Answering yes-no questions about causes: Question acts and question categories

Three experiments examined the cognitive process of answering yes-no questions about causes. Singer’s VAIL model of question answering predicted that readers would take longer to correctly answer “no” than “don’t know” to such questions. In Experiment 1, the antecedent sentences used either the causal conjunction so orbecause. Experiment 2 compared so with an implicit causal link. In all conditions, the main prediction was strongly supported. However, when the questions referred to brief stories in Experiment 3, correct “no” and “don’t know” response latencies did not differ. It was concluded that (1) VAIL identifies the cognitive operations underlying the answering of causal questions; (2) answering yes-no questions about causes resembles answering yes-no questions about case-filling elements; (3) the yes-no versus wh- distinction is orthogonal to the type of relation asked about; and (4) studying question answering about sentences will contribute to the understanding of question answering about text.     

The role of visual imagery in the enhanced cognitive interview: guided questioning techniques and individual differences

The cognitive interview utilises mnemonics and other techniques to facilitate obtaining information from victims and witnesses. Research has indicated superior recall to standard police interviews. However, there has been minimal research regarding the role of individual differences. One area that has generated spirited theoretical debate is imagery ability, as guided imagery questioning is an important part of the enhanced cognitive interview. Imagery is also arguably an integral part of several mnemonics employed in the technique. The present study investigated the role of individual differences in imagery ability, as well as the effect of explicit instructions to image, on recall performance. Participants completed the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ), witnessed a film of a simulated crime, and were interviewed using the cognitive interview or a structured interview. While recall in the cognitive interview was superior, VVIQ scores had little relationship with recall of information. Further, recall elicited by guided imagery differed only minimally from that obtained using standard questioning in the structured interview. These results suggested that the relaxation and rapport building common to questioning in both interview conditions may evoke spontaneous imagery that is comparable to explicit instructions to image, regardless of individuals' inherent imagery ability. Future directions are discussed, including research focused on individual differences and a practical emphasis on context reinstatement and social facilitative techniques. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What You Don’t Know Won’t Hurt You,Unless You Don’t Know You’re Wrong

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the impact of students’ background knowledge and how they utilized “don’t know” affordances to comprehend and learn from text. In two studies, over 8,000 middle and high school students interacted with a content-area learning environment in which they answered a series of background knowledge questions before they completed a unit on the same topic. Students were given the opportunity to indicate they “did not know” the answers to the knowledge questions. Higher knowledge was related to higher understanding, and the use of the “don’t know” option further explained variability in students’ understanding of the sources beyond background knowledge. When responding to knowledge questions, students who selected incorrect options before the task understood less and were less likely to learn content when given the opportunity compared to students who indicated they did not know. Thus, low knowledge students were still able to comprehend and learn as long as they acknowledged they lacked background knowledge. One’s comprehension and learning can be facilitated or impaired, depending upon the veracity of their knowledge, and whether students choose to acknowledge their lack of background knowledge. Implications of this work are discussed in terms of learning and instruction.     

Back to basics: a componential analysis of the original cognitive interview mnemonics with three age groups

A large body of research now exists which demonstrates that the cognitive interview (CI) increases the reporting of correct recall from various population groups. It is now necessary to determine from both a theoretical and an applied perspective which of the CI techniques, or combination of techniques are largely responsible for this CI superiority effect. The two aims of this study were (1) to examine the relative effectiveness of each of the four original CI mnemonics and (2) to assess their efficacy as a function of age. A total of 125 participants; 34 first‐year undergraduate students, 44 children aged 8–9 years and 47 children aged 5–6 years viewed a video‐recording of an accident. Forty‐eight hours later each participant was individually interviewed and randomly assigned to one of six instruction groups; (1) context reinstatement, (2) change perspective, (3) change order, (4) report everything, (5) report everything + context reinstatement combination (RE + CR), or (6) a control instruction to ‘try again’. Each of the individual CI mnemonics were found to be of equal benefit and to occasion no more recall than the ‘try again’ control. However, the RE + CR combination resulted in significantly more correct recall compared to the individual mnemonics. There was no effect of age group on the efficacy of the various instructions. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

When a Skeptical Hypothesis Is Live

I’m going to argue for a set of restricted skeptical results: roughly put, we don’t know that fire engines are red, we don’t know that we sometimes have pains in our lower backs, we don’t know that John Rawls was kind, and we don’t even know that we believe any of those truths. However, people unfamiliar with philosophy and cognitive science do know all those things. The skeptical argument is traditional in form: here's a skeptical hypothesis; you can’t epistemically neutralize it, you have to be able to neutralize it to know P; so you don’t know P. But the skeptical hypotheses I plug into it are “real, live” scientific‐philosophical hypotheses often thought to be actually true, unlike any of the outrageous traditional skeptical hypotheses (e.g., ‘You’re a brain in a vat’). So I call the resulting skepticism Live Skepticism. Notably, the Live Skeptic's argument goes through even if we adopt the clever anti‐skeptical fixes thought up in recent years such as reliabilism, relevant alternatives theory, contextualism, and the rejection of epistemic closure. Furthermore, the scope of Live Skepticism is bizarre: although we don’t know the simple facts noted above, many of us do know that there are black holes and other amazing facts.     

The efficacy of mnemonic components of the cognitive interview: towards a shortened variant for time‐critical investigations

The cognitive interview utilizes mnemonic instructions and social facilitative techniques to increase correct recall from eyewitnesses without concomitant increases in errors. Recent studies however have suggested that police may neglect this technique in time‐critical situations. The present study investigated mnemonic components to determine whether a shorter, but still effective, technique was possible. Forty‐five participants viewed a film of a simulated crime and were interviewed with one of three techniques: the cognitive interview; a modified version that replaced the change order and change perspectives techniques with additional free recall attempts; or a structured interview. It was hypothesized that the modified technique would be as effective as the cognitive interview, while both would be superior to the structured interview. Results supported these hypotheses. Further analysis suggested that a shortened version, with the two mnemonics removed, may substantially reduce interviewing time while still offering an effective interview strategy in time‐critical situations. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intending,knowing how,infinitives

Intellectualists tell us that a person who knows how to do something therein knows a proposition. Along with others, they may say that a person who intends to do something intends a proposition. I argue against them. I do so by way of considering ‘know how ——’ and ‘intend ——’ together. When the two are considered together, a realistic conception of human agency can inform the understanding of some infinitives: the argument need not turn on what semanticists have had to say about (what they call) ‘the subjects of infinitival clauses’.     

Wittgenstein, Moorean Absurdity and its Disappearance from Speech

G. E. Moore famously observed that to say, “ I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don’t believe that I did” would be “absurd”. Why should it be absurd of me to say something about myself that might be true of me? Moore suggested an answer to this, but as I will show, one that fails. Wittgenstein was greatly impressed by Moore’s discovery of a class of absurd but possibly true assertions because he saw that it illuminates “the logic of assertion”. Wittgenstein suggests a promising relation of assertion to belief in terms of the idea that one “expresses belief” that is consistent with the spirit of Moore’s failed attempt to explain the absurdity. Wittgenstein also observes that “under unusual circumstances”, the sentence, “It’s raining but I don’t believe it” could be given “a clear sense”. Why does the absurdity disappear from speech in such cases? Wittgenstein further suggests that analogous absurdity may be found in terms of desire, rather than belief. In what follows I develop an account of Moorean absurdity that, with the exception of Wittgenstein’s last suggestion, is broadly consistent with both Moore’s approach and Wittgenstein’s.     

Perspective taking instructions and self-other overlap: Different motives for helping

In two studies (N’s = 57 and 115), we demonstrate that type of perspective-taking instruction (“imagine self” vs. “imagine other”) differentially affects two motives for helping: self-other overlap and empathic concern. Imagine-self instructions produce greater self-other overlap than imagine-target and objective instructions, while both types of perspective-taking instruction promote empathic concern relative to an objective condition. In Study 2, imagine-self instructions indirectly increased the likelihood of helping via empathic concern and self-other overlap, while imagine-target instructions led indirectly to greater helping only through empathic concern. We discuss how different perspective-taking instructions may implicate different emotional and motivational paths to increasing helping.     

Now,Pay Attention! The Effects of Instruction on Children's Attention

We investigated the effects of instructions to “stay on task” on preschoolers' attention and cognitive performance in the face of either incomprehensible or comprehensible distraction. Three- and 4-year-olds completed problem-solving tasks while a distracting event played continuously in the background under conditions of a) no instruction, b) moderate instruction, or c) frequent instruction to “stay on task.” Under conditions where an incomprehensible distractor was present, any amount of instruction reduced looking to the distracting event. Under conditions where a comprehensible distractor was present, however, frequent instruction was the most effective in increasing looking to the task and decreasing looking to the distracting event.     

A Comfortable Sureness: Knowledge,Animality and Conceptual Investigations in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty

This essay analyses some remarks of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty in which Wittgenstein compares human behaviour to that of animals and says he wants to consider man as an animal. The essay’s main purpose is to show that these remarks are essentially understood as part and parcel of what Wittgenstein calls “conceptual investigations” and that, consequently, they give little support to On Certainty’s naturalistic interpretations. A second purpose of the essay is to show that Wittgenstein does not intend to combat the use of “I know” in contexts such as those evoked by Moore; rather he wants to draw attention to the different ways in which we say or can say “I know.”

     

Logic and Social Cognition

This article takes off from Johan van Benthem’s ruminations on the interface between logic and cognitive science in his position paper “Logic and reasoning: Do the facts matter?”. When trying to answer Van Benthem’s question whether logic can be fruitfully combined with psychological experiments, this article focuses on a specific domain of reasoning, namely higher-order social cognition, including attributions such as “Bob knows that Alice knows that he wrote a novel under pseudonym”. For intelligent interaction, it is important that the participants recursively model the mental states of other agents. Otherwise, an international negotiation may fail, even when it has potential for a win-win solution, and in a time-critical rescue mission, a software agent may depend on a teammate’s action that never materializes. First a survey is presented of past and current research on higher-order social cognition, from the various viewpoints of logic, artificial intelligence, and psychology. Do people actually reason about each other’s knowledge in the way proscribed by epistemic logic? And if not, how can logic and cognitive science productively work together to construct more realistic models of human reasoning about other minds? The paper ends with a delineation of possible avenues for future research, aiming to provide a better understanding of higher-order social reasoning. The methodology is based on a combination of experimental research, logic, computational cognitive models, and agent-based evolutionary models.     

Représentations sociales de la personne obèse et de l’obésité : effets de la situation de contact

This paper introduces a study about social representations of obese people and obesity. Two hundred normal-weighted women divided in two groups (presence vs absence of contact with an obese person) completed a word association tasks with inductive words “obese people” and “obesity”. Two instructions were proposed: one in which they responded for themselves (standard instruction) and another in which they responded for someone else (substitution instruction). Results of the Correspondences Factor Analysis support the hypothesis of an intergroup contact effect on the explored social representations’ organization. Participants in contact with obese people seem to have a more empathetic representation than those who have no contact. Indeed, when participants did not respond for themselves, counter-normative representations were produced: stereotypical elements and a judgment on the physical characteristics were expressed. These results were discussed regarding theories of intergroup contact and of social representations.     

言语编码和视空编码在时间—空间联结中的作用

时间和空间存在反应编码联合效应（spatial—temporal association of response codes effect, STEARC）,该效应的编码是视觉空间性还是言语性还存在争议。本研究借鉴Georges（2015）的研究方式,以2秒内的时距为刺激,实验1采用言语反应和空间反应,词语和空间与时距的关系分为一致和不一致。结果发现言语反应时,短时距用“左边”反应快,长时距用“右边”反应快,空间反应时,时距和空间的一致性效应消失,表明言语编码参与两种反应形式的STEARC效应。实验2将词语改为箭头朝向（视觉编码条件）,发现视觉编码和空间编码存在于相对应的反应形式中。研究表明时空关系的编码形式与具体任务要求有关。     

Decreasing Echolalia of the Instruction “Say” During Echoic Training Through Use of the Cues-Pause-Point Procedure

Echolalia is common in children with autism and may interfere with the development of functional language. Given the variety of vocal stimuli included in teaching language to children with autism, it is possible that discrimination between instructions and targeted responses may not always occur. Thus, children may engage in very high rates of echolalia during language training because it is unclear which vocalizations produced by an instructor should be echoed. The cues-pause-point (CPP) procedure has been effective in decreasing echolalia and increasing specific correct responses to unknown questions in adults with intellectual disability. The current investigation applied the CPP procedure to the echoic repertoire with 1 child with autism who consistently echoed the instruction “say” during language training. Results indicated that echolalia of the instruction “say” decreased, and correct responding of the targeted vocalization increased for all targeted words. Implications for the use of the procedure in educational settings are discussed, and areas for future research are provided.     

Educating pain

Abstract

In times in which we ask ourselves how political cruelty and torments can be forgotten, Nietzsche’s pleadoyer for pain to serve the purpose of education, surprises. What might sound like a mere provocation, rather lies at the heart of the Nietzschean philosophy. As is pointed out, Nietzsche’s contention that pain is the most powerful aid to mnemonics, originates from his philosophy of pain as the main condition of all forms of creation. The title “educating (bilden) pain” expresses Nietzsche’s advocacy of an education towards pain as the dynamo of creation. In this paper I explore how Nietzsche’s notion of pain is linked to two concepts of Bildung. In the first part I investigate the relation between pain and “Bildung” in the sense of “creation”, and in the second part I link this to the relation between pain and “Bildung” in the sense of “education”. By these means, I try to answer the question: how far can pain, which is seen as the condition of creation, be linked to conditions of education.     

A Proposal for the Demarcation of Theory and Knowledge

Research communication in interdisciplinary research projects requires a way of demarcation of theory and knowledge that is easy to communicate, is inconsequential for the framework of concepts, results, and procedures within existing scientific disciplines, and abstains from trying to resolve the dispute between (neo)positivists and constructivists. A simple way of demarcation starts from the notion of language-independent and language-dependent reality. Currently, what passes for knowledge (“news”) and myth (“fake news”) depends, besides on sheer volume and frequency of the messages, increasingly on the internal consistency of (computer) language-dependent reality and decreasingly on language-independent reality. All language is instruction, and knowledge is to know which instructions (that is, theory) are predictive of a result, state, or situation in language-independent reality. Any theory that doesn’t reduce outcome space, or contains one or more empirically/physically impossible instructions, or produces wrong predictions, or falls short of demonstration is not knowledge.     

DEVELOPING GENERALIZED BEHAVIOR-MODIFICATION SKILLS IN HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENTS WORKING WITH RETARDED CHILDREN1

Seven high-school trainees each conducted training sessions with two profoundly retarded children. Each trainee was asked to teach one child to follow the instruction “Bring ball” and the other child to follow the instructions “Sit down” and “Come here”. During baseline sessions, before the trainees had been instructed in behavior-modification techniques, no trainee successfully taught either child to follow the instructions. After differing numbers of baseline sessions, trainees were exposed to training procedures designed to teach them to teach one child to follow the instruction “Bring ball”. The training procedures consisted of videotaped modelling, rehearsal, and corrective feedback and praise. Following the training procedures, four of the seven trainees successfully taught their child to follow the instruction “Bring ball”. Further, all trainees were able to teach their other children to follow the instructions “Sit down” and “Come here”, even though they had received no modelling, rehearsal, or feedback on how to teach the children to follow these instructions. The ability of the trainees to teach new behaviors to different children indicates the development of generalized skills in behavior modification.     

Community-dwelling older adults with mild cognitive impairments show subtle visual attention costs when descending stairs

BackgroundOlder adults are at greater risk of falls while descending stairs. Cognitive deficits can further influence one's ability and mild cognitive impairments (MCI) specifically affect visual attention and dual tasking behavior. The present study aimed at comparing the attentional costs at different points during the approach to and descent of a staircase between older adults with and without MCI.MethodsEleven older adults with MCI and twenty-three healthy older individuals without cognitive impairments were recruited. Neuropsychological tests were carried out. In addition, participants approached and descended a 5-step staircase while a simultaneous visual Stroop dual-task was randomly introduced during the approach, transition or steady state descent phases across trials. Three-dimensional kinematics and accuracy on the Stroop task were analyzed and dual task costs were calculated.ResultsThe MCI group showed deficits for visuo-spatial attention, memory and multi-tasking abilities, as well as balance and decreased confidence for falls efficacy, but not for daily activity scores. Despite such changes, this group of community-dwelling individuals with MCI presented a functional capacity to descend stairs even during divided visual attention. However, there were subtle, but significant, group differences for movement fluidity and performance on the simultaneous cognitive task, particularly during the approach and transition to descent phases. The MCI group also tended to descend slower while using the handrails more than healthy older adults.ConclusionThe present cohort of community-dwelling older adults with MCI were functional, but appeared to prioritize locomotor demands over the simultaneous cognitive task in a possible “posture first” strategy to descend stairs. The present findings should be considered for developing more ecologically based clinical assessments of mobility deficits following cognitive impairments, with the approach and transition phases during stair descent as key points of focus.