Second-order beliefs about intention and children's attributions of sociomoral judgment

Predicting how another person will evaluate the intention underlying an action involves consideration of second-order mental states. Children (ages 5-10 years) and college students (N=105) predicted an observer's belief about an actor's intention and evaluated the actor from both their own perspectives and the perspective of the observer. Younger children were more likely than older children and adults to attribute a belief to the observer that mismatched the actor's prior intention. Attributed beliefs about intention were more likely to match negative prior intentions than to match positive prior intentions and were also more likely to match prior intentions when the observer knew the actor's prior intention than when the observer did not know the actor's prior intention. The judgments attributed to the observer were based on the beliefs about intention attributed to the observer, showing use of second-order mental states to infer another's sociomoral judgments.     

The development of possibility judgment within and across domains

The ability to differentiate possible events from impossible ones is an invaluable skill when reasoning about claims that transcend the perceptual evidence at hand, yet preschool-aged children do not readily make this differentiation when reasoning about physically extraordinary events [Shtulman, A., &; Carey, S. (2007). Improbable or impossible? How children reason about the possibility of extraordinary claims. Child Development, 78, 1015–1032]. The present study sought to determine whether this failure stems from deficits in domain-specific knowledge or deficits in the domain-general procedure by which possibility judgments are made. Participants (48 children aged 4-9 years olds and 16 adults) were asked to judge the possibility of three types of extraordinary events – physical, psychological, and biological – and to justify their judgments of impossibility. Developmental changes in the ability to differentiate improbable events from impossible events were qualitatively similar across domains. Moreover, participants’ propensity to judge improbable events possible was significantly correlated with the quality of their justifications, both within and across domains. These findings suggest that modal development involves a domain-general change in how modal claims are evaluated.     

A model of working memory capacity in the radial-arm maze task

The radial arm maze is one of the most commonly used tests for assessing working memory in laboratory animals. However, to date, there exists no quantitative method of estimating working memory capacity from performance on this task. Here, we present a mathematical model of performance on the radial arm maze from which we can derive estimates of capacity. We derive explicit results for the two most commonly used measures of performance as functions of number of arms in the maze and memory capacity, assuming a uniform random search. We simulate random non-uniform search strategies. Comparing our model to previous experiments, we show that our model predicts a working memory capacity in the range of 3-9 at the level of performance observed in these experiments. This estimate is within the typical estimate of human working memory capacity. Performance of rats on large mazes (e.g. 48 arms) has been used as evidence that the working memory capacity of rats may be significantly larger than that of humans. We report that memory capacity in the range 3-9 is sufficient to explain the performance of rats in very large radial mazes. Furthermore, when we simulate non-uniform random search strategies observed in the experiments, the resulting estimates do not differ significantly from those assuming a uniform random search. We conclude that a list-based model of working memory with modest capacity is more powerful than previously expected.     

Mysteries of morality

Evolutionary theories of morality, beginning with Darwin, have focused on explanations for altruism. More generally, these accounts have concentrated on conscience (self-regulatory mechanisms) to the neglect of condemnation (mechanisms for punishing others). As a result, few theoretical tools are available for understanding the rapidly accumulating data surrounding third-party judgment and punishment. Here we consider the strategic interactions among actors, victims, and third-parties to help illuminate condemnation. We argue that basic differences between the adaptive problems faced by actors and third-parties indicate that actor conscience and third-party condemnation are likely performed by different cognitive mechanisms. Further, we argue that current theories of conscience do not easily explain its experimentally demonstrated insensitivity to consequences. However, these results might be explicable if conscience functions, in part, as a defense system for avoiding third-party punishment. If conscience serves defensive functions, then its computational structure should be closely tailored to the details of condemnation mechanisms. This possibility underscores the need for a better understanding of condemnation, which is important not only in itself but also for explaining the nature of conscience. We outline three evolutionary mysteries of condemnation that require further attention: third-party judgment, moralistic punishment, and moral impartiality.     

How strong is the comparison‐to‐the‐strongest heuristic?: An empirical test of the comparison‐ to‐the‐strongest heuristic in probability judgment1,2

Abstract: Windschitl and Wells (1998 ) proposed that the pairwise comparison between the focal and strongest alternative outcomes plays an important role in probability judgment. However, their studies did not control the effects of alternative outcomes other than the strongest one. This article tested whether only the strongest alternative outcome would affect probability judgment, using a variable selection method in a multiple regression analysis. Study 1 reanalyzed the results of Windschitl and Young (2001 ) and showed that only the strongest alternative outcome affects probability judgment. In Study 2, a new experiment was conducted to modify the methodological problems in Study 1. The results of Study 2 were identical to those of Study 1. All these results consistently supported the comparison hypothesis.     

Priming family values: How being a parent affects moral evaluations of harmless but offensive acts

In modern liberal societies people are generally reluctant to morally condemn acts that they find personally distasteful so long as those acts are not harmful or unfair to others. However, in providing character education for their children, parents often have to censure harmless but offensive acts. Thus, we hypothesize that the parental role broadens the scope of morality beyond narrow considerations of harm and fairness. To test this idea we asked parents and nonparents to morally evaluate harmless/offensive acts and a control harmful act. We manipulated whether the parental role was primed before they evaluated these acts. Parents and nonparents did not differ in their moral objections to the control act regardless of parental role priming. However, when the parental role was primed parents were more morally opposed to harmless but offensive acts than were nonparents. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding the dynamics of moral judgment and the recruitment of parents into moral reform movements.     

The role of the right posterior parietal cortex in temporal order judgment

Perceived order of two consecutive stimuli may not correspond to the order of their physical onsets. Such a disagreement presumably results from a difference in the speed of stimulus processing toward central decision mechanisms. Since previous evidence suggests that the right posterior parietal cortex (PPC) plays a role in modulating the processing speed of a visual target, we applied single-pulse TMS over the region in 14 normal subjects, while they judged the temporal order of two consecutive visual stimuli. Stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA) randomly varied between -100 and 100 ms in 20-ms steps (with a positive SOA when a target appeared on the right hemi-field before the other on the left), and a point of subjective simultaneity was measured for individual subjects. TMS stimulation was time-locked at 50, 100, 150, and 200 ms after the onset of the first stimulus, and results in trials with TMS on right PPC were compared with those in trials without TMS. TMS over the right PPC delayed the detection of a visual target in the contralateral, i.e., left hemi-field by 24 (+/-7 SE) ms and 16 (+/-4 SE) ms, when the stimulation was given at 50 and 100 ms after the first target onset. In contrast, TMS on the left PPC was not effective. These results show that the right PPC is important in a timely detection of a target appearing on the left visual field, especially in competition with another target simultaneously appearing in the opposite field.     

自我责任归因与推断的心理结构与特征

基于日常经验取向,运用问卷调查的方法,探索自我责任归因与推断的心理结构及其基本特征。对382名被试问卷调查的统计分析结果显示：（1）自我责任归因与推断结构是一种一元单向决定模式,即“责任推断→责任情感→责任行为”。（2）个体倾向于较多地将挫折或失败的原因归咎于可控起因,而较少归因于不可控起因。（3）个体在进行自我责任推断时,可控性程度仅对责任的大小构成影响,并不影响对是否承担责任的推断。（4）在自身应为挫折或失败承担责任时,个体在情感体验上较多自我责备,较少自我同情;在行为反应上,较多积极应对,较少甚至不大会消极应对。     

Metaethical Internalism: Another Neglected Distinction

‘Internalism’ is used in metaethics for a cluster of claims which bear a family resemblance. They tend to link, in some distinctive way—typically modal, mereological, or causal—different parts of the normative realm, or the normative and the psychological. The thesis of this paper is that much metaethical mischief has resulted from philosophers’ neglect of the distinction between two different features of such claims. The first is the modality of the entire claim. The second is the relation between the items specified in the claim. In part one I explain this distinction and the problems neglecting it may cause. In part two I show that it has been neglected, and has caused those problems, at least with respect to one version of internalism. That is judgment internalism, which claims that moral beliefs are necessarily related to pro- or con-attitudes; e.g., that if you believe you ought to x you must have some motivation to x. The considerations standardly adduced in favor of judgment internalism support only a version which lacks the metaethical implications typically attributed to it, at least so far as anyone has shown. Proponents and opponents of judgment internalism fail to realize this because of their neglect of the modality/relation distinction. I illustrate by considering discussions of judgment internalism by Russ Shafer-Landau, Simon Blackburn, James Dreier, David Brink, and others.

Quantity judgments of sequentially presented food items by capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)

Recent assessments have shown that capuchin monkeys, like chimpanzees and other Old World primate species, are sensitive to quantitative differences between sets of visible stimuli. In the present study, we examined capuchins’ performance in a more sophisticated quantity judgment task that required the ability to form representations of food quantities while viewing the quantities only one piece at a time. In three experiments, we presented monkeys with the choice between two sets of discrete homogeneous food items and allowed the monkeys to consume the set of their choice. In Experiments 1 and 2, monkeys compared an entirely visible food set to a second set, presented item-by-item into an opaque container. All monkeys exhibited high accuracy in choosing the larger set, even when the entirely visible set was presented last, preventing the use of one-to-one item correspondence to compare quantities. In Experiment 3, monkeys compared two sets that were each presented item-by-item into opaque containers, but at different rates to control for temporal cues. Some monkeys performed well in this experiment, though others exhibited near-chance performance, suggesting that this species’ ability to form representations of food quantities may be limited compared to previously tested species such as chimpanzees. Overall, these findings support the analog magnitude model of quantity representation as an explanation for capuchin monkeys’ quantification of sequentially presented food items.