Language access and theory of mind reasoning: evidence from deaf children in bilingual and oralist environments

This investigation examined whether access to sign language as a medium for instruction influences theory of mind (ToM) reasoning in deaf children with similar home language environments. Experiment 1 involved 97 deaf Italian children ages 4-12 years: 56 were from deaf families and had LIS (Italian Sign Language) as their native language, and 41 had acquired LIS as late signers following contact with signers outside their hearing families. Children receiving bimodal/bilingual instruction in LIS together with Sign-Supported and spoken Italian significantly outperformed children in oralist schools in which communication was in Italian and often relied on lipreading. Experiment 2 involved 61 deaf children in Estonia and Sweden ages 6-16 years. On a wide variety of ToM tasks, bilingually instructed native signers in Estonian Sign Language and spoken Estonian succeeded at a level similar to age-matched hearing children. They outperformed bilingually instructed late signers and native signers attending oralist schools. Particularly for native signers, access to sign language in a bilingual environment may facilitate conversational exchanges that promote the expression of ToM by enabling children to monitor others' mental states effectively.     

Disjunctive and Conjunctive Multiple-Conclusion Consequence Relations

Studia Logica - Two different kinds of multiple-conclusion consequence relations taken from Shoesmith and Smiley (Multiple-conclusion logic, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978) and Galatos...     

Why should we try to think like scientists? Scientific reasoning and susceptibility to epistemically suspect beliefs and cognitive biases

This paper examines whether scientific reasoning skills predict people's susceptibility to epistemically suspect beliefs and cognitive biases. We used the recently developed Scientific Reasoning Scale (SRS) because it measures the ability to read and evaluate scientific evidence. Alongside the SRS, 317 participants aged 18–30 years completed measures of thinking dispositions and cognitive ability to ascertain whether the SRS contributes specifically to susceptibility to epistemically suspect beliefs and cognitive biases. Scientific reasoning correlated positively with dispositions towards analytic thinking and cognitive ability and negatively with dogmatism, epistemically suspect beliefs, and susceptibility to cognitive biases. Most importantly, it emerged as a significant predictor, contributing to susceptibility to both cognitive biases and epistemically suspect beliefs over and above the other cognitive predictors. These results provide the first empirical evidence that scientific reasoning ability is an important factor in protecting against epistemically suspect beliefs and in aiding better decision making among the non-scientific population.     

Executive Functions and Theory-of-Mind Among Deaf Children: Different Routes to Understanding Other Minds?

The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of executive functions (EF) in theory-of-mind (ToM) performance in deaf children and adolescents. Four groups of deaf children aged 7–16 years, with different language backgrounds at home and at school, that is, bilingually instructed native signers, oralist-instructed native signers, and two groups of bilingually instructed late signers from Sweden and Estonia, respectively, were given eight ToM and four EF measures. The bilingually instructed native signers performed at a significantly higher level on the ToM measures than the other groups of deaf children. On the EF measures, there were no significant differences found between any of the groups, with one exception—the Swedish bilingual late signers had a significantly shorter average reaction time on the go-no-go inhibition task than the oralist native signers and the Estonian bilingual late signers. However, the Swedish children's better EF performance was not mirrored in better performance on ToM tasks. Our results indicate that despite all deaf children's good general cognitive abilities, there were still differences in their performance on ToM tasks that need to be explained in other terms. Thus, whatever the cause of late signers' difficulties with ToM, poor EF-skills seem to be of minor importance.     

Reducing cognitive complexity in a hypothetico-deductive reasoning task

The confusion/non-consequential thinking explanation proposed by Newstead, Girotto, and Legrenzi (1995) for poor performance on Wason's THOG problem (a hypothetico-deductive reasoning task) was examined in three experiments with 300 participants. In general, as the cognitive complexity of the problem and the possibility of non-consequential thinking were reduced, correct performance increased. Significant but weak facilitation (33-40% correct) was found in Experiment 1 for THOG classification instructions that did not include the indeterminate response option. Substantial facilitation (up to 75% correct) was obtained in Experiment 2 with O'Brien et al.'s (1990) one-other-THOG classification instruction. In Experiment 3, a revised version of O'Brien et al.'s pre-test problem format also led to substantial facilitation, even with the use of the standard three-choice THOG classification instruction. These findings are discussed in terms of Newstead et al.'s theoretical proposal and possible attentional factors.     

Who self-initiates gratitude interventions in daily life? An examination of intentions,curiosity, depressive symptoms,and life satisfaction

Despite a variety of interventions to increase well-being, little is known about who is interested in and initiates exercises on their own. We explored individual differences that predict who is most likely to participate in a voluntary gratitude intervention. College students (n = 226) completed measures of curiosity, depressive symptoms, life satisfaction, and intentions to change their lifestyle. Afterwards, participants received a personalized invitation to take part in a web-based intervention to enhance their well-being (anonymous and strictly voluntary). Results suggested that 11.5% of participants started the gratitude intervention. Individuals endorsing strong intentions to change their lifestyle (+1 SD above mean) were 2.2 times more likely than their peers to start the gratitude intervention. People with greater trait curiosity endorsed greater intentions to start this intervention; people with greater depressive symptoms endorsed weaker intentions. Both curiosity and depressive symptoms indirectly influenced initiation of the gratitude intervention via intentions. These findings provide support for particular paths that lead to the initial behavioral effort towards healthy change. We discuss the implications for attempting to increase and sustain people’s well-being.     

The humanity of what we eat: Conceptions of human uniqueness among vegetarians and omnivores

Studies on dehumanization demonstrated that denying certain human characteristics might serve as a strategy for moral disengagement. Meat consumption—especially in the times of cruel animal farming—is related to the exclusion of animals from the human scope of justice. In the present research, it was hypothesized that the conception of human uniqueness (denying animals certain psychological characteristics) might be a strategy of meat‐eaters' moral disengagement. Three studies compared the extent to which vegetarians and omnivores attribute psychological characteristics to humans versus animals. In Study 1, vegetarian participants ascribed more secondary (uniquely human) emotions to animals than did the omnivores; however, there were no differences in primary (animalistic) emotions. Study 2 showed that omnivores distinguish human characteristics from animalistic ones more sharply than vegetarians do, while both groups do not differ in distinguishing human characteristics from mechanistic ones. Study 3 confirmed the results by showing that omnivores ascribed less secondary emotions to traditionally edible animals than to the non‐edible species, while vegetarians did not differentiate these animals. These results support the claim that the lay conceptions of ‘human uniqueness’ are strategies of moral disengagement. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Generation difficulty and memory for source

The role of the word predictability from sentence context for reality monitoring and external source monitoring was examined in two experiments. In a reality-monitoring task, discrimination of an internal source was better in the hard than in the easy condition. It is probable that extra cognitive operations engaged during word generation in the hard condition were effective cues for reality-monitoring judgements. In contrast, in an external source-monitoring task (recognition memory of item's colour), the hard condition resulted in worse source memory for generated words than did the easy condition. This result is consistent both with an item-context trade-off hypothesis and a processing hypothesis. Greater effort involved at the time of generation might limit resources available for encoding of an external source. It is also possible that for generated words, the hard condition promoted conceptual processing instead of perceptual processing; therefore the item's colour was not effectively encoded.     

Berdjaev: authentic existence or a negative sociology

This paper is a contribution to the constantly increasing Polish interest in Russian thought, especially in Nicolas Berdjaev’s philosophy. The differences between Western philosophy and Russian religious thinking are mentioned in passing. Berdjaev’s existential personalism, which from the sociological point of view can be described as a freedom from the world, is dealt with. The thinker contrasts persons and their activities with the objectified world and emphasizes the existential strangeness of the person in the world of culture bound by different determining factors.