A Poetics of Psychological Explanation

Intentional, 'commonsense,' or 'folk' psychology is, as Jerry Fodor has remarked, ubiquitous. Explanations of what we say and do in terms of our reasons for acting are the stock in trade of intentional psychology. But there is a question whether explanations in terms of reasons are properly explanatory. Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett, to name two, have defended intentional psychology and its reason-explanations. Still, many philosophers – including Fodor, Davidson and Dennett – fail to pay due attention to the narrative basis of such agent-centered accounts of action. In this paper, I argue that psychological explanation is an agent-centered, narrative-based interpretive practice. To make my case, I present a poetics of psychological explanation: seven elements which collectively describe what makes psychological explanations work. Narrative form allows us to represent the temporal arc of agents' actions – as well as the temporal arc of their reasoning about their actions, both prospective and retrospective. It allows us to negotiate between the canonical and the exceptional in human experience, and thus to account for actions that strike us as puzzling or unusual – whether the puzzle originates in our suboptimal understanding or the agent's suboptimal reasoning. And it allows us to juxtapose different perspectives on any action. Such juxtapositioning gives us a mechanism for coming to see how an action that strikes us as misguided might have been construed by the agent as reasonable given her understanding of her circumstances. After establishing the seven elements of the poetics, I address the objection that narrative-based accounts of intentional action are not properly explanatory.     

Cognitive control: dynamic, sustained, and voluntary influences

The cost of incongruent stimuli is reduced when conflict is expected. This series of experiments tested whether this improved performance is due to repetition priming or to enhanced cognitive control. Using a paradigm in which Word and Number Stroop alternated every trial, Experiment 1 assessed dynamic trial-to-trial changes. Incongruent trials led to task-specific reduction of conflict (trial n + 2) without cross-task modulation (trial n + 1), but this was fully explained by repetition priming. In contrast, an increased ratio of incongruent words did lead to sustained task-specific enhancement, above and beyond repetition priming (Experiment 2). Experiments 3 and 4 assessed the voluntary modulation of cognitive control: A cue predicted the congruency of the incoming trial, allowing participants to establish the correct mindset (Word Stroop in Experiment 3, Flanker task in Experiment 4). Preparing oneself to process an incongruent word (or flanker) enhanced conflict resolution in the subsequent Number Stroop, an example of cross-task modulation. Taken together, these experiments reveal the multifaceted aspects of conflict resolution: Trial-to-trial changes are often due to repetition priming; sustained modulations brought about by task demands are task specific; and voluntary modulations are task general.     

The development of idiom comprehension: an investigation of semantic and contextual processing skills

Two experiments compared 7- and 8-year-olds' and 9- and 10-year-olds' ability to use semantic analysis and inference from context to understand idioms. We used a multiple-choice task and manipulated whether the idioms were transparent or opaque, familiar or novel, and presented with or without a supportive story context. Performance was compared with that of adults (Experiment 1) and 11- and 12-year-olds (Experiment 2). The results broadly support Cacciari and Levorato's global elaboration model of figurative competence with a notable exception: Even the youngest children were able to use semantic analysis to derive the meanings of transparent idioms as well as being sensitive to meaning in context. The findings show that young children process language at both the small-grain phrase level and the discourse level to establish figurative meaning, and they demonstrate that the language processing skills that aid idiom comprehension, as well as idiom knowledge itself, are still not fully developed in 11- and 12-year-olds.     

Aging and goal-directed emotional attention: distraction reverses emotional biases

Previous findings reveal that older adults favor positive over negative stimuli in both memory and attention (for a review, see Mather & Carstensen, 2005). This study used eye tracking to investigate the role of cognitive control in older adults' selective visual attention. Younger and older adults viewed emotional-neutral and emotional-emotional pairs of faces and pictures while their gaze patterns were recorded under full or divided attention conditions. Replicating previous eye-tracking findings, older adults allocated less of their visual attention to negative stimuli in negative-neutral stimulus pairings in the full attention condition than younger adults did. However, as predicted by a cognitive-control-based account of the positivity effect in older adults' information processing tendencies (Mather & Knight, 2005), older adults' tendency to avoid negative stimuli was reversed in the divided attention condition. Compared with younger adults, older adults' limited attentional resources were more likely to be drawn to negative stimuli when they were distracted. These findings indicate that emotional goals can have unintended consequences when cognitive control mechanisms are not fully available.     

Between- or within-culture variation?: Culture group as a moderator of the relations between individual differences and resource allocation preferences

Recent theoretical discussion of the influence of between- and within-culture factors on social behaviors suggests that both approaches may be useful. The present study was designed to investigate the joint influence of sociocultural (between-group) and individual (within-group) factors on resource allocation preferences. Brazilian (n=166) and European–American (n=99) children with ages ranging from 37 to 140 months were administered a resource allocation task, which consisted of distributing rewards to themselves or to an acquaintance. As expected, individualistic resource allocation preferences decreased with age, whereas competitive and cooperative resource allocation preferences increased with age. Culture group, the task-specific cognitive demands, and the gender of the child, however, moderated these age differences. For example, gender differences in resource allocation preferences were stronger among Brazilians as compared to European–Americans and stronger in the reduced cognitive demand condition. Models of cooperative and competitive behaviors that consider the role of culture group, gender, and cognitive development and applied implications are discussed.     

The Relationship Between Agentic and Communal Personality Traits and Psychosocial Adjustment to Breast Cancer

Agency, communion, unmitigated agency (UA), and unmitigated communion (UC) are related to psychosocial health outcomes in nonclinical and medical populations. This study examined the relationship between these personality traits and emotional and interpersonal well-being, as up to 50% of women experience difficulties in psychosocial adjustment after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Seventy-four women newly diagnosed with breast cancer completed baseline assessment measures within 2 weeks prior to their first chemotherapy treatment or at the beginning of their hormonal therapy. Findings indicate that (1) agency and UA are important correlates of emotional and interpersonal adjustment and should be considered when attempting to identify women at high risk for psychosocial distress, and (2) UC deserves increased attention in behavioral medicine research, given its strong relationship with emotional distress in a breast cancer population. Thus, evidence continues to accumulate regarding the important relationship of these personality traits to psychosocial outcomes in medical populations.