Experts and Deviants: The Story of Agentive Control

This essay argues that current theories of action fail to explain agentive control because they have left out a psychological capacity central to control: attention. This makes it impossible to give a complete account of the mental antecedents that generate action. By investigating attention, and in particular the intention‐attention nexus, we can characterize the functional role of intention in an illuminating way, explicate agentive control so that we have a uniform explanation of basic cases of causal deviance in action as well as other defects of agency (distraction), explain cases of skilled agency and sharpen questions about the role of thought in agency. This provides for a different orientation in the theory of action.     

The Invisible Hand: Toddlers Connect Probabilistic Events With Agentive Causes

Children posit unobserved causes when events appear to occur spontaneously (e.g., Gelman & Gottfried, 1996). What about when events appear to occur probabilistically? Here toddlers (M = 20.1 months) saw arbitrary causal relationships (Cause A generated Effect A; Cause B generated Effect B) in a fixed, alternating order. The relationships were then changed in one of two ways. In the Deterministic condition, the event order changed (Event B preceded Event A); in the Probabilistic condition, the causal relationships changed (Cause A generated Effect B; Cause B generated Effect A). As intended, toddlers looked equally long at both changes (Experiment 1). We then introduced a previously unseen candidate cause. Toddlers looked longer at the appearance of a hand (Experiment 2) and novel agent (Experiment 3) in the Deterministic than the Probabilistic conditions, but looked equally long at novel non‐agents (Experiment 4), suggesting that by 2 years of age, toddlers connect probabilistic events with unobserved agents.     

On a Neglected Aspect of Agentive Experience

Philosophia - There is an argument for incompatibilism that is based on the experience of agency. Authors who endorse this argument place pro tanto evidential weight on one or more of two putative...     

Confronting Many‐Many Problems: Attention and Agentive Control

I argue that when perception plays a guiding role in intentional bodily action, it is a necessary part of that action. The argument begins with a challenge that necessarily arises for embodied agents, what I call the Many‐Many Problem. The Problem is named after its most common case where agents face too many perceptual inputs and too many possible behavioral outputs. Action requires a solution to the Many‐Many Problem by selection of a specific linkage between input and output. In bodily action the agent perceptually selects, and in this way perceptually attends to, relevant information so as to guide the execution of specific movements. Since perceptual attention is a necessary part of solving the Many‐Many Problem, it is a necessary part of bodily action. Indeed, the process of implementing a solution to the Many‐Many Problem, as constrained by the agent's motivational state, just is the agent's performing an intentional bodily action in the relevant way.     

Dynamic Modalities

A new modal logic containing four dynamic modalities with the following informal reading is introduced: ${\square^\forall}$ – always necessary, ${\square^\exists}$ – sometimes necessary, and their duals – ${\diamondsuit^\forall}$ – always possibly, and ${\diamondsuit^\exists}$ – sometimes possibly. We present a complete axiomatization with respect to the intended formal semantics and prove decidability via fmp.     

Kant's Modalities of Judgment

Abstract: This paper proposes a way to understand Kant's modalities of judgment—problematic, assertoric, and apodeictic—in terms of the location of a judgment in an inference. Other interpretations have tended to understand these modalities of judgment in terms of one or other conventional notion of modality. For example, Mattey (1986) argues that we should take them to be connected to notions of epistemic or doxastic modality. I shall argue that this is wrong, and that these kinds of interpretation of the modality of judgments cannot be reconciled with a key claim made by Kant, namely, that the modality of a judgment does not contribute to its content, and has nothing to do with the matter that is judged. I offer an alternative interpretation based upon Kant's explicating these modalities in terms of the location of a judgment in an inference, whereby the modality of a judgment is determined by the role a judgment plays in a given course of reasoning. If I am right, then Kant in fact presents an intriguing thesis pertaining to the inferential status and potential of all our judgments.     

Bisimulation for Conditional Modalities

We give a definition of bisimulation for conditional modalities interpreted on selection functions and prove the correspondence between bisimilarity and modal equivalence, generalizing the Hennessy–Milner Theorem to a wide class of conditional operators. We further investigate the operators and semantics to which these results apply. First, we show how to derive a solid notion of bisimulation for conditional belief, behaving as desired both on plausibility models and on evidence models. These novel definitions of bisimulations are exploited in a series of undefinability results. Second, we treat relativized common knowledge, underlining how the same results still hold for a different modality in a different semantics. Third, we show the flexibility of the approach by generalizing it to multi-agent systems, encompassing the case of multi-agent plausibility models.     

Projection across Sensory Modalities

Question is raised as to whether we are not setting our sights too high in trying to understand personality. Difficulty of understanding the “whole” personality is related to the fact that half of what is determining it at any given time is situationally defined and the other half is tied up with almost invisible inner processes. Homage is paid to Henry Murray for having put us on the right path.     

儿童视听觉通道现实监控的发展

采用视觉图片和动画,听觉声音和词语任务,分别要求5岁（平均年龄66.5个月）、7岁（平均年龄80.8个月）和9岁（平均年龄117.2个月）共233名儿童在知觉和想象材料中作出来源判断,比较现实监控任务中视听觉通道之间和通道内部的发展差异。结果发现,在通道内部,不同实验材料对现实监控的影响不尽相同。在视觉通道内部：较小年龄儿童对图片的现实监控好于动画,较大年龄儿童对动画的现实监控好于图片;在听觉通道内部：儿童对声音的现实监控好于词。随着年龄的增长,对记忆现实监控的通道差异从视觉的图片刺激优势到图片和动画优势,到视觉刺激和声音对词的优势。文章还讨论了这些发展差异的可能原因,对我们理解个体记忆发展的规律和特点以及对实践的指导意义     

Non-Adjunctive Inference and Classical Modalities

The article focuses on representing different forms of non-adjunctive inference as sub-Kripkean systems of classical modal logic, where the inference from □A and □B to □A∧B fails. In particular we prove a completeness result showing that the modal system that Schotch and Jennings derive from a form of non-adjunctive inference in (Schotch and Jennings, 1980) is a classical system strictly stronger than EMN and weaker than K (following the notation for classical modalities presented in Chellas, 1980). The unified semantical characterization in terms of neighborhoods permits comparisons between different forms of non-adjunctive inference. For example, we show that the non-adjunctive logic proposed in (Schotch and Jennings, 1980) is not adequate in general for representing the logic of high probability operators. An alternative interpretation of the forcing relation of Schotch and Jennings is derived from the proposed unified semantics and utilized in order to propose a more fine-grained measure of epistemic coherence than the one presented in (Schotch and Jennings, 1980). Finally we propose a syntactic translation of the purely implicative part of Jaśkowski's system D₂ into a classical system preserving all the theorems (and non-theorems) explicilty mentioned in (Jaśkowski, 1969). The translation method can be used in order to develop epistemic semantics for a larger class of non-adjunctive (discursive) logics than the ones historically investigated by Jaśkowski.     

跨视听通道的相继错误记忆效应

本研究以12名大学生为被试采用DRM范式,考察了视觉与听觉通道在编码阶段的错误记忆ERP效应,以从更深层面认识错误记忆的内在加工机制。研究结果表明,在编码阶段,在300-500ms及500-700ms的时间窗视觉通道均存在相继错误记忆效应（DIM）,比听觉通道表现出较强的DIM效应,这不仅说明视觉通道与听觉通道在编码阶段具有不同的脑机制,而且表明DIM效应与学习项目的语义加工有着密切的关系。     

Grafting Modalities onto Substructural Implication Systems

We investigate the semantics of the logical systems obtained by introducing the modalities and into the family of substructural implication logics (including relevant, linear and intuitionistic implication). Then, in the spirit of the LDS (Labelled Deductive Systems) methodology, we "import" this semantics into the classical proof system KE. This leads to the formulation of a uniform labelled refutation system for the new logics which is a natural extension of a system for substructural implication developed by the first two authors in a previous paper.     

A Comparison of Modalities in Modeling

Organizational display rules (e.g., “service with a smile”) have had mixed relationships with employee emotional labor—either in the form of “bad faith” surface acting (suppressing or faking expressions) or “good faith” deep acting (modifying inner feelings). We draw on the motivational perspective of emotional labor to argue that individual differences in customer orientation will directly and indirectly relate to these acting strategies in response to display rules. With a survey of more than 500 working adults in customer contact positions, and controlling for affective disposition, we find that customer orientation directly increases “good faith” acting while it moderates the relationship of display rules with “bad faith” acting.     

The Symbol Digit Modalities Test: a screening instrument for brain-damaged children

28 brain-damaged males ranging in age from 8 to 16 yr. were compared with 28 nondamaged matching controls on their Symbol Digit Modalities Test performance. The damaged group performed significantly more poorly, and 75% of the subjects scored more than .5 z score below their matched controls. The results suggest that this brief and objective test can be used to screen brain-damaged children when their performance is compared to that of a control group or the normative group.     

Modalities of Generalization Through Single Case Studies

The value of case studies for theory building is still doubted in psychology. The paper argues for the importance of case studies and the possibility of generalizing from these for a specific sociocultural understanding of human development. The paper first clarifies the notion of abduction within case studies, drawing on pragmatists James and Peirce and expanding it with the work of Lewin, and argues that it is the core mechanism that allows generalization from case studies. The second section presents the possibility of generalizing from individual single case studies, for which not only the subjective perspective, but also the dynamics by which the social and cultural environment guide and enable the person’s development, have to be accounted for. The third section elaborates the question of institutional case studies, where the challenge is to account both for institutional dynamics, and for persons’ trajectories within; this is exemplified with an ongoing study on the process of obtaining citizenship in Switzerland. The paper briefly concludes by highlighting two possible implications of the paper, one concerning the process of theoretical reasoning, the other, the fact that sociocultural psychology could itself be seen as an institution in-the-making.     

具身认知观的身体样态分析

面对身体与心灵的二元论困境,具身认知观开始以一种新的眼光去打量身体,并致力于将身体改造为一种具有超越能力的新的身体。但是,当根据一条纵向线索将具身认知观划分为温和的具身认知观和激进的具身认知观之后,上述新的身体在纵向上就呈现为两种身体样态。而且,通过对这两种身体样态的批判性反思,最终可以发现,具身认知观当前所实现出来的身体,与其说超越了二元论,不如说在二元论的思考框架下最大程度地强化了传统身体。