Explanatory power of extended cognition

I argue that examining the explanatory power of the hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC) offers a fruitful approach to the problem of cognitive system demarcation. Although in the discussions on HEC it has become common to refer to considerations of explanatory power as a means for assessing the plausibility of the extended cognition approach, to date no satisfying account of explanatory power has been presented in the literature. I suggest that the currently most prominent theory of explanation in the special sciences, James Woodward's contrastive-counterfactual theory, and an account of explanatory virtues building on that theory can be used to develop a systematic picture of cognitive system demarcation in the psychological sciences. A major difference between my differential influence (DI) account and most other theories of cognitive extension is the cognitive systems pluralism implied by my approach. By examining the explanatory power of competing traditions in psychological memory research, I conclude that internalist and externalist classificatory strategies are characterized by different profiles of explanatory virtues and should often be considered as complementary rather than competing approaches. This suggests a deflationary interpretation of HEC.     

再认研究的ROC理论模型

接受者操作特性曲线（ROC）分析已被广泛运用于再认记忆研究中。文章述及ROC解释记忆结果的三种理论模型,并结合基于项目识别、关联识别、排除任务以及“记得／知道”程序等范式的相关研究文献对此三种模型进行了评价。文献分析表明,相对于阈限模型和信号检测模型,结合信号检测加工和回忆阈限加工的综合模型能更好地拟合研究结果,并佐证再认可能是包含功能相互独立的双结构心理过程。     

Unexplained chest pain: a review of psychological conceptualizations and treatment efficacy

This review critically considers psychological theories and models used to understand unexplained chest pain, and efficacy of treatment strategies. It discusses the strengths and limitations of current perspectives, and highlights implications for future research and interventions. A comprehensive range of literature examining unexplained chest pain, and published over the last three decades, was thus reviewed finding that, although unexplained chest pain has been examined as a psychological phenomenon for over 100 years, explanatory models have emerged only in the last two decades. Neither psychophysiological nor psychodynamic models have been significantly advanced. Only cognitive-behavioural models have been explicitly derived to explain and manage the condition, and require further refinement to address conceptual and methodological limitations. Studies assessing treatment efficacy suggest cognitive-behavioural therapy as a first-line therapy, but have failed to establish whether the approach is acceptable and effective in routine care. Comprehensive psychological understanding of unexplained chest pain, and its management, is therefore developing but is far from complete. Cognitive-behavioural interventions show promise but are likely to be enhanced by greater theoretical clarity and understanding of resistance to their implementation.     

Explanatory models for mental illness endorsed by Christian clergymen: The development and use of an instrument in Singapore

Researchers have attempted to elicit the explanatory models used by different populations to understand mental illness, since these models can influence how populations use mental-health treatment. However, little effort has been made to understand the explanatory models used by Christian clergymen. This is despite their important role as providers of mental-health care in many Asian and Western societies. Neither are there suitable instruments to conduct such investigations. This study attempts to present a suitable instrument for such research and explore the belief structure of this population by administering a modified version of the Opinions about Psychological Problems to a representative sample of Singaporean Christian clergymen. Factor-analytic techniques revealed five factors which were explained as (1) a Traditional Christian and (2) a Deliverance etiology, both models implicating religious causes for mental illness, (3) a Poor Coping and (4) Internal Conflicts etiology, essentially being psychological explanations and an (5) Organic etiology model. The Traditional Christian model received the greatest endorsement, followed by the Poor Coping model, while the Organic model had the least acceptance. The belief structure used by nearly half of the respondents was noted to be complex, involving a combination of religious, psychological, and organic explanations.     

Rethinking the explanatory power of dynamical models in cognitive science

In this paper I offer an interventionist perspective on the explanatory structure and explanatory power of (some) dynamical models in cognitive science: I argue that some “pure” dynamical models – ones that do not refer to mechanisms at all – in cognitive science are “contextualized causal models” and that this explanatory structure gives such models genuine explanatory power. I contrast this view with several other perspectives on the explanatory power of “pure” dynamical models. One of the main results is that dynamical models need not refer to underlying mechanisms in order to be explanatory. I defend and illustrate this position in terms of dynamical models of the A-not-B error in developmental psychology as elaborated by Thelen and colleagues, and dynamical models of unintentional interpersonal coordination developed by Richardson and colleagues.     

The Al Qaeda 9/11 instructions: a study in the construction of religious martyrdom

A growing global concern about suicide attacks has led to attempts from various disciplines to understand the psychological profiles of persons willing to commit suicide terrorist attacks. Recent reports have suggested that more powerful explanatory models might be discovered using social psychological concepts, with a shift of focus from the individual to the group within which the individual acts and by which the individual is influenced. This paper attempts to do so by presenting an analysis of the Al Qaeda ‘final instructions’ document, which sheds light on the way members of this group were mobilised towards conducting one of the most devastating assaults in modern history. We discuss the use of religious doctrine and rhetorical devices as a psychological strategy employed by this group to inspire, control and mobilise its members before and during the September 11, 2001, attacks.     

Using Excel to estimate parameters from observed data: An example from source memory data

We present an application, using Excel, that can solve best-fitting parameters for multinomial models. Multinomial modeling has become increasingly popular and can be used in a variety of domains, such as memory, perception, and other domains in which processes are assumed to be dissociable. We offer an application that can be used for a variety of psychological models and can be used on both PC and Macintosh platforms. We illustrate the use of our program by analyzing data from a source memory experiment.     

D-optimal design for the Rasch counts model with multiple binary predictors

In this paper we derive optimal designs for the Rasch Poisson counts model and its extended version of the (generalized) negative binomial counts model incorporating several binary predictors for the difficulty parameter. To efficiently estimate the regression coefficients of the predictors, locally D-optimal designs are developed. After an introduction to the Rasch Poisson counts model and its extension, we will specify these models as particular generalized linear models. Based on this embedding, optimal designs for both models including several binary explanatory variables will be presented. Therefore, we will derive conditions on the effect sizes for certain designs to be locally D-optimal. Finally, it is pointed out that the results derived for the Rasch Poisson models can be applied for more general Poisson regression models which should receive more attention in future psychological research.     

Incremental Validity of Coping-oriented Marijuana Use Motives in the Prediction of Affect-based Psychological Vulnerability

The present investigation examined whether coping-oriented motives to use marijuana, as measured by the Marijuana Motives Measure (MMM; Simons et al. in J. Couns. Psychol. 45:265–273, 1998), were uniquely related to affect-based psychological vulnerability factors among marijuana users. Participants were 131 adult current marijuana users (72 women, M _age = 20.14, SD = 3.37 years). As hypothesized, after controlling for gender, cigarettes smoked per day, past 30-day marijuana use, total years of marijuana use, and alcohol consumption, coping motives were significantly and incrementally related to negative affect-based psychological vulnerability factors. No other marijuana use motives demonstrated a similar type of relationship to the dependent variables, providing a high degree of explanatory specificity. These data suggest that coping-oriented motives to use marijuana may be an important explanatory construct in better understanding marijuana and psychological vulnerability relations.     

Psychological attachment,no-self and Chan Buddhist mind therapy

The role of Chan Buddhism for mind therapy is distinguished from psychotherapy by the objectives in diminishing or removing the deluded perceived self and the psychological self of attachments and cravings, which are considered as the more basic origins for psychological suffering and problems. The Buddhist concepts of impermanence, no-self and emptiness are discussed to explain the Buddhist explanation for human suffering. A four-stage theory is described to explain the common Buddhist meditation experience toward the realization of no-self. Removing psychological attachment is found to be of explanatory value for many enlightenment episodes of Chan masters. Meditation concentration and reduction of self-attachment will mutually reinforce each other toward a complete therapy of the mind. An innovative approach for psychotherapy in going further to tackle a person's basic life attachments is suggested.     

The puzzle of language evolution

Linguistics must again concentrate on the evolutionary nature of language, so that language models are more realistic with respect to human natural languages and have a greater explanatory force. Multi-agent systems are proposed as a possible route to develop such evolutionary models and an example is given of a concrete experiment in the origins and evolution of word-meaning based on a multi-agent approach.     

Putting theory of mind in its place: psychological explanations of the socio-emotional-communicative impairments in autistic spectrum disorder

In this review, the history of the theory of mind (ToM) theory of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is outlined (in which ToM is indexed by success on false belief tasks), and the explanatory power and psychological causes of impaired ToM in ASD are critically discussed. It is concluded that impaired ToM by itself has only limited explanatory power, but that explorations of the psychological precursors of impaired ToM have been fruitful in increasing understanding of mindreading impairments in ASD (where 'mindreading' refers those abilities that underlie triadic interaction as well as ToM). It is argued that early explanations of impaired mindreading are untenable for various reasons, but that impairments of dyadic interaction in ASD that could lead to impaired ability to represent others' mental states may be the critical psychological cause, or causes, of impaired ToM. The complexity of causal routes to impaired ToM is emphasized.     

Explaining with Models: The Role of Idealizations

Because they contain idealizations, scientific models are often considered to be misrepresentations of their target systems. An important question is therefore how models can explain the behaviours of these systems. Most of the answers to this question are representationalist in nature. Proponents of this view are generally committed to the claim that models are explanatory if they represent their target systems to some degree of accuracy; in other words, they try to determine the conditions under which idealizations can be made without jeopardizing the representational function of models. In this article, we first outline several forms of this representationalist view. We then argue that this view, in each of these forms, omits an important role of idealizations: that of facilitating the identification of the explanatory components within a model. Via examination of a case study from contemporary astrophysics, we show that one way in which idealizations can do this is by creating a comparison case that serves to highlight the relevant features of the target system.     

Integrating advice and experience: learning and decision making with social and nonsocial cues

When making decisions, people typically gather information from both social and nonsocial sources, such as advice from others and direct experience. This research adapted a cognitive learning paradigm to examine the process by which people learn what sources of information are credible. When participants relied on advice alone to make decisions, their learning of source reliability proceeded in a manner analogous to traditional cue learning processes and replicated the established learning phenomena. However, when advice and nonsocial cues were encountered together as an established phenomenon, blocking (ignoring redundant information) did not occur. Our results suggest that extant cognitive learning models can accommodate either advice or nonsocial cues in isolation. However, the combination of advice and nonsocial cues (a context more typically encountered in daily life) leads to different patterns of learning, in which mutually supportive information from different types of sources is not regarded as redundant and may be particularly compelling. For these situations, cognitive learning models still constitute a promising explanatory tool but one that must be expanded. As such, these findings have important implications for social psychological theory and for cognitive models of learning.     

Direction dependence analysis: A framework to test the direction of effects in linear models with an implementation in SPSS

In nonexperimental data, at least three possible explanations exist for the association of two variables x and y: (1) x is the cause of y, (2) y is the cause of x, or (3) an unmeasured confounder is present. Statistical tests that identify which of the three explanatory models fits best would be a useful adjunct to the use of theory alone. The present article introduces one such statistical method, direction dependence analysis (DDA), which assesses the relative plausibility of the three explanatory models on the basis of higher-moment information about the variables (i.e., skewness and kurtosis). DDA involves the evaluation of three properties of the data: (1) the observed distributions of the variables, (2) the residual distributions of the competing models, and (3) the independence properties of the predictors and residuals of the competing models. When the observed variables are nonnormally distributed, we show that DDA components can be used to uniquely identify each explanatory model. Statistical inference methods for model selection are presented, and macros to implement DDA in SPSS are provided. An empirical example is given to illustrate the approach. Conceptual and empirical considerations are discussed for best-practice applications in psychological data, and sample size recommendations based on previous simulation studies are provided.     

Why wasn't O.J. convicted? Emotional coherence in legal inference

This paper evaluates four competing psychological explanations for why the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial reached the verdict they did: explanatory coherence, Bayesian probability theory, wishful thinking, and emotional coherence. It describes computational models that provide detailed simulations of juror reasoning for explanatory coherence, Bayesian networks, and emotional coherence, and argues that the latter account provides the most plausible explanation of the jury's decision.     

A neurobiological model for near-death experiences

The authors present a neurobiological model for near-death experiences (NDEs) in an attempt to correlate the biological and psychological domains. This model is based on temporal lobe dysfunction, hypoxia/ischemia, stress, and neuropeptide/neurotransmitter imbalance. They describe and discuss the fundamental contribution of the language system in the construction of verbal reports of NDEs. This model could be seen as a complement to other explanatory domains.     

How scientific models can explain

Scientific models invariably involve some degree of idealization, abstraction, or fictionalization of their target system. Nonetheless, I argue that there are circumstances under which such false models can offer genuine scientific explanations. After reviewing three different proposals in the literature for how models can explain, I shall introduce a more general account of what I call model explanations, which specify the conditions under which models can be counted as explanatory. I shall illustrate this new framework by applying it to the case of Bohr’s model of the atom, and conclude by drawing some distinctions between phenomenological models, explanatory models, and fictional models.     

Victims of Abuse by Priests: Some Preliminary Observations

This paper describes the results of psychological assessments of 25 adult males who were victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests as children or early adolescents. Preliminary data suggest that premorbid personality patterns in these victims put them at greater risk for abuse and also exacerbated the effects of their victimization. These observations are considered in the context of prevalent explanatory models of the traumagenic effects of child sexual abuse.