表达的是涵义,通过涵义的作用,语词有了指称,表达概念。概称句三段论是更为常用的推理,有两个基本形式GAG和Gaa。在涵义语义的基础上建立的系统GAG和Gaa是关于这两种推理的公理系统。     

日常生活事件时间关系推理的初步研究

对时间推理的研究主要有两种范式,习俗周期性时间推理和时间关系推理。以往大多数研究集中在习俗周期性时间推理上,而时间关系推理研究则相对薄弱。本研究在以往研究的基础上,对日常生活事件的时间关系推理进行了研究。实验设计考虑了推理任务的模型数量、前提数量、无关前提以及有无肯定答案等因素,形成了六类推理任务。研究发现:推理任务的模型数量、前提数量、无关前提、是否有肯定答案以及推理者时间维度上的人格特征等都会影响个体的时间关系推理;被试一般是以呈现的前提顺序来表征推理任务的。但是,当被试意识到无关信息时,可以从整体上表征问题。     

文本阅读中预期推理生成的容量制约性

本研究通过操纵读者信息加工的时间量考察了工作记忆容量对预期推理生成的影响性质。结果表明,如果没有信息加工时间的限制,则工作记忆容量低的读者也能表现出在阅读中生成预期推理的证据,而如果读者的阅读加工时间受一定限制,则工作记忆容量低者建构预期推理的证据随着被允许的加工时间的缩短而逐渐消失。结果支持“工作记忆容量只影响阅读中预期推理建构速度”的观点。     

贝叶斯推理研究综述

Kahneman 和Tversky在70年代初期发现人们在概率推理中并不遵循数学上的贝叶斯定理,常常由于忽略问题中的基础概率而对稀少事件的条件概率作出夸大的反应。此后心理学家采用文本范式和经验范式对此问题进行了大量的研究,并涌现了一些不同的理论观点,主要有启发法策略论(代表性启发法和可得性启发法)、自然抽样空间假说、频率效应论和抽样加工理论。     

条件推理的类比转换运用

该文通过2个实验研究旨在探究将演绎推理和类比推理结合在一起的四卡条件推理的类比转换运用的特点。结果表明：1）假设检验的条件推理过程在特定的实验条件下,表现出推理过程转换的心理加工特点;2）改善问题的陈述形式,使之和样例问题一样,能够降低推理过程转换的难度,促进推理过程转换的成绩;3）2个样例归纳的图式促进同形问题的解答,却对推理转换过程有抑制作用。     

Frequency interpretation of ambiguous statistical information facilitates Bayesian reasoning

The idea that naturally sampled frequencies facilitate performance in statistical reasoning tasks because they are a cognitively privileged representational format has been challenged by findings that similarly structured numbers presented as chances similarly facilitate performance, on the basis of the claim that these are technically single-event probabilities. A crucial opinion, however, is that of the research participants, who possibly interpret chances as de facto frequencies. A series of experiments here indicate that not only is performance improved by clearly presented natural frequencies, rather than chances phrasing, but also that participants who interpreted chances as frequencies, rather than as probabilities, were consistently better at statistical reasoning. This result was found across different variations of information presentation and across different populations.     

Reid on Fictional Objects and the Way of Ideas

I argue that Reid adopts a form of Meinongianism about fictional objects because of, not in spite of, his common sense philosophy. According to 'the way of ideas', thoughts take representational states as their immediate intentional objects. In contrast, Reid endorses a direct theory of conception and a heady thesis of first-person privileged access to the contents of our thoughts. He claims that thoughts about centaurs are thoughts of nonexistent objects, not thoughts about mental intermediaries, adverbial states or general concepts. In part this is because of the common sense semantics he adopts for fictional-object terms. I show that it is reasonable for Reid to endorse Meinongianism, given his epistemological priorities, for he took the way of ideas to imply that his view about first-person privileged access to our mental contents was false.     

Representational and executive selection resources in 'theory of mind': evidence from compromised belief-desire reasoning in old age

Effective belief-desire reasoning requires both specialized representational capacities-the capacity to represent the mental states as such-as well as executive selection processes for accurate performance on tasks requiring the prediction and explanation of the actions of social agents. Compromised belief-desire reasoning in a given population may reflect failures in either or both of these systems. We report evidence supporting this two-process model from belief-desire reasoning tasks conducted with younger and older adult populations. When task inferential complexity is held constant, neither group showed specific difficulty with reasoning about mental state content as compared with non-mental state content. However, manipulations that systematically increase executive performance demands within belief-desire reasoning caused systematic decreases in task performance in both older and younger adult groups. Moreover, the effect of increasing executive demands was disproportionately greater in the older group. Regression analysis indicated that measures of processing speed and inhibition contributed most to explaining variance in accuracy and response times in the belief-desire reasoning tasks. These results are consistent with the idea that compromised belief-desire reasoning in old age is likely the result of age-related decline in executive selection skills that supplement core mental state representational abilities, rather than as a result of failures in the representational system itself.     

Affect: representationalists’ headache

Representationalism is the view that the phenomenal character of experiences is identical to their representational content of a certain sort. This view requires a strong transparency condition on phenomenally conscious experiences. We argue that affective qualities such as experienced pleasantness or unpleasantness are counter-examples to the transparency thesis and thus to the sort of representationalism that implies it.     

When learning to classify by relations is easier than by features

Relational reasoning is often considered more resource intensive than feature-based reasoning. This view implies that learning categories defined by relational regularities should be more difficult than learning categories defined by featural regularities. Unfortunately previous studies do not ground featural and relational information in a common perceptual substrate. After addressing this concern, a series of experiments compare learning performance for relation- and feature-based categories. Under certain circumstances we find faster learning for relation-based categories. The results suggest that mechanisms rooted in relational processes (e.g., relative stimulus judgement, analogical comparison) facilitate or hinder learning depending on whether the relational processes highlight or obscure the underlying category structure. Conversely, category learning affects relational processes by promoting relational comparisons that increase the coherence of acquired categories. In contrast to the largely independent research efforts in category learning and analogy research, our findings suggest that learning and comparison processes are deeply intertwined.     

Reconceiving rationality: situating rationality into radically enactive cognition

Rational beliefs and actions are typically evaluated against certain benchmarks, e.g., those of classical logic or probability theory. Rationality therefore is traditionally taken to involve some sort of reasoning, which in turn implies contentful cognition. Radically Enactive (and Embodied) views of Cognition (REC), on the other hand, claim that not all cognition is contentful. In order to show that rationality does not need to lie outside of REC’s scope of radicalizing cognition, I develop a Radically Enactive notion of Rationality (RER), according to which rationality is embodied, situated and contentless. For RER, an organism acts rationally insofar as it sustains a proficient interaction with its environment, which in turn requires the coordination of cognitive abilities in accordance with environmental constraints. Rationality is thus distinguished from reasoning, for reasoning is understood as a capacity to coordinate representational cognitive abilities.

     

Moral Reasoning as Naturally Good: A Qualified Defense of Foot's Conception of Practical Rationality

Philippa Foot's version of ethical naturalism, centered on the idea of “natural goodness,” has received a good deal of critical scrutiny. One pervasive criticism contends that less than virtuous modes of conduct may be described as naturally good or, at least, not naturally defective on her account. If true, this contradicts the most ambitious aspect of Foot's naturalistic approach to ethics: to show that judgments of moral goodness are a subclass of judgments of natural goodness. But even if one finds this line of criticism convincing, there is a less ambitious aspect of Foot's project which remains, at least in a qualified way, defensible: her conception of moral reasoning as a legitimate form of practical rationality. This more modest claim turns not on the view that moral judgments are a subclass of judgments of natural goodness but merely on the idea that moral reasoning itself is naturally good for us.     

Improving insight and non‐insight problem solving with brief interventions

Developing brief training interventions that benefit different forms of problem solving is challenging. In earlier research, Chrysikou (2006) showed that engaging in a task requiring generation of alternative uses of common objects improved subsequent insight problem solving. These benefits were attributed to a form of implicit transfer of processing involving enhanced construction of impromptu, on‐the‐spot or ‘ad hoc’ goal‐directed categorizations of the problem elements. Following this, it is predicted that the alternative uses exercise should benefit abilities that govern goal‐directed behaviour, such as fluid intelligence and executive functions. Similarly, an indirect intervention – self‐affirmation (SA) – that has been shown to enhance cognitive and executive performance after self‐regulation challenge and when under stereotype threat, may also increase adaptive goal‐directed thinking and likewise should bolster problem‐solving performance. In Experiment 1, brief single‐session interventions, involving either alternative uses generation or SA, significantly enhanced both subsequent insight and visual–spatial fluid reasoning problem solving. In Experiment 2, we replicated the finding of benefits of both alternative uses generation and SA on subsequent insight problem‐solving performance, and demonstrated that the underlying mechanism likely involves improved executive functioning. Even brief cognitive– and social–psychological interventions may substantially bolster different types of problem solving and may exert largely similar facilitatory effects on goal‐directed behaviours.     

The Enigma of Extreme Traumatism: Trauma,Exclusion and their Impact on Subjectivity<Superscript>*</Superscript>

My aim is to discuss the immediate effects of extreme trauma and to speculate on its long term effects. The formulations associated with the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome generate an overly medicalized view of trauma, grossly underestimating its devastating impact. Catastrophic traumatic experience rips a hole in the representational continuity of psychic life; neither representations nor narrations are generated. Instead, a representational emptiness occurs, such that what has taken place cannot be shared or transmitted. The cathartic word becomes a robotic mocking of the interchange between human beings. There is no internalization, no ability to make the experience subjective. The resulting deep splitting in the psyche is characteristic of extreme traumatism, and its balance or perpetual working through is elaborated in this paper.     

Anticipatory spatial representation of natural scenes: Momentum without movement?

Does mental representation of the immediate past contain anticipatory projections of the future? In cases of representational momentum (RM), the last remembered location of a moving object is displaced farther along its path of motion. In boundary extension (BE), the remembered view of a scene expands to include a region just outside the boundaries of the original view. Both are "errors", yet they make remarkably good predictions about the real world. The factors affecting these phenomena, the boundary conditions for their occurrence, and their generality to non-visual senses (audition or haptics) are reviewed to determine if RM and BE are fundamentally related. In contrast to Hubbard's (1995b) suggestion that they may share a common underlying mechanism, it is proposed instead that RM and BE are related in a more general sense and may be different instantiations of the dynamic nature of mental representation.