预先承诺的理论解释及其神经机制

预先承诺是指个体提前做出一个有长远目标的决定来限制对即时诱惑的选择,从而避免在未来决策中由于意志力缺乏而出现的自我控制失败。最后期限法和限制选择法是开展预先承诺研究的常用范式。本研究在系统回顾预先承诺的三种理论解释（自我控制资源模型、神经网络模型和时间差强化学习模型）的基础上,尝试提出一个整合性的认知神经机制模型来解释预先承诺的作用过程。未来研究可进一步丰富预先承诺的研究范式和应用范围,并探究预先承诺调控非理性决策的心理与神经机制。     

预先承诺的理论解释及其神经机制

预先承诺是指个体提前做出一个有长远目标的决定来限制对即时诱惑的选择,从而避免在未来决策中由于意志力缺乏而出现的自我控制失败。最后期限法和限制选择法是开展预先承诺研究的常用范式。本研究在系统回顾预先承诺的三种理论解释（自我控制资源模型、神经网络模型和时间差强化学习模型）的基础上,尝试提出一个整合性的认知神经机制模型来解释预先承诺的作用过程。未来研究可进一步丰富预先承诺的研究范式和应用范围,并探究预先承诺调控非理性决策的心理与神经机制。     

自发性自传体记忆：功能、特征及其理论解释

自发性自传体记忆是个体在日常生活中对自身经历的突发性回忆。作为一种普遍的基本记忆方式, 它具有指导功能和自我功能。与自觉性自传体记忆相比, 其特征是：提取方式为基于联想、自下而上加工的直接提取过程, 内容上更倾向于积极情绪事件且复述频率较低, 性质上更具体。相应的解释理论有情景记忆回想理论、线索-启动理论、直接提取理论及概念联想理论。未来研究应注意功能验证、研究系统化、理论整合与跨文化等问题。     

Sociochemosensory and Emotional Functions: Behavioral Evidence for Shared Mechanisms

ABSTRACT— Olfaction and emotion are distinctively different systems. Nevertheless, there are reasons to suspect that they influence each other on the social level. Functionally, olfactory chemosensory communication is used by a wide range of animals to convey individual and group identity, as well as attraction or repulsion. Anatomically, the olfactory brain overlaps with the socioemotional brain, and is believed to have contributed to the evolution of the latter. Little is known about how the functional and anatomical links are manifested in behavior, however. Using human olfaction as a model, we demonstrate that chemosensory recognition of individuals—one of the most ubiquitous forms of social communication—is interconnected with both the cognitive and the visual processing of emotion. Our results provide the first behavioral evidence for mechanisms being shared by a sensory system and emotion.     

Coherence and Explanations

The article advocates a particular coherence theory of justification that emphasizes the significance of explanatory relations. It is shown that other approaches to coherence have failed because they underestimate the importance of explanatory theories in forming a system of beliefs. Additionally, a conception of explanation as a unifying substantial embedding of models is sketched that closely conforms with the proposed theory of coherence.     

Mathematics and Program Explanations

Aidan Lyon has recently argued that some mathematical explanations of empirical facts can be understood as program explanations. I present three objections to his argument.     

Nationalism and Its Explanations

This paper presents new terms for analyzing individuals' national attitudes and their conceptualization and operationalization, a universal psychological structure in which these concepts interconnect, and a nationalism explanatory model. Three empirical studies using anonymous self-administered surveys served to test and improve national attitude assessment and its developmental theory. These empirical studies were conducted in a well-established state (the Netherlands), a recently established state (Slovakia), and a region in which a considerable proportion of citizens are striving to develop a new independent state (the Basque Autonomous Community of Spain).     

Chronometric Explanations

In this paper I present a problem for the conventionalist regarding temporal metrics, and I defend an objectivist position on the ground of its explanatory force. Roughly, the conventionalist has it that there is no fact of the matter with respect to the truth or falsity of judgments of the kind “event e₁ lasted as long as event e₂”, while the objectivist thinks that they are grounded in objective features of space-time. I argue that, by positing grounds for judgments of relative temporal length, the objectivist gains an explanatory force that the conventionalist position lacks.     

Complementary Explanations

Scientific explanations arc subject to the occurrence of inconsistencies. To rule them out in many cases demands the construction of new theories. As the examples of complementary explanations show, that may take a while. Furthermore, even if possible in principle, it is not always reasonable to eliminate inconsistencies immediately, e.g., by bringing in a more sophisticated formal language. After all, under some circumstances a provisional, not fully coherent explanation may be better than none. In any case, we need a logically controlled approach to such inconsistencies. Modern logic provides the tools which are necessary to solve this task. We will mention two alternative approaches. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Reasons Explanations and Pure Agency

We focus on the recent non-causal theory of reasons explanationsof free action proffered by a proponent of the agency theory, Timothy O'Connor. We argue that the conditions O'Connor offersare neither necessary nor sufficient for a person to act for a reason. Finally, we note that the role O'Connor assigns toreasons in the etiology of actions results in further conceptual difficulties for agent-causalism.     

Ordinary Explanations and Career Theories

The author highlights the relatively unexplored relationship between ordinary language explanations of career behavior and formal theories of career development. As in Gergen and Gergen's (1982) framework, several ordinary explanations of career behavior are classified along two dimensions—the extent to which explanations are founded in the person or the situation and the extent to which they account for predictability and control or chance and change. The value of the framework for both theory development and practice is outlined. The use of ordinary explanations addresses a number of issues faced by counselors as they move between their clients' explanations and formal career and counseling theories.     

Competing Explanations and Explaining-Away Arguments

An “explaining-away argument” [EAA] aims to discredit some explanatory hypothesis by appealing to the explanatory power of an alternative hypothesis. Nietzsche's genealogical argument against theism and Darwin's case against Paley's “old argument of design in nature” are famous examples. In order for EAAs to have their negative force, they must satisfy several conditions. After clarifying these conditions, I focus in on one in particular: the two hypotheses in question offer potential explanations that compete with one another. I develop a formal account of what it takes for potential explanations to compete, and I use this account to argue that EAAs are often misapplied today. This is due to the fact that philosophers often fail to appreciate the subtle line dividing competing from non-competing explanations.     

Parsimony in Intuitive Explanations for Behavior: Reconciling the Discounting Principle and Preference for Conjunctive Explanations

Age and gender differences were examined using the new Spatial Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (SSEQ) and the Misplaced Objects Test (MOT) for location recall. Analysis of the MOT scores revealed significant age differences with younger adults performing better than older adults. Women performed better than men did, but despite higher scores, the women showed consistently lower self-efficacy than the men. Analyses of the SSEQ measures revealed significant differences as a function of age and gender, with men showing greater spatial memory self-efficacy than women, and older adults showing less self-efficacy than younger adults. Analyses of congruence (accuracy of SSEQ responses relative to MOT scores) revealed that older adults and men tended to overestimate their ability to remember object locations. Explanations for these findings are based on self-efficacy theory, in particular, the possible influence of gender socialization on beliefs about ability.     

Purely Theoretical Explanations

Philosophia - This paper introduces a new kind of explanation that we describe as ‘purely theoretical’. We first present an example, E, of what we take to be a case of purely...     

Explanations for unemployment in Britain

Psychological studies on unemployment in the 1930's and the 1970's and 1980's have concentrated on the psychological impact of unemployment on such things as people's health, self-esteem and social interaction. Furthermore studies have, not unnaturally, concentrated almost exclusively on the unemployed neglecting the employed altogether. Very few studies have concerned the range and determinants of lay explanations or attributions about the causes of unemployment. This study set out to examine differences in the explanations for unemployment as a function of whether people were employed or unemployed, as well as their age, sex, education and voting pattern, The results showed a predictable pattern of differences between the employed and unemployed, the former believing more in individualistic explanations and less in societal explanations than the latter. Whereas there were few sex and age differences, education and vote revealed numerous differences in explanations for unemployment. As in the case with explanations for poverty, Conservatives found individualistic explanations for unemployment more important than Labour voters who in turn found societal explanations more important than Conservative voters. Results were discussed in terms of the psychology of explanations, political socialization and the experience of unemployment. Problems in this study as well as the limitations and difficulties in research of the kind were also discussed.     

Mechanistic Constitution in Neurobiological Explanations

This paper discusses the constitution relation within the framework of the mechanistic approach to neurobiological explanation. It develops a regularity theory of constitution as an alternative to the manipulationist theory of constitution advocated by some of the proponents of the mechanistic approach. After the main problems of the manipulationist account of constitution have been reviewed, the regularity account is developed based on the notion of a minimal type relevance theory. A minimal type relevance theory expresses a minimally necessary condition of a given type that consists of a disjunction of minimally sufficient conditions of that type. Afterwards, the attained definition is successfully applied in an analysis of the logical structure of the explanation of spatial learning and memory in rats as a paradigm neurobiological explanation. The overall result is a more robust and more precise version of the mechanistic approach to neurobiological explanations.     

Idealizations and Concretizations in Laws and Explanations in Physics

The paper tries to provide an alternative to Hempel’s approach to scientific laws and scientific explanation as given in his D-N model. It starts with a brief exposition of the main characteristics of Hempel’s approach to deductive explanations based on universal scientific laws and analyzes the problems and paradoxes inherent in this approach. By way of solution, it analyzes the scientific laws and explanations in classical mechanics and then reconstructs the corresponding models of explanation, as well as the types of scientific laws appearing in it. Finally, it compares this reconstruction with the approaches of J. Woodward and C. Hitchcock, C. Liu and with the views of M. Thalos on analytic mechanics.

Evolutionary Explanations of Indicatives and Imperatives

Recently there has been some interest in studying the explanation of meaning by using signaling games. I shall argue that the meaning of signals in signaling games remains sufficiently unclear to motivate further investigation. In particular, the possibility of distinguishing imperatives and indicatives at a fundamental level will be explored. Thereby I am trying to preserve the generality of the signaling games framework while bringing it closer to human languages. A number of convergence results for the evolutionary dynamics of our models will be proved.     

Ego Functions and Ego Development: Defense Mechanisms and Intelligence as Predictors of Ego Level

This study considers the contribution of two ego functions--intelligence and defense mechanisms--to ego developmental level. Two independent assessments of ego level were related to IQ and defense mechanism use in a sample of 89 young adults. Whereas IQ and defense were themselves found to be unrelated, both variables predicted ego level: The relation with IQ was linear, whereas the relation with defense was curvilinear. In addition, the relation between defense and ego level varied as a function of IQ level. At low levels of IQ, stronger use of Denial and Projection was associated with higher ego levels. At high IQ levels, strong use of Denial was associated with lower ego levels, whereas moderate use of Projection was associated with higher ego levels.