The phenomenological role of affect in the Capgras delusion

This paper draws on studies of the Capgras delusion in order to illuminate the phenomenological role of affect in interpersonal recognition. People with this delusion maintain that familiars, such as spouses, have been replaced by impostors. It is generally agreed that the delusion involves an anomalous experience, arising due to loss of affect. However, quite what this experience consists of remains unclear. I argue that recent accounts of the Capgras delusion incorporate an impoverished conception of experience, which fails to accommodate the role played by ‘affective relatedness’ in constituting (a) a sense of who a particular person is and (b) a sense of others as people rather than impersonal objects. I draw on the phenomenological concept of horizon to offer an interpretation of the Capgras experience that shows how the content ‘this entity is not my spouse but an impostor’ can be part of the experience, rather than something that is inferred from a strange experience.

La représentation des causes de l’état de santé par les infirmiers et les points de vue envisagés des patients et des aidants naturels : une approche socionormative

This study examines the representation of the determining factors of patients’ states of health in therapeutic care situations. We describe the average representation of experienced hospital nurses (n=44) and the differences which they consider to exist between their own and their patients’ points of view. Taking as our starting point the purpose of the care provided and the asymmetry of the carer/patient relationship, we hypothesize, on the one hand, that nurses will have a representation of their patients’ state of health which is based on the care to be provided, with the factors determining the state of health being necessarily perceived as having a general impact on patients’ lives while still being remediable, i.e. capable of changing and being controlled by the provided care. On the other hand, we expect them to attribute a passive position and attitude to their patients, with the factors determining their state of health being necessarily perceived as being out of their own control. The results and the analysis of the representations reported as being those of the patients and their families seem to justify this perception and role of carer: the supposed representations of the latter would appear to be convergent but less focused on health problems and would tend to minimize the patient’s involvement, in particular when the state of health declines. The results are discussed with reference to the Health Belief Model and the social norm of internality as well as the professional practices observed in hospital environments.     

Multiple Kernel Contraction

This paper focuses on the extension of AGM that allows change for a belief base by a set of sentences instead of a single sentence. In [FH94], Fuhrmann and Hansson presented an axiomatic for Multiple Contraction and a construction based on the AGM Partial Meet Contraction. We propose for their model another way to construct functions: Multiple Kernel Contraction, that is a modification of Kernel Contraction, proposed by Hansson [Han94] to construct classical AGM contractions and belief base contractions. This construction works out the unsolved problem pointed out by Hansson in [Han99, pp. 369]. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

心理模型及其探查技术的研究

自从1943年Craik首次提出心理模型概念以来,有关心理模型的研究已大量涌现,目前有两条心理模型的研究思路．文章分别沿着这两条思路介绍有关心理模型的研究,并以访谈法和观察法为线索梳理了心理模型的探查技术．最后指出心理模型及其探查技术的研究趋向：两条研究思路的整合和多种探查技术的整合。     

Local Change

An agent can usually hold a very large number of beliefs. However, only a small part of these beliefs is used at a time. Efficient operations for belief change should affect the beliefs of the agent locally, that is, the changes should be performed only in the relevant part of the belief state. In this paper we define a local consequence operator that only considers the relevant part of a belief base. This operator is used to define local versions of the operations for belief change. Representation theorems are given for the local operators.     

The effects of justice motivation on memory for self- and other-relevant events

We examined whether people might distort and selectively remember the past in ways that enable them to sustain a belief in a just world (BJW; Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum Press). In Study 1, recall of a lottery prize reflected participants’ justice concerns, such that the average lottery amount recalled was lowest when a “bad” versus “good” person won. In Study 2, an unrelated experience of just world threat (versus affirmation) enhanced biased recall of the lottery prize when the winner was undeserving. In Study 3, participants who experienced a fortuitous bad break selectively remembered more bad deeds from their recent past, whereas participants who experienced a good break selectively remembered more good deeds. Study 4 demonstrates that such selective memory biases specifically serve to portray chance outcomes as more fair. Taken together, these findings offer support for the notion that reconstructing and selectively recalling the past can serve to sustain a BJW.     

The inessential quasi-indexical

In this paper, I argue, contra Perry, that the existence of locating beliefs does not require the abandonment of the analysis of belief as a relation between subjects and propositions. I argue that what the “problem of the essential indexical” reveals is that a complete explanation of behaviour requires both an explanation of the type of behaviour the agent engaged in and an explanation of why she engaged in it in the circumstances that she did. And I develop an account of belief which encompasses both explanatory roles and which still treats belief as a two-place relation between subjects and propositions.

Weight approximations in multi‐attribute decision models

The use of surrogate weights based on rankings has been proposed as a method for avoiding difficulties associated with the elicitation of weights in multi‐attribute decision analysis. When the simple multiattribute rating technique using swings (SMARTS) method is being employed it has been suggested that rank order centroid (ROC) weights are the best surrogate weights to use. This study shows that ROC weights are appropriate to use as a substitute for original weights that are constrained to sum to a fixed total (usually 1 or 100) as used in the point allocation method. If, however, the original weights are determined without any initial restrictions, as in the direct rating method, and are then normalized, which is the common procedure in SMARTS analysis, then the ROC weights do not provide the best approximations to the original weights. This paper shows how to obtain rank order distribution (ROD) weights that provide a better approximation than the ROC approach to unrestricted original weights. The paper also shows that, as the number of attributes in a decision problem increases, the ROD weights approximate to the more easily calculated rank sum weights. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fake feedback on pain tolerance impacts proactive versus reactive control strategies

It is well-known that beliefs about one’s own ability to execute a task influence task performance. Here, we tested the hypothesis that beliefs about a specific self-control capacity, namely pain tolerance, modulate basic cognitive control processes. Participants received fake comparative social feedback that their ability to tolerate painful stimulations was either very poor or outstanding after which they performed an unrelated go/no-go task. Participants receiving low-tolerance feedback, relative to high-tolerance feedback, were less successful at inhibiting their responses and more influenced by previous trial conditions, as indicated by an increased slowdown following errors and more failed inhibitions following go-trials. These observations demonstrate a shift from a more proactive to a more reactive control mode. This study shows that providing feedback about one’s own capacity to control impulsive reactions to painful stimulations directly influences low-level cognitive control dynamics.     

Assessing individual differences in the degree to which people are committed to following their beliefs

The authors developed a new dispositional measure of Commitment to Beliefs (CTB)—the degree to which people feel it is important to follow their value-expressive beliefs—across three phases of research. In Phases 1 and 2 (Studies 1-4), the CTB scale demonstrated strong internal consistency, and convergent and discriminant validity. Phase 3 demonstrated the scale’s predictive validity: high-CTB individuals were more likely to report engaging in activities during the past month and year that followed directly from their beliefs (Study 5), act on their beliefs when given the opportunity (Study 6), and show more polarized attitudes toward ideologically-relevant groups (Study 7). These findings illustrate the utility of a dispositional approach for examining the extent to which people follow their beliefs.