Strategy and the pursuit of truth

Science is a social epistemic enterprise. The complexity of research requires the division of cognitive labor. As a consequence, scientists have to present results and incorporate the results of others into their body of knowledge. This creates the possibility of strategic behavior, leading to phenomena such as publication bias. To analyze the dynamics of strategic behavior in epistemic communities, agent-based modeling suggests itself as a method. The phenomena generated by the developed agent-based simulation model reveal a diverse set of possible dynamics in strategically heterogeneous groups and support the claim that there is a trade-off between a behavioral rule’s efficacy to generate accurate beliefs under optimal conditions and its robustness to variation in the composition of the epistemic environment.

     

The (non-)benefit of choosing: If you get what you want it is not important that you chose it

Self-Determination Theory argues that autonomy plays a major role in intrinsic motivation. Autonomy can be operationalized as choice. Whether positive effects on motivation are caused by the mere act of choosing or by confounding variables is still unclear. In this study (N?=?299, M_age?=?13.1?±?0.6 years), students could work with two polarizing animals. The first group was allowed to choose (choosing & match), two groups were not. In these groups, the teacher allocated the animals to the students resulting in a second group that received the wanted animal (no choosing & match), and a third group that received the unwanted animal (no choosing & no match). Situational motivation and flow experience were assessed. Regarding intrinsic motivation and flow, students in the no choosing & match treatment scored the highest, students of the no choosing & no match group the lowest. In conclusion, matching and not choosing made the difference.     

The volitive and the executive function of intentions

Many philosophers of action, including Bratman and Mele, conceive intentions functionally, as executive states: intentions are mental states that represent an action and tend to cause this action. In the philosophical tradition (e.g. for Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz, Kant) another function of intentions, which may be called “volitive”, played a much more prominent role: intentions are mental states that represent what kind of actions we want and prefer to be realised and thus, in a possibly rational way, synthesise our motivational, desiderative, and perhaps affective as well as cognitive attitudes towards this action. This paper argues that intentions must fulfil both functions and then develops a concept of ‘intention’ that integrates both functions. One reason for including the volitive function in the definition of ‘intention’ is that only via this function the value of actions as such is realised, namely to enable the person, the kernel of the self to express herself and to control the world. Various forms of dissociation of the two functions are discussed and a proposal how to deal with such cases in the definition of ‘intention’ is developed.     

Of two minds or one? A registered replication of Rydell et al. (2006)

ABSTRACT

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is proposed as a mechanism of automatic preference acquisition in dual-process theories of attitudes (Gawronski, B., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2006). Associative and propositional processes in evaluation: An integrative review of implicit and explicit attitude change. Psychological Bulletin, 132(5), 692–731. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.132.5.692). Evidence for the automaticity of EC comes from studies claiming EC effects for subliminally presented stimuli. An impression-formation study showed a selective influence of briefly presented primes on implicitly measured attitudes, whereas supraliminally presented behavioural information about the target person was reflected in explicit ratings (Rydell, R. J., McConnell, A. R., Mackie, D. M., & Strain, L. M. (2006). Of two minds forming and changing valence-inconsistent implicit and explicit attitudes. Psychological Science, 17(11), 954–958. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01811.x) This finding is considered one of the strongest pieces of evidence for dual process theories (Sweldens, S., Corneille, O., & Yzerbyt, V. (2014). The role of awareness in attitude formation through evaluative conditioning. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18(2), 187–209. doi:10.1177/1088868314527832), and it is therefore crucial to assess its reliability and robustness. The present study presents two registered replications of the Rydell et al. (2006) study. In contrast to the original findings, the implicit measures did not reflect the valence of the subliminal primes in both studies.     

Wiederkehrende,primäre Kopfschmerzen im Jugendalter

Background

Recurrent pain, especially primary headache, is a serious health problem in adolescents. Music therapy in the treatment of children with migraine has already been evaluated. The aim of this pilot study was to adopt this treatment manual for adolescent patients with recurrent primary headache in preparation for the main randomized controlled trial.

Patients and methods

In this pilot study two different modes of treatment (standard and compact treatment) were tested in an outpatient setting with 19 patients. Frequency and intensity of headache symptoms were evaluated using pain diaries for 8 weeks in a pre-post design.

Results

The pilot study showed good feasibility of both treatment conditions in outpatient practice. Patients reported a reduction of pain frequency and intensity in both groups. The evaluation of the clinical relevance of these effects remains the objective for the main trial.

Conclusions

The music therapeutic treatment plan for children with migraine is even feasible in the treatment of adolescents with recurrent, primary headache. Further evidence questioning the effectiveness of the treatment under controlled conditions is needed.

     

A Practical Explication of the Knowledge Rule of Informative Speech Acts

Abstract: This paper defends the knowledge rule of informative speech acts. It is argued that Edward Craig's insightful practical explication of the concept of knowledge can be extended to motivate the knowledge rule. A number of problem cases for the knowledge rule are addressed and accommodated.     

Two-Year-Old Children's Understanding of Visual Perception and Knowledge Formation in Others

A landmark study by O'Neill (1996 O'Neill , D. K. ( 1996 ). Two-year-old children's sensitivity to a parent's knowledge state when making requests . Child Development , 67 , 659 – 677 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), in which 2-year-old children were found to be more likely to point toward a hidden object to help an adult who was unsighted during the hiding event than to point helpfully for an adult who had been sighted, seems to undermine the conventional assumption that children this young do not understand the relationship between seeing/not seeing and knowing/not knowing. Concerns remain, however, as to whether the children's success was mentalistic or behavioral. In two experiments, 2-year-old children received first-person experience with two kinds of glasses of different colors but with apparently identical opaque lenses, one of which blocked their vision and the other of which they could see through. When the parent was wearing these glasses, the children were able to use their own first-person experience of the glasses to infer whether the adult could see or not. Despite this, they did not understand the causal relationship between visual perception and knowledge formation, as demonstrated by their indiscriminate pointing behavior in response to an ignorant or a knowledgeable parent. However, in a third experiment, we examined the relationship between experience of the adult's behavioral incompetence when wearing glasses of a certain color and the children's pointing behavior. Here they tended to point appropriately. We conclude that the phenomenon reported by O'Neill (1996 O'Neill , D. K. ( 1996 ). Two-year-old children's sensitivity to a parent's knowledge state when making requests . Child Development , 67 , 659 – 677 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) yields to an account in terms of the 2-year-olds' assumptions about behavioral competence/incompetence rather than about knowledge/ignorance.