Three decades of lay epistemics: The why,how, and who of knowledge formation

A conceptual integration and review are presented of three separate research programmes informed by the theory of lay epistemics (Kruglanski, 1989 Kruglanski, A. W. 1989. Lay epistemics and human knowledge: Cognitive and motivational bases, New York: Plenum. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). They respectively address the “why”, “how”, and “who” questions about human knowledge formation. The “why” question is treated in work on the need for cognitive closure that propels epistemic behaviour and affects individual, interpersonal, and group phenomena. The “how” question is addressed in work on the unimodel (Kruglanski, Pierro, Mannetti, Erb, & Chun, 2007 Kruglanski, A. W., Pierro, A., Mannetti, L., Erb, H. P. and Chun, W. Y. 2007. “On the parameters of social judgement”. In Advances in experimental social psychology, Edited by: Zanna, M. P. Vol. 39, 255–296. New York: Academic Press.  [Google Scholar]) depicting the process of drawing conclusions from the “information given”. The “who” question is addressed in work on “epistemic authority” highlighting the centrality of source effects (including oneself as a source) in human epistemic behaviour. These separate research paradigms explore facets of epistemic behaviour that jointly produce human knowledge, of essential significance to people's’ individual and social functioning.     

The Medieval Commentary Tradition:

No abstract available for this article.     

Reasons and practical possibility

According to a common thesis about normative reasons for action, you have a reason to perform a given action only if you can act for that reason. This thesis has long had broad appeal and is intended to capture the practical character of practical reasons. I’ll call it the ‘Practicality Thesis’. Recently, however, various writers have developed subtly different objections to it, each designed to show that there can be actions you have a reason to perform even though you could not act for that reason – because, were you aware of the reason-giving facts in the ways needed to act for the reason, it would no longer be a reason for you to so act. This article defends the Practicality Thesis against such objections. It considers some extant defences but shows that these are inadequate. It then advances an alternative approach intended to counter any structurally similar objection.     

The development of social value orientation across different contexts

This study aimed to explore Chinese children's social value orientation across different ages and contexts. Revised decomposed games were used to measure the social value orientation of 9‐, 11‐, and 14‐year‐old children and college students as an adult group. About half of them were assigned to the hypothetical context of “equal payment group,” providing equal compensation for participation in the study, and the others to the “real payment group,” who got payment according to their own choices in the games. Results showed that 9‐ and 11‐year‐old children's choices differed between the two contexts: They made more prosocial choices in the hypothetical context, and more competitive choices in the “real payment” context. The 14‐year‐olds’ and adults’ choices were not significantly different in the two contexts. These results may imply that by 14 years of age, children have stable social value orientation, and their behavior reflects this value.     

Differentiation of stages in joke comprehension: Evidence from an ERP study

This study aimed to investigate the mechanisms underlying joke comprehension using event‐related potentials (ERPs). Fourteen healthy college students were presented with the context of a story without its joke or nonjoke ending, and then, when the story ending was presented, they were asked to make a funny/unfunny judgment about these endings. The behavioral results showed that there was no significant difference between funny and unfunny items, which meant that subjects could understand funny items as easily as unfunny ones. However, the ERP results showed that funny items initially elicited a more negative ERP deflection (N350–450) over frontocentral scalp regions. Dipole analysis localized the generators in the left temporal gyrus and the left medial frontal gyrus; it is suggested that these areas might be involved in detecting the incongruent element in joke comprehension. Between 600 and 800 ms, funny items subsequently elicited a more negative ERP deflection (N600–800) over frontocentral scalp regions and a more positive ERP deflection (P600–800) over posterior scalp regions. Dipole analysis localized the generator in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), an area involved in the breaking of mental set/expectation and the forming of novel associations. Finally, funny items elicited a more positive ERP deflection (P1250–1400) over anterior and posterior scalp regions. Dipole analysis localized the generators in the middle frontal gyrus and the fusiform gyrus, areas that might be related to the affective appreciation stage in joke process. Unlike that of Coulson and Kutas (2001), the present study might support the hypothesis of a three stage model of humor processing (humor detection, resolution of incongruity and humor appreciation).     

‘Black holes’: escaping the void

The ‘black hole’ is a metaphor for a reality in the psyche of many individuals who have experienced complex trauma in infancy and early childhood. The ‘black hole’ has been created by an absence of the object, the (m)other, so there is no internalized object, no (m)other in the psyche. Rather, there is a ‘black hole’ where the object should be, but the infant is drawn to it, trapped by it because of an intrinsic, instinctive need for a ‘real object’, an internalized (m)other. Without this, the infant cannot develop. It is only the presence of a real object that can generate the essential gravity necessary to draw the core of the self that is still in an undeveloped state from deep within the abyss. It is the moving towards a real object, a (m)other, that relativizes the absolute power of the black hole and begins a reformation of its essence within the psyche.     

Numerical approximation abilities correlate with and predict informal but not formal mathematics abilities

Previous research has found a relationship between individual differences in children’s precision when nonverbally approximating quantities and their school mathematics performance. School mathematics performance emerges from both informal (e.g., counting) and formal (e.g., knowledge of mathematics facts) abilities. It remains unknown whether approximation precision relates to both of these types of mathematics abilities. In the current study, we assessed the precision of numerical approximation in 85 3- to 7-year-old children four times over a span of 2 years. In addition, at the final time point, we tested children’s informal and formal mathematics abilities using the Test of Early Mathematics Ability (TEMA-3). We found that children’s numerical approximation precision correlated with and predicted their informal, but not formal, mathematics abilities when controlling for age and IQ. These results add to our growing understanding of the relationship between an unlearned nonsymbolic system of quantity representation and the system of mathematics reasoning that children come to master through instruction.     

Memory for Frequency of Bizarre and Common Stimuli: Limitations of the Automaticity Hypothesis

In 2 experiments, the influence of intention to process frequency on accuracy of memory for frequency of bizarre and common sentences was investigated. The results from multiple regression analyses indicated that intentional processing increased the accuracy of frequency judgments when memory for frequency was tested after a 2-min (Experiment 1) and after a 48-hr (Experiment 2) retention interval. Furthermore, the results of Experiment 2 indicated that unintentional processors tended to overestimate frequencies of bizarre relative to common items after a delay. The implications of the results are discussed with regard to L. Hasher and R. T. Zacks's (1984) automaticity hypothesis, human performance, and the accuracy of judgments of frequency of occurrence of unusual events.     

Asymmetric Reinstatement Effects in Recognition

Our experiment examined two questions: (1) Does reinstating a studied context affect recognition of an associated word, and (2) Does reinstating a studied word affect recognition of an associated context? After encoding 75 words, each of which was shown superimposed over a different 5-sec video of an environment (e.g., a playground, a traffic scene, or a grocery store), participants were asked to recognize 50 of the words and 50 of the video scenes. On the test, half of the studied words were shown superimposed over the same video contexts that had been present at encoding, and half were shown over new scenes. Similarly, videos were presented with either old or new words. Context reinstatement increased hits and reduced false alarms for words, but word reinstatement did not affect recognition of video contexts. The results suggest that the associations that bind word events with their contexts may not be bidirectional.