Toward an explanatory framework for mental ownership

Philosophical and scientific investigations of the proprietary aspects of self??mineness or mental ownership??often presuppose that searching for unique constituents is a productive strategy. But there seem not to be any unique constituents. Here, it is argued that the ??self-specificity?? paradigm, which emphasizes subjective perspective, fails. Previously, it was argued that mode of access also fails to explain mineness. Fortunately, these failures, when leavened by other findings (those that exhibit varieties and vagaries of mineness), intimate an approach better suited to searching for an explanation. Having an alternative in hand, one that shows promise of achieving explanatory adequacy, provides an additional reason to suspend the search for unique constituents. In short, a negative and a positive thesis are developed: we should cease looking for unique constituents and should seek to explain mineness in accord with the model developed here. This model rejects attempts to explain the phenomenon in terms of either a narrative or a minimal sense of self; it seeks to explain at a ??molecular?? level, one that appeals to multiple, interacting dimensions. The molecular-level model allows for the possibility that subjective perspective is distinct from a stark perspective (one that does not imply mineness). It proposes that the confounding of tacit expectations plays an important role in explaining mental ownership and its complement, disownership. But the confounding of tacit expectations is not sufficient. Because we are able to be aware of the existence of mental states that do not belong to self, we require a mechanism for determining degree of self-relatedness. One such mechanism is proposed here, and it is shown how this mechanism can be integrated into a general model of mental ownership. In the spirit of suggesting how this model might be able to help resolve outstanding problems, the question as to whether inserted thoughts belong to the patient who reports them is also considered.     

Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for use with athletes

ObjectivesThree studies examine the factorial validity, internal consistency, test–retest stability, and criterion validity of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ: Gross & John, 2003) for use with athletes.DesignFactorial validity, internal consistency, test–retest stability and criterion validity of the ERQ were examined over three stages, using three separate samples.MethodIn stage 1 the factorial validity and internal consistency of the ERQ subscales were examined based on responses from 433 sport participants. In stage 2, 176 sport participants completed the ERQ on two occasions separated by an interval of two weeks. In stage 3, the criterion validity of the ERQ was examined. Sport participants (n = 88) completed the ERQ and reported the intensity, frequency and direction of a range of emotions experienced when competing in sport.ResultsConfirmatory factor analysis results lend some support to a two-factor model when reappraisal and suppression are allowed to correlate. Alpha coefficients were acceptable. Test–retest stability analyses indicated poor agreement and a greater influence of situational, as opposed to trait factors, in the variance of item scores on the second test administration. In addition, results were partially consistent with findings of Gross and John (2003): reappraisal scores were associated with pleasant emotions, but suppression scores were not associated with unpleasant emotions.ConclusionResults provide mixed support for the validity of the ERQ in sport. Because the ERQ is intended to assess stable patterns of emotion regulation, the instability of items is a concern and reasons for this require further investigation.     

Probabilistic Reasoning in Context: Socio-cultural Differences in Children’s and Adults’ Predictions about the Fulfillment of Prayers and Wishes

ABSTRACT

Children and adults appreciate that physical action is typically the conduit between individuals’ desires and the fulfillment of those desires. However, certain forms of petitionary thought – e.g., wishing and praying – are believed by many people to influence the external world and fulfill desires without direct physical action. We examine whether children’s and adults’ predictions about the occurrence of desired events differs based on: (1) the ways in which desires are expressed (wishing vs. praying), (2) whether desired events are plausible vs. impossible, and (3) participants’ religious backgrounds. Children ages 3- to 11-years (n = 144) and young adults (n = 85) were read scenarios in which a protagonist either wished or prayed for a desired event to occur. Some of the desired events could plausibly happen with ordinary human intervention and others were impossible, even with human intervention. Preschoolers often predicted that desired events would obtain; with increasing age, participants judged that fewer events would obtain. Participants’ predictions varied by the probability of the desired event – across the entire age-range participants predicted that impossible events would obtain less often than plausible events. Thus, participants’ everyday probabilistic reasoning was imported into their reasoning about the fulfillment of supernatural petitions. Children’s and adults’ religious experiences predicted their judgments that events would obtain if they had been prayed for, but not if they had been wished for. Thus, the effects of socio-cultural experience did not globally pervade children’s and adults’ probabilistic reasoning, but were specific to certain contexts about which they reasoned.     

Distinctions between emotion and mood

Most academics agree that emotions and moods are related but distinct phenomena. The present study assessed emotion-mood distinctions among a non-academic population and compared these views with distinctions proposed in the literature. Content analysis of responses from 106 participants identified 16 themes, with cause (65% of respondents), duration (40%), control (25%), experience (15%), and consequences (14%) the most frequently cited distinctions. Among 65 contributions to the academic literature, eight themes were proposed, with duration (62% of authors), intentionality (41%), cause (31percnt;), consequences (31%), and function (18%) the most frequently cited. When the eight themes cited by both academics and non-academics were rank ordered, approximately 60% overlap in opinion was evident. A data-derived summary of emotion-mood distinctions is provided. These data should prove useful to investigators interested in developing a clearer scientific distinction between emotion and mood than is currently available.     

Depressed versus nondepressed young adult tobacco users: differences in coping style, weight concerns and exercise level.

Undergraduates age 18 to 24 years (n=656) completed questionnaires assessing tobacco use, depressive symptoms, coping responses, weight concerns, and exercise. The majority of participants were female (72%), White/non-Hispanic (95%), and in the 1st or 2nd year of college (80%). Current tobacco users (n=236) had a higher frequency of depression (40%) than never tobacco users (32%; p=.05). Tobacco users classified as depressed (Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale [CES-D] score a 16) reported greater weight concerns and more frequent maladaptive coping in response to negative mood than tobacco users classified as nondepressed (CES-D score<16). Multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that higher maladaptive coping and lower level of exercise were significantly associated with depression among tobacco users.     

Cerebral asymmetry in the perception of American sign language.

American Sign Language (ASL) offers a valuable opportunity for the study of cerebral asymmetries, since it incorporates both language structure and complex spatial relations: processing the former has generally been considered a left-hemisphere function, the latter, a right-hemisphere one. To study such asymmetries, congenitally deaf, native ASL users and normally-hearing English speakers unfamiliar with ASL were asked to identify four kinds of stimuli: signs from ASL, handshapes never used in ASL, Arabic digits, and random geometric forms. Stimuli were presented tachistoscopically to a visual hemifield and subjects manually responded as rapidly as possible to specified targets. Both deaf and hearing subjects showed left-visual-field (hence, presumably right-hemisphere) advantages to the signs and to the non-ASL hands. The hearing subjects, further, showed a left-hemisphere advantage to the Arabic numbers, while the deaf subjects showed no reliable visual-field differences to this material. We infer that the spatial processing required of the signs predominated over their language processing in determining the cerebral asymmetry of the deaf for these stimuli.