Norms of Belief

When in the business of offering an account of the epistemic normativity of belief, one is faced with the following dilemma: strongly externalist norms fail to account for the intuition of justification in radical deception scenarios, while milder norms are incapable to explain what is epistemically wrong with false beliefs. This paper has two main aims; we first look at one way out of the dilemma, defended by Timothy Williamson and Clayton Littlejohn, and argue that it fails. Second, we identify what we take to be the problematic assumption that underlies their account and offer an alternative way out. We put forth a knowledge‐first friendly normative framework for belief which grants justification to radically deceived subjects while at the same time acknowledging that their false beliefs are not epistemically good beliefs.     

Potential traumatic events in early childhood and behavioural resilience: a longitudinal case control study

Abstract

Resilience can be evidenced when an exposure to potentially traumatic event (PTE) has no negative impact on behavior. This study explored the effects of exposure to PTE applying a longitudinal design with 592 children (mean age 4 years) followed across three years. Children who had experienced a PTE and those who had not, were compared over time. Behavioral difficulties and prosocial behaviour for children experiencing PTE did not differ from those who had not experienced a PTE suggesting resilience among the exposed children. PTE in itself seems to carry minimal risk for symptoms of behaviour difficulties among preschool children.     

Interrupting the cascade: orienting contributes to decision making even in the absence of visual stimulation

Most systematic studies of human decision making approach the subject from a cost analysis point of view and assume that people make the highest utility choice. Very few articles investigate subjective decision making, such as that involving preference, although such decisions are very important for our daily functioning. We have argued (Shimojo, Simion, Shimojo, & Scheier, 2003) that an orienting bias effectively leads to the preference decision by means of a positive feedback loop involving mere exposure and preferential looking. The illustration of this process is a continually increasing gaze bias toward the eventual choice, which we call the gaze cascade effect. In the present study, we interrupt the natural process of preference selection, but we show that gaze behavior does not change even when the stimuli are removed from observers' visual field. This demonstrates that once started, the involvement of orienting in decision making cannot be stopped and that orienting acts independently of the presence of visual stimuli. We also show that the cascade effect is intrinsically linked to the decision itself and is not triggered simply by a tendency to look at preferred targets.     

Does Evidence-Based Medicine Apply to Psychiatry?

Evidence-based psychiatry (EBP) has arisen through the application of evidence-based medicine (EBM) to psychiatry. However, there may be aspects of psychiatric disorders and treatments that do not conform well to the assumptions of EBM. This paper reviews the ongoing debate about evidence-based psychiatry and investigates the applicability, to psychiatry, of two basic methodological features of EBM: prognostic homogeneity of clinical trial groups and quantification of trial outcomes. This paper argues that EBM may not be the best way to pursue psychiatric knowledge given the particular features of psychiatric disorders and their treatments. As a result, psychiatry may have to develop its own standards for rigour and validity. This paper concludes that EBM has had a powerful influence on how psychiatry investigates and understands mental disorders. Psychiatry could influence EBM in return, reshaping it in ways that are more clinically useful and congruent with patients’ needs.     

A priori perceptual entitlement,knowledge‐first

Tyler Burge notably offers a truth‐first account of perceptual entitlement in terms of a priori necessary representational functions and norms: on his account, epistemic normativity turns on natural norms, which turn on representational functions. This paper has two aims: first, it criticises Tyler Burge's truth‐first a priori derivation on functionalist and value‐theoretic grounds. Second, it develops a novel, knowledge‐first a priori derivation of perceptual entitlement. According to the view developed here, it is a priori that we are entitled to believe the deliverances of our perceptual belief formation system, in virtue of the latter's constitutive function of generating knowledge.     

A puzzle for epistemic WAMs

Synthese - In recent literature, a very popular position about the normativity of assertion claims that standards for epistemically proper assertion vary with practical context, while standards for...     

Preferential orienting to faces in 4‐month‐olds: analysis of temporal–nasal visual field differences

A two‐process theory of the development of face processing predicted that newborns’ preferential orienting to face‐like patterns would be stronger in the temporal visual field than in the nasal. This prediction was confirmed in a previous study. While it is known that the newborn tendency to orient to face‐like patterns declines around 6 weeks of age, it is not known whether this is due to inhibition by cortical pathways or to the conflicting biases of cortical and subcortical pathways. In the present experiment we repeated the newborn study but with 4‐month‐olds and obtained results which were partially consistent with both the inhibition and the conflicting pathways accounts. We conclude that disappearance of the newborn tendency to orient to face‐like patterns is probably due to multiple factors.     

Children's objective and subjective sleep disruptions: links with afternoon cortisol levels.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine possible relations between the quality and amount of children's sleep and cortisol in healthy children. DESIGN: Children's sleep was monitored with actigraphs for 7 nights. Children came to the laboratory to provide saliva samples, which were used to assess cortisol. Children reported on their sleepiness and sleep/wake problems. Sixty-four healthy children participated (M = 8.75 years; SD = .55). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Self-reported sleepiness and sleep/wake problems, actigraphy-measured total sleep minutes, sleep efficiency, minutes awake after sleep onset, and sleep activity, and afternoon cortisol levels. Results: After controlling for demographic variables and child characteristics, higher levels of cortisol were related to increased subjective sleep problems and objective measures of shorter sleep duration and poorer sleep quality. CONCLUSION: These findings are of importance for understanding critical facets of children's health and well-being, and are noteworthy given the high prevalence of sleep disruptions in otherwise normally developing children in the United States.     

Face detection in complex visual displays: an eye-tracking study with 3- and 6-month-old infants and adults

The ability to detect and prefer a face when embedded in complex visual displays was investigated in 3- and 6-month-old infants, as well as in adults, through a modified version of the visual search paradigm and the recording of eye movements. Participants (N=43) were shown 32 visual displays that comprised a target face among 3 or 5 heterogeneous objects as distractors. Results demonstrated that faces captured and maintained adults' and 6-month-olds' attention, but not 3-month-olds' attention. Overall, the current study contributes to knowledge of the capacity of social stimuli to attract and maintain visual attention over other complex objects in young infants as well as in adults.