How do I remember that I know you know that I know?

Communication is aided greatly when speakers and listeners take advantage of mutually shared knowledge (i.e., common ground). How such information is represented in memory is not well known. Using a neuropsychological-psycholinguistic approach to real-time language understanding, we investigated the ability to form and use common ground during conversation in memory-impaired participants with hippocampal amnesia. Analyses of amnesics' eye fixations as they interpreted their partner's utterances about a set of objects demonstrated successful use of common ground when the amnesics had immediate access to common-ground information, but dramatic failures when they did not. These findings indicate a clear role for declarative memory in maintenance of common-ground representations. Even when amnesics were successful, however, the eye movement record revealed subtle deficits in resolving potential ambiguity among competing intended referents; this finding suggests that declarative memory may be critical to more basic aspects of the on-line resolution of linguistic ambiguity.     

How do people know?

To fully understand processes of knowing and knowledge acquisition, it is necessary to examine people's understanding of their own knowing. Individual and developmental differences in what it means to know something, and hence in the criteria for justifying knowledge claims, have potentially wide-ranging implications. In providing support for a claim, young children have difficulty differentiating explanation of why a claim makes sense and evidence that the claim is true. Epistemic understanding progresses developmentally, but substantial variation remains among adults, with few adults achieving understanding of the complementary strengths and weaknesses of evidence and explanation in argument. Epistemic understanding shapes intellectual values and hence the disposition (as opposed to competence) to exercise intellectual skills. Only its most advanced levels support a disposition to engage in the intellectual effort that reasoned argument entails. The sample case of juror reasoning illustrates how epistemic understanding underlies and shapes intellectual performance.     

Everybody needs to know?

I propose an amendment to Sosa’s virtue reliabilism. Sosa’s framework assigns a central role to sophisticated, conceptual, motivational states: ‘intentions to affirm aptly’. I argue that the suggestion that ordinary knowers in fact are motivated by such intentions in everyday belief-forming situations is at best problematic, and explore the possibility of an alternative virtue reliabilist framework. In this alternative framework, the role Sosa assigns to ‘intentions to affirm aptly’ is played instead by non-conceptual motivational states, which I call ‘needs’. The first part of the paper sketches Sosa’s framework. The second develops the need-based alternative. I close by comparing the two proposals, concluding that the onus is at least on Sosa to say why his intention-based framework should be preferred.     

How can we know what we need to know? Reflections on clinical judgment formation

What distinguishes a psychoanalyst from any other psychologically minded, empathic human being? This seemingly simple question goes to the heart of our profession, the way we see ourselves as competent clinicians. To understand a patient's material beyond ordinary empathy--that is, to come to a clinical judgment--we need to step out of the dyadic, countertransference situation and reflect what we've experienced in reference to our clinical theories. An analytic vignette shows how a theoretical background can be used to understand and interpret to a patient in a way that is deeply meaningful.     

The development of arithmetic principle knowledge: How do we know what learners know?

This paper reviews research on learners’ knowledge of three arithmetic principles: Commutativity, Relation to Operands, and Inversion. Studies of arithmetic principle knowledge vary along several dimensions, including the age of the participants, the context in which the arithmetic is presented, and most importantly, the type of knowledge assessment (e.g., application of procedures, evaluation of examples). The vast majority of studies utilize single-faceted knowledge assessments, which can lead to incomplete or misleading views of learners’ knowledge. Both context and type of knowledge assessment can influence conclusions about learners’ arithmetic principle knowledge. However, relatively few studies directly address the possible effects of context or type of knowledge assessment on their results. To move the field forward, research that utilizes multifaceted knowledge assessments is needed.     

Are people's estimates of what other people know influenced by what they themselves know?

An exploratory experiment was done to investigate how estimates of what other people know are influenced by what one knows oneself. Three hypotheses were of interest: (1) that people are more likely to impute a bit of knowledge to other people if they have it themselves than if they do not, (2) that people are likely to overestimate the commonality of their own knowledge, and (3) that people who are unusually knowledgeable with respect to a particular topic are likely to bias their estimates of what other people know in the direction of their personal knowledge store. Subjects answered questions selected from the set for which Nelson and Narens (1980) have provided norms. They also estimated the percentage of other people who would be likely to know the answers to these questions. The results supported the first two hypotheses, but were inconclusive with respect to the third.     

When do those who know more also know more about how much they know? The development of confidence and performance in categorical decision tasks

The study traces the development of confidence and its relation to performance as participants learn a new skill and develop from laymen to experts. We describe a new hierarchy of Categorical Decisions Structures that distinguishes between screening, discrimination, and classification modes. Each decision mode offers a different representation of information and provides a different type of feedback. We propose simple models of performance and confidence, and derive their predictions under all three modes. We report results of an empirical study designed to evaluate the models’ predictions. Ninety participants performed 1200 categorical decisions under the three modes and three distinct base rates. Results show that (a) decisions made in the screening mode tend to induce over-confidence; (b) the discrimination mode leads to fast learning and high correspondence between performance and confidence; and (c) the detailed feedback provided in the classification mode results in slow and steady improvement of the correspondence between confidence and performance.     

What does a person in a “TOT” state know that a person in a “don’t know” state doesn’t know

The purpose of this study was to examine the significance of Brown and McNeill’s (1966) findings regarding the “tip of the tongue” (TOT) phenomenon, A modified version of their procedure was used with 56 Ss. Although their findings that Ss in a TOT state can detect parts and properties of the missing word were generally replicated, a division of the TOT state into a variety of substates showed correct detection rate to vary greatly, depending on the substate involved. In addition, correct detection of partial information was demonstrated even when S declared he had no knowledge of the selected word (don’t know). It was suggested that a distinction be made between information detection based on knowledge of the characteristics common to the class of items of which the target is a member (“class detection”) and detection based on knowledge of characteristics specific to the target in question (“differential detection”). Both class and differential detection were found to obtain in TOT states as well as in the don’t know state. Some theoretical and methodological implications were suggested     

What can it mean to know?

This paper offers a critique of the prevailing epistemological assumptions which undergird modern Pastoral Care and Counseling education. By drawing upon emerging insights in Transpersonal Psychology and Consciousness disciplines, along with the ontological perspectives of Martin Heidegger and John Macquarrie, the attempt is made to reclaim the modes of knowing of William James and Anton Boison. This paper includes practical and concrete examples of how one supervisor is attempting to put a new paradigm into practice.     

How to know one’s experiences transparently

Philosophical Studies - I would like to propose a demonstrative transparency model of our immediate, introspective self-knowledge of experiences. It is a model entirely in line with transparency....     

I’d know that face anywhere!

Mandler (1980) provided the classic “butcher on the bus” example illustrating the feeling of familiarity without recollection that may arise when an acquaintance is encountered in an unusual context. We studied this phenomenon by pairing photos of faces with photos of distinctive contexts at study and later testing recognition memory andremember/know judgments for faces presented with studied, switched, or new contexts. Estimates of recollection and familiarity, based on the assumption that these processes are independent, showed that switching contexts significantly lowered recollection while leaving familiarity intact, just as Mandler described. False alarm rates were higher with old contexts, suggesting that subjects tended to misattribute memories of contexts to memories of faces. These results provide the first evidence of context effects on the subjective experience of recognizing faces. One-dimensional signal-detection models fit the data, but such models do not explain the difference in remember responses between studied and switched items, whereas dual-process models (which also fit the data) do while also capturing the phenomenology of the butcher-on-the-bus experience in an intuitively appealing way.     

What do we know about psycholinguistic effects?

Identifying clear and unequivocal psycholinguistic effects for lexical retrieval tasks has been the aim of a significant proportion of recent research activity. Debates have erupted concerning the existence or otherwise of particular effects on particular lexical tasks. Here, it is suggested that the reason for these debates is that researchers exercise choice in what variables they consider in their analysis. It is further illustrated that methods that have been employed for comparing the size of these effects between tasks can only lead to inconclusive results. It is suggested that psycholinguistic data may be better analysed using structural equation modelling methodologies. An example of such an approach is presented.     

What do infants know about continuous quantity?

We investigated infants' sensitivity to amount of continuous quantity and to change in amount of continuous quantity. Using a habituation procedure, Experiment 1 examined whether 6-month-old infants can distinguish between different amounts of liquid in a container. Infants looked significantly longer at a novel quantity than at the familiar quantity. Using a violation-of-expectation paradigm, Experiment 2 examined whether 9-month-old infants expect a change in amount when liquid is added to a hidden container which is already one-fourth full of liquid. Infants looked significantly longer at the impossible event than at the possible event. These findings indicate that infants are sensitive to amount, calling into question claims that infants have a quantitative mechanism which is exclusive to number.     

What do we know about psycholinguistic effects?

Identifying clear and unequivocal psycholinguistic effects for lexical retrieval tasks has been the aim of a significant proportion of recent research activity. Debates have erupted concerning the existence or otherwise of particular effects on particular lexical tasks. Here, it is suggested that the reason for these debates is that researchers exercise choice in what variables they consider in their analysis. It is further illustrated that methods that have been employed for comparing the size of these effects between tasks can only lead to inconclusive results. It is suggested that psycholinguistic data may be better analysed using structural equation modelling methodologies. An example of such an approach is presented.