Perceptual causality and animacy

Certain simple visual displays consisting of moving 2-D geometric shapes can give rise to percepts with high-level properties such as causality and animacy. This article reviews recent research on such phenomena, which began with the classic work of Michotte and of Heider and Simmel. The importance of such phenomena stems in part from the fact that these interpretations seem to be largely perceptual in nature - to be fairly fast, automatic, irresistible and highly stimulus driven - despite the fact that they involve impressions typically associated with higher-level cognitive processing. This research suggests that just as the visual system works to recover the physical structure of the world by inferring properties such as 3-D shape, so too does it work to recover the causal and social structure of the world by inferring properties such as causality and animacy.     

Process causality and asymmetry

Process theories of causality seek to explicate causality as a property of individual causal processes. This paper examines the capacity of such theories to account for the asymmetry of causation. Three types of theories of asymmetry are discussed; the subjective, the temporal, and the physical, the third of these being the preferred approach. Asymmetric features of the world, namely the entropic and Kaon arrows, are considered as possible sources of causal asymmetry and a physical theory of asymmetry is subsequently developed with special reference to the questions of objectivity and backwards causation.An earlier draft of this paper was read at the A.A.P. conference at the University of Sydney, June, 1990. The author would like to thank Peter Menzies and Huw Price for their helpful comments.     

Audiovisual phenomenal causality

We report three experiments in which visual or audiovisual displays depicted a surface (target) set into motion shortly after one or more events occurred. A visual motion was used as an initial event, followed directly either by the target motion or by one of three marker events: a collision sound, a blink of the target stimulus, or the blink together with the sound. The delay between the initial event and the onset of the target motion was varied systematically. The subjects had to rate the degree of perceived causality between these events. The results of the first experiment showed a systematic decline of causality judgments with an increasing time delay. Causality judgments increased when additional auditory or visual information marked the onset of the target motion. Visual blinks of the target and auditory clacks produced similar causality judgments. The second experiment tested several models of audiovisual causal processing by varying the position of the sound within the visual delay period. No systematic effect of the sound position occurred. The third experiment showed a subjective shortening of delays filled by a clack sound, as compared with unfilled delays. However, this shortening cannot fully explain the increased tolerance for delays containing the clack sound. Taken together, the results are consistent with the interpretation that the main source of the causality judgments in our experiments is the impression of a plausible unitary event and that perfect synchrony is not necessary in this case.     

Probabilistic causality reexamined

According to Nancy Cartwright, a causal law holds just when a certain probabilistic condition obtains in all test situations which in turn satisfy a set of background conditions. These background conditions are shown to be inconsistent and, on separate account, logically incoherent. I offer a corrective reformulation which also incorporates a strategy for problems like Hesslow's thrombosis case. I also show that Cartwright's recent argument for modifying the condition to appeal to singular causes fails.Proposed modifications of the theory's probabilistic condition to handle effects with extreme probabilities (0 or 1) are found unsatisfactory. I propose a unified solution which also handles extreme causes. Undefined conditional probabilities give rise to three good, but non-equivalent, ways of formulating the theory. Various formulations appear in the literature. I give arguments to eliminate all but one candidate. Finally, I argue for a crucial new condition clause, and show how to extend the results beyond a simple probabilistic framework.     

Discounting in causality and covariation judgements

In two experiments, humans were asked to judge the strength of a moderate contingency between a cue and an outcome in the presence of a second strong contingency between another cue and the outcome. The first experiment replicated the discounting effect whereby a strong contingency causes subjects to reduce or discount judgements of a moderate contingency. This experiment used a video-game procedure in which subjects camouflaged a tank to make it safe from mines. The second causal cue was the presence or absence of a spotter plane. Experiment 1 also ruled out the possibility that judgements might be determined by the number of co-occurrences of the cue and outcome as opposed to the level of contingency. The second experiment used an abstract scenario in which discounting was demonstrated when subjects were asked to judge the relationship between the occurrence of geometric objects. The instructions were neutral to discourage causal hypotheses. These results support the notion that judgements result from associative or connectionist processes and not from a two-step cognitive retrospective process in which an estimate of covariation is calculated between cue and outcome and then in a second step this information is used in a normative manner when a decision is made.     

Equipment malfunctions and attribution of causality

The purpose of this study was to test whether individuals would be more likely to attribute the cause for the malfunction of a new piece of equipment as a manufacturing problem in the equipment or as an inability on their part to properly work with the equipment. The subjects were 600 residents of Florida, selected by a stratified random sample and interviewed in a statewide telephone survey. Subjects were more likely to attribute the cause to themselves rather than the machine. Overall, 71% attributed the cause to themselves, while only 24% said the machine was at fault. There was also an interaction effect in terms of income, with middle-income users more likely to blame the machine and upper-income users more likely to blame themselves. Further, there was also a significant relationship between attribution of cause and age, with older respondents being more likely to attribute cause to themselves. These results imply that attribution may differ when the potential object of attribution is a machine rather than another person.     

Activation and Automaticity of Colonial Mentality

Among Filipino Americans, colonial mentality (CM) is characterized by automatic preference for anything American and automatic rejection of anything Filipino that may be manifested overtly and covertly. Thus, 3 studies were conducted to test CM's theorized covertness and automaticity. Study 1 attempted to activate and capture the existence of CM‐consistent cultural knowledge schemas; Study 2 investigated whether CM may be automatically activated using a lexical decision task; and Study 3 tested whether Filipino Americans have associated pleasantness with anything American, and unpleasantness with anything Filipino using the Implicit Association Test. The results suggest that many Filipino Americans hold a CM‐consistent cultural knowledge schema, and that CM may be conceptualized as a set of automatic associations that cannot be consciously controlled.     

科学与文化心理转型

在多种文明密切交往,不同信仰并存的世界 上,以现代科学思想为基础重塑我们的价值观念是 中国和平崛起过程必须面对的一个重大文化问题。 这反映在三个方面: 首先,从传统到现代心理转型是社会转型的一 个重要侧面。改革开放以来,伴随着文化生活的活 跃和丰富,各种迷信思潮也沉渣泛起。这种现象令     

超越启蒙心态

启蒙心态(the enlightenment mentality)作为人类历史上最具活力和转化力的意识形态,是现代西方崛起的基础。实际上,作为现代特征的,人们关注的所有主要领域,比如科学技术、工业资本、市场经济、民主政治等等,都从启蒙心态中受惠或汲取养分。而且,我们追求的那些被视为属于现代意识的价值,比如自由、平等和人权等等,如果不是在结构上,就是在起源上,与启蒙心态密不可分。     

Six Levels of Mentality

Abstract

Examination of recent debates about belief shows the need to distinguish:

• (a)?non–linguistic informational states in animal perception;

• (b)?the uncritical use of language, e.g. by children;

• (c)?adult humans' reasoned judgments.

If we also distinguish between mind-directed and object–directed mental states, we have: 1. Perceptual ‘beliefs’ of animals and infants about their material environment.

2. ‘Beliefs’ of animals and infants about the mental states of others.

3. Linguistically-expressible beliefs about the world, resulting from e.g. the uncritical tendency to believe what we are told.

4. Uncritically-formed beliefs about the mental states.

5. Beliefs about the material world arrived at by the weighing of evidence.

6. Beliefs about mental states formed by critical assessment.