The self-attribution bias and paranormal beliefs

The present study investigated the relation between paranormal beliefs, illusory control and the self-attribution bias, i.e., the motivated tendency to attribute positive outcomes to oneself while negative outcomes are externalized. Visitors of a psychic fair played a card guessing game and indicated their perceived control over randomly selected cards as a function of the congruency and valence of the card. A stronger self-attribution bias was observed for paranormal believers compared to skeptics and this bias was specifically related to traditional religious beliefs and belief in superstition. No relation between paranormal beliefs and illusory control was found. Self-report measures indicated that paranormal beliefs were associated to being raised in a spiritual family and to anomalous experiences during childhood. Thereby this study suggests that paranormal beliefs are related to specific cognitive biases that in turn are shaped by socio-cultural factors.     

Inductive reasoning about causally transmitted properties

Different intuitive theories constrain and guide inferences in different contexts. Formalizing simple intuitive theories as probabilistic processes operating over structured representations, we present a new computational model of category-based induction about causally transmitted properties. A first experiment demonstrates undergraduates’ context-sensitive use of taxonomic and food web knowledge to guide reasoning about causal transmission and shows good qualitative agreement between model predictions and human inferences. A second experiment demonstrates strong quantitative and qualitative fits to inferences about a more complex artificial food web. A third experiment investigates human reasoning about complex novel food webs where species have known taxonomic relations. Results demonstrate a double-dissociation between the predictions of our causal model and a related taxonomic model [Kemp, C., & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2003). Learning domain structures. In Proceedings of the 25th annual conference of the cognitive science society]: the causal model predicts human inferences about diseases but not genes, while the taxonomic model predicts human inferences about genes but not diseases. We contrast our framework with previous models of category-based induction and previous formal instantiations of intuitive theories, and outline challenges in developing a complete model of context-sensitive reasoning.     

The rational side of egocentrism in social comparisons

Prior work has found that when people compare themselves with others they egocentrically focus on their own strengths and achievements more than on the (equally relevant) strengths and achievements of the comparison group. As a consequence, people tend to overestimate their comparative standing when absolute standing is high and underestimate their comparative standing when absolute standing is low. The present research investigated a rational discounting explanation of this bias—namely, that people weight the target of the comparison (the self) more than the referent of the comparison (others) because they typically have more knowledge about the former than the latter. In three studies, we found that the tendency to focus on the target in social comparisons—and the over and underestimation of relative standing that tendency engenders—was reduced (but not eliminated) as people’s knowledge about the comparison group increased. These results suggest that there may be a rational side to egocentrism in social comparisons.     

Some Aspects of Polyadic Inductive Logic

We give a brief account of some de Finetti style representation theorems for probability functions satisfying Spectrum Exchangeability in Polyadic Inductive Logic, together with applications to Non-splitting, Language Invariance, extensions with Equality and Instantial Relevance.     

Understanding linear and exponential growth: Searching for the roots in 6- to 9-year-olds

Previous studies have suggested that children as young as 9 years old have developed an understanding of non-linear growth processes prior to formal education. The present experiment aimed at investigating this competency in even younger samples (i.e., in kindergartners, first, and third graders, ages 6, 7 and 9, respectively). Children (N = 90) solved non-verbal inductive reasoning tasks by forecasting linear and exponential growth. While children of all ages forecasted linear growth adequately, exponential growth was also estimated remarkably well. Surprisingly, kindergartners and third graders showed similar high achievement concerning the magnitude and curve shape of forecasts, whereas first graders performed significantly worse. We concluded that primary knowledge of both linearity and non-linearity exists even in kindergartners. However, children's understanding is quite fragile, as their performance was strongly affected by task sequence: Children underestimated exponential growth when the previous task required a forecast of linear growth, and overestimated linear growth when the previous task required forecasting of exponential growth.     

归纳认知过程中的价值因素

现代归纳逻辑产生之初,一些逻辑学家依照逻辑学求真的传统研究归纳推理前提的真对结论真的支持程度。随着研究的深入,价值因素进入归纳逻辑的视野,逻辑学家发现,在人的归纳认知过程中渗透着价值因素。     

Counter-regulation triggered by emotions: Positive/negative affective states elicit opposite valence biases in affective processing

The present study investigated whether counter-regulation in affective processing is triggered by emotions. Automatic attention allocation to valent stimuli was measured in the context of positive and negative affective states. Valence biases were assessed by comparing the detection of positive versus negative words in a visual search task (Experiment 1) or by comparing interference effects of positive and negative distractor words in an emotional Stroop task (Experiment 2). Imagining a hypothetical emotional situation (Experiment 1) or watching romantic versus depressing movie clips (Experiment 2) increased attention allocation to stimuli that were opposite in valence to the current emotional state. Counter-regulation is assumed to reflect a basic mechanism underlying implicit emotion regulation.