儿童阅读与心理理论间的关系

阅读与心理理论(theory of mind, ToM)在儿童发展过程中都发挥着重要的作用,梳理文献发现两者可能存在双向促进作用。儿童通过与家长或老师的共享阅读,启动联合注意,使用心理状态术语进行对话,进一步根据社会想象力,模拟社会互动,从而促进儿童心理理论发展。另一方面,在阅读过程中,心理理论能够助力儿童从宏观的阅读观的建立、元认知阅读策略的使用、故事情境模型的构建,到微观具体的短语、句子、语篇和多文本的理解等能力的提高,这些证据揭示了心理理论可以从多方面促进儿童阅读能力的发展。进一步的神经生理证据发现,阅读和心理理论这两个过程的神经活动是有一定重叠的。由此推测,两者可能具备潜在的双向促进关系。未来需要更深入和长期的纵向追踪研究为两者的关系提供丰富的实证证据。此外,还应进行更多中国的低龄儿童的研究。随着科技的发展和线上课程的盛行,也应更多关注多媒体内容阅读对儿童心理理论的影响。     

基于心灵知觉理论的AI服务用户接受机制及使用促进策略

许多企业采用人工智能服务应答顾客需求,然而多项研究指出用户并不总是对此感到满意。本研究围绕着用户对AI的心灵知觉的产生和影响,探索了驱动用户对AI服务态度的关键因素及使用促进策略,包括(1)机理分析层面：用户与AI早期接触的线索和体验因素如何使得人们产生了AI“擅长计算却缺乏感受”的心灵知觉？(2)调节作用层面：不同的用户内部状态和AI外部特征怎样调节了这种心灵知觉的形成和激活？(3)促进策略层面：将AI拟动物化和提供技术援助为何能借助心灵知觉使得用户在更广泛的场景中接受来自AI的服务？本研究试图在学理层面构建一个基于心灵知觉理论的新型AI服务接受模型,为从理论上解释用户对AI服务的矛盾态度提供心理学参考;同时试图在实践层面上借助心灵知觉理论提出两种促进用户接受AI服务的路径方法,为企业在服务中提升AI的应用效能提供技术参考。     

Problem Solvers Adjust Cognitive Offloading Based on Performance Goals

When incorporating the environment into mental processing (cf., cognitive offloading), one creates novel cognitive strategies that have the potential to improve task performance. Improved performance can, for example, mean faster problem solving, more accurate solutions, or even higher grades at university.¹ Although cognitive offloading has frequently been associated with improved performance, it is yet unclear how flexible problem solvers are at matching their offloading habits with their current performance goals (can people improve goal‐related instead of generic performance, e.g., when being in a hurry and aiming for a “quick and dirty” solution?). Here, we asked participants to solve a cognitive task, provided them with different goals—maximizing speed (SPD) or accuracy (ACC), respectively—and measured how frequently (Experiment 1) and how proficiently (Experiment 2) they made use of a novel external resource to support their cognitive processing. Experiment 1 showed that offloading behavior varied with goals: Participants offloaded less in the SPD than in the ACC condition. Experiment 2 showed that this differential offloading behavior was associated with high goal‐related performance: fast answers in the SPD, accurate answers in the ACC condition. Simultaneously, goal‐unrelated performance was sacrificed: inaccurate answers in the SPD, slow answers in the ACC condition. The findings support the notion of humans as canny offloaders who are able to successfully incorporate their environment in pursuit of their current cognitive goals. Future efforts should be focused on the finding's generalizability, for example, to settings without feedback or with high mental workload.     

A social-cognitive framework for understanding serious lies: Activation-decision-construction-action theory

Little is known about the cognition of deception (Gombos, 2006). We propose a cognitive account of serious lying (i.e., deception involving high stakes) in response to a solicitation of a truth: Activation-Decision-Construction-Action Theory (ADCAT). Built on the Activation-Decision-Construction Model of answering questions deceptively (Walczyk, Roper, Seeman, & Humphrey, 2003), the theory elaborates on the roles of executive processes, theory of mind, emotions, motivation, specifies cognitive processing thoroughly, and considers the rehearsal of lies. ADCAT's four processing components are (a) activation of the truth, the (b) decision whether and how to alter deceptively the information shared, (c) construction of a deception, and (d) action [acting sincere while delivering a lie]. Core constructs are “theory of mind” and “cognitive resources”. Specifically, throughout serious deception, individuals are inferring the current or potential mental states of targets and taking steps to minimize the allocation of cognitive resources during delivery to appear honest and lie well.     

Older (but not younger) preschoolers understand that knowledge differs between people and across time

We examined 3‐ to 5‐year‐olds' understanding of general knowledge (e.g., knowing that clocks tell time) by investigating whether (1) they recognize that their own general knowledge has changed over time (i.e., they knew less as babies than they know now), and (2) such intraindividual knowledge differences are easier/harder to understand than interindividual differences (i.e., Do preschoolers understand that a baby knows less than they do?). Forty‐eight 3‐ to 5‐year‐olds answered questions about their current general knowledge (‘self‐now’), the general knowledge of a 6‐month‐old (‘baby‐now’), and their own general knowledge at 6 months (‘self‐past’). All age groups were significantly above chance on the self‐now questions, but only 5‐year‐olds were significantly above chance on the self‐past and baby‐now questions. Moreover, children's performance on the baby‐now and self‐past questions did not differ. Our findings suggest that younger preschoolers do not fully appreciate that their past knowledge differs from their current knowledge, and that others may have less knowledge than they do. We situate these findings within the research on knowledge understanding, more specifically, and cognitive development, more broadly.     

Critical thinking in North America: A new theory of knowledge,learning, and literacy

The pace of change in the world is accelerating, yet educational institutions have not kept pace. Indeed, schools have historically been the most static of social institutions, uncritically passing down from generation to generation outmoded didactic, lecture-and-drill-based, models of instruction. Predictable results follow. Students, on the whole, do not learn how to work by, or think for, themselves. They do not learn how to gather, analyze, synthesize and assess information. They do not learn how to analyze the diverse logic of the questions and problems they face and hence how to adjust their thinking to those problems. They do not learn how to enter sympathetically into the thinking of others, nor how to deal rationally with conflicting points of view. They do not learn to become critical readers, writers, speakers and listeners. They do not learn how to use their native languages clearly, precisely, or persuasively. They do not, therefore, become literate, in the proper sense of the word. Neither do they gain much in the way of genuine knowledge since, for the most part, they could not explain the basis for what they believe. They would be hard pressed to explain, for example, which of their beliefs were based on rational assent and which on simple conformity to what they have been told. They have little sense as to how they might critically analyze their own experience, or identify national or group bias in their own thinking. They are much more apt to learn on the basis of irrational than rational modes of thought. They lack the traits of mind of a genuinely educated person: intellectual humility, courage, integrity, perseverance, and faith in reason.Happily, there is a movement in education today striving to address these problems in a global way, with strategies and materials for the modification of instruction at all levels of education. At its foundation is an emerging new theory of knowledge, learning, and literacy, one which recognizes the centrality of independent critical thinking to all substantial learning, one which recognizes that higher-order, multilogical thinking is as important to childhood as to adult learning, and as important to foundational learning in monological as in multilogical disciplines. This educational reform movement is not proposing an educational miracle cure, for its leading proponents recognize that many social and historical forces must come together before the ideals of the critical thinking movement will become a full academic reality. Schools do not exist in a social vacuum. To the extent that the broader society is uncritical so, on the whole, will be society's schools. Nevertheless, the social conditions necessary for fundamental changes in schooling are increasingly apparent. The pressure for fundamental change is growing. Whether and to what extent these needed basic changes will be delayed or side-tracked, thus requiring new periodic resurgences of this movement, with new, more elaborate articulations of its ideals, goals, and methods — only time will tell.     

THE STORY OF THE MIND: PSYCHOLOGICAL AND BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Abstract. Persons have a curious dual nature. On the one hand, they are subjects, whose actions must be explained in terms of beliefs, desires, plans, and goals. At the same time, however, they also are physical objects, whose actions must be explicable in terms of physical laws. So far no satisfying account of this duality has been offered. Both Cartesian dualism and the modern materialist alternatives (reductionist and antireductionist) have failed to capture the full range of our experience of persons. I argue that an exciting new approach to this difficulty can be found by considering developments in clinical psychology. The clinical debate between those endorsing biological models of mental illness and those endorsing psychodynamic models mirrors broader debates in the philosophy of mind. The possible resolution of this debate through the development of integrated psychobiological models suggests a promising way to reconcile the dual nature of persons in a far more appealing way than any yet proposed.     

Cognitive Science: What One Needs to Know

Cognitive science is a new paradigm that informs and involves several disciplines, including artificial intelligence, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, cognitive ethology, and the philosophy of mind. Cognitive science studies the mind as an information processor, with the computer often operating as a metaphor for the operations of the mind. Developments in the cognitive sciences stand to affect tremendously how we think of the mind and, consequently, how we think of theological and religious claims that concern the human subject. The unity of self, claims of human uniqueness, the relation of mind and body, human nature, and the personal agency of God are all areas of religious import in which the cognitive sciences need to be taken into account.     

Does it matter whether friends,parents, or peers drink walk? Identifying which normative influences predict young pedestrian’s decisions to walk while intoxicated

Drink walking, that is walking in a public place while intoxicated, is associated with increased risk of injury and fatality. Young people and males are especially prone to engaging in this behaviour, yet little is known about the factors associated with individual’s decisions to drink walk. The present research explores the role of different normative influences (friendship group norm, parent group norm, university peer group norm) and perceived risk, within an extended theory of planned behaviour (TPB) framework, in predicting young people’s self-reported drink walking intentions. One hundred and eighteen young people (aged 17–25 years) completed a survey including sociodemographic measures and extended TPB measures related to drink walking. Overall the extended TPB explained 72.8% of the variance in young people’s intentions to drink walk in the next six months with attitude, perceived behavioural control, friendship group norm, and gender (male) emerging as significant predictors. Males, as compared with females, had higher intentions to drink walk and lower perceptions of risk regarding drink walking. Together, these findings provide a clearer indication of the salient normative influences and gender differences in young pedestrian’s decisions to walk while intoxicated. Such findings can be used to inform future interventions designed to reduce injuries and fatalities associated with drink walking.