Understanding intuition and how the mind works

The associations between maternal reports of positive marital quality (i.e., positive emotional expressions, constructive conflict, and mothers’ marital satisfaction) and 3–6-year-olds’ (N = 62) positive peer relations were examined as a function of child temperament and gender. Although a zero-order correlation indicated that marital quality was unrelated to peer relations, a regression analysis indicated that high levels of positive marital quality were associated with more positive peer relations for preschoolers low in effortful control, but not for those high in effortful control. In addition, a moderating effect of gender revealed that the relationship between marital quality and positive peer relations was positive for girls but negative for boys. However, positive emotionality did not moderate the relations among marital quality and peer relations. The present study provides important preliminary findings that highlight the need for further study of the significance of positive marital relations for child development.     

How the mind works

by Steven Pinker, W.W. Norton & Co., 1997. $29.95 (xii+660 pages) ISBN 0 393 04535 8.     

Prosthetic gestures: how the tool shapes the mind

I agree with Vaesen that it is a mistake to discard tool use as a hallmark of human cognition. I contend, nonetheless, that tools are not simply external markers of a distinctive human mental architecture. Rather, they actively and meaningfully participate in the process by which hominin brains and bodies make up their sapient minds.     

The puzzle of transparency and how to solve it

ABSTRACT

According to the transparency approach, achievement of self-knowledge is a two-stage process: first, the subject arrives at the judgment ‘p’; second, the subject proceeds to the judgment ‘I believe that p.’ The puzzle of transparency is to understand why the transition from the first to the second judgment is rationally permissible. After revisiting the debate between Byrne and Boyle on this matter, I present a novel solution according to which the transition is rationally permissible in virtue of a justifying argument that begins from a premise referring to the mental utterance that is emitted in the course of judging ‘p.’     

Envy up, scorn down: how comparison divides us

Comparison compels people, even as it stresses, depresses, and divides us. Comparison is only natural, but the collateral damage reveals envy upward and scorn downward, and these emotions, arguably, poison people and their relationships. Summaries of several experiments--using questionnaire, psychometric, response-time, electromyographic, and neuroimaging data--illustrate the dynamics of envy up and scorn down, as well as proposing how to mitigate their effects. Initial studies suggest the importance of status. Other data show how scorn down minimizes thought about another's mind; power deactivates mental concepts. Regarding envy up, other studies demonstrate that Schadenfreude (malicious joy) targets envied outgroups. However, counterstereotypic information, empathy, and outcome dependency can mitigate both scorn and envy.     

Change in action: how infants learn to walk down slopes

A critical aspect of perception–action coupling is the ability to modify ongoing actions in accordance with variations in the environment. Infants’ ability to modify their gait patterns to walk down shallow and steep slopes was examined at three nested time scales. Across sessions, a microgenetic training design showed rapid improvements after the first session in infants receiving concentrated practice walking down slopes and in infants in a control group who were tested only at the beginning and end of the study. Within sessions, analyses across easy and challenging slope angles showed that infants used a ‘braking strategy’ to curb increases in walking speed across increasingly steeper slopes. Within trials, comparisons of infants’ gait modifications before and after stepping over the brink of the slopes showed that the braking strategy was planned prospectively. Findings illustrate how observing change in action provides important insights into the process of skill acquisition.     

试论邪教精神依赖和精神痴迷者的心理治疗

邪教精神依赖和精神痴迷是一种独特的“成瘾”现象,有学者指出精神依赖和精神痴迷者具有精神病样症状,但是治疗这种情况有其独特性,针对邪教精神依赖和精神痴迷者需要进行全面的心理治疗,同时社会支持系统对邪教精神依赖和精神痴迷者起到的作用也非常关键。     

Links between theory of mind and executive function in young children with autism: clues to developmental primacy

There has been much theoretical discussion of a functional link between theory of mind (ToM) and executive function (EF) in autism. This study sought to establish the relationship between ToM and EF in young children with autism (M = 5 years, 6 months) and to examine issues of developmental primacy. Thirty children with autism and 40 typically developing children, matched on age and ability, were assessed on a battery of tasks measuring ToM (1st- and 2nd-order false belief) and components of EF (planning, set shifting, inhibition). A significant correlation emerged between ToM and EF variables in the autism group, independent of age and ability, while ToM and higher order planning ability remained significantly related in the comparison group. Examination of the pattern of ToM-EF impairments in the autism group revealed dissociations in 1 direction only: impaired ToM with intact EF. These findings support the view that EF may be 1 important factor in the advancement of ToM understanding in autism. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Intersubjectivity and narcissism in group psychotherapy: how feedback works

In group psychotherapy, inter-subjectivity is complicated by the number and quality of therapist-member, member-member, and member-group relations. Inter-member feedback structures the relational process. However, fears of narcissistic injury engender resistance to this form of engagement. The nature of the narcissistic belief system that motivates such resistance is discussed. Then, two models of feedback are presented: the cybernetic and the inter-subjective. In the cybernetic model, feedback is intended to inform recipients about themselves and to change their behavior accordingly. As such, this model is consistent with narcissistic beliefs in the power of others' perceptions to control one's being, identity, or value. The inter-subjective model focuses, instead, on what feedback tells recipients about their donors' worlds. This model and some of its parameters are exemplified clinically.     

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.     

Adding pieces to the puzzle: a commentary

In Jensen's theme paper she did an excellent job of outlining and explaining ways in which motor developmentalists can use the tools of biomechanics and engineering to address research questions. We extend her thorough efforts in two ways. First, we highlight the communication value provided by the precision of biomechanics terminology, and second, we reinforce the need to embed motion (the kinematics and kinetics) in context and function in order to understand the complexity of behaviour. We illustrate how one biomechanical tool, mechanical models, can facilitate this and provide insight to the development of control. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Academic performance,prejudice, and the jigsaw classroom: new pieces to the puzzle

This field study investigated the effects of a cooperative learning environment and a Jigsaw classroom environment on academic performance, self-esteem, liking of school, liking of peers, and racial prejudice. The subjects were 103 children in Grades 4–6, in two separate schools. The cooperative learning condition was used as a baseline measure of the effects of cooperation, against which the effects of a Jigsaw method, involving both cooperation and interdependence, were compared. The results reveal that Jigsaw produced significant improvements on measures of academic performance, liking of peers, and racial prejudice. In contrast, the effect of the cooperative condition was to exacerbate pre-existing intergroup tensions. The present findings demonstrate that the Jigsaw method can be applied successfully in Australian conditions, and lend support to Allport's contact hypothesis. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fluency heuristic: a model of how the mind exploits a by-product of information retrieval

Boundedly rational heuristics for inference can be surprisingly accurate and frugal for several reasons. They can exploit environmental structures, co-opt complex capacities, and elude effortful search by exploiting information that automatically arrives on the mental stage. The fluency heuristic is a prime example of a heuristic that makes the most of an automatic by-product of retrieval from memory, namely, retrieval fluency. In 4 experiments, the authors show that retrieval fluency can be a proxy for real-world quantities, that people can discriminate between two objects' retrieval fluencies, and that people's inferences are in line with the fluency heuristic (in particular fast inferences) and with experimentally manipulated fluency. The authors conclude that the fluency heuristic may be one tool in the mind's repertoire of strategies that artfully probes memory for encapsulated frequency information that can veridically reflect statistical regularities in the world.