Faulty Judgment,Expert Opinion,and Decision-Making Capacity

An assessment of decision-making capacity is the accepted procedure for determining when a person is not competent. An inferential gap exists between the criteria for capacity specific abilities and the legal requirements to understand relevant information and appreciate the consequences of a decision. This gap extends to causal influences on a person'scapacity to decide. Using a published case of depression, we illustrate that assessors' uses of diagnostic information is frequently not up to the task of bridging this inferential gap in a justifiable way. We then describe cases of faulty judgement which challenge the understanding of diagnostic causal influences. These cases help to clarify the nature of the expertise required for capacity assessments. In practice, the requirements of decision-making capacity are often abandoned to other considerations due to a lack of requisite expertise. The legal policy supporting decision-making capacity as a means to protective intervention is justified only if the requisite expertise is developed. We propose the requisite expertise to be developed in the long term as a distinct multidisciplinary endeavour.     

眼动操纵技术在决策研究中的应用前景：改变决策行为

眼动追踪技术因干扰性低、客观性强、获取数据丰富而准确等优点, 被广泛应用于行为决策研究。通过操纵眼动过程, 可使决策结果按照预期的方向改变, 建立决策过程和结果的因果链, 为决策的干预研究提供思路。基于外源性眼动操纵、注视追随操纵这两类研究, 介绍了行为决策领域眼动操纵的基本方法及原理、常见操纵指标、操纵效果, 并分析和讨论了不同操纵类别的优缺点。在实验设计中考虑决策者策略及偏好的差异, 结合计算建模等方法进一步丰富操纵指标和分析方法, 并将该方法的优势拓展到其它领域是眼动操纵研究未来的重要方向。     

组织型插图对不同认知方式个体说明性文本阅读的影响

采用图文相继呈现、文本逐句阅读的范式,通过反应时技术与出声思维的方法考察了组织型插图对不同认知方式个体说明性文本阅读过程与阅读结果的影响,结果发现,与单一文本相比,场独立个体在有插图条件下的阅读成绩显著提高,而阅读时间没有增加,并产生了更多的推理、细化和提问策略;而场依存个体在有插图条件下的阅读成绩显著提高,阅读时间也显著增多,而理解策略没有变化。这说明组织型插图对两种认知方式个体说明性文本的阅读均起到促进作用,但场独立个体没有因为增加组织型插图而付出更多的加工努力,而是通过调整理解策略的方式来提高阅读效果;而场依存个体在阅读过程中没有根据组织型插图调整理解策略,阅读效果的提高是以付出更多的加工努力为代价的。     

Intention as action under development: why intention is not a mental state

This paper constructs a theory according to which an intention is not a mental state but an action at a certain developmental stage. I model intention on organic life, and thus intention stands to action as (e.g.) tadpole stands to frog. I then argue for this theory by showing how it overcomes three problems: intending while (1) merely preparing, (2) not taking any steps, and (3) the action is impossible. The problems vanish when we see that not all actions are mature. Just as some frogs (such as tadpoles) are immature frogs, some actions (such as intentions) are immature actions.     

There must be a First: Why Thomas Aquinas Rejects Infinite,Essentially Ordered,Causal Series

Several of Thomas Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God rely on the claim that causal series cannot proceed in infinitum. I argue that Aquinas has good reason to hold this claim given his conception of causation. Because he holds that effects are ontologically dependent on their causes, he holds that the relevant causal series are wholly derivative: the later members of such series serve as causes only insofar as they have been caused by and are effects of the earlier members. Because the intermediate causes in such series possess causal powers only by deriving them from all the preceding causes, they need a first and non-derivative cause to serve as the source of their causal powers.     

Estrategias de aprendizaje en estudiantes de 10 a 14 años y su relación con los procesos de atribución causal,el autoconcepto y las metas de estudio

Resumen

En el presente trabajo de investigación nos interesamos por dar a conocer las características psicométricas y estructurales de una nueva escala de evaluación de estrategias de aprendizaje escolar, así como también por el tipo de relación que mantiene este constructo con otras variables o correlatos importantes en el funcionamiento cognitivo como son los procesos de atribución, el autoconcepto y la motivación académica La muestra de sujetos, en base a la cual se realiza el estudio, está compuesta por 371 alumnos/as de 5°, 6°, 7° y 8° de E.G.B., pertenecientes a colegios públicos de la zona central del Principado de Asturias, de los cuales 192 son chicos y 179 son chicas. Su nivel socioeconómico es medio y pertenecen a una zona industrial. Los resultados obtenidos indican que (a) la escala LASSI es moderadamente fiable y con una estructura factorial que pudiera variar con la edad de los sujetos, (b) que existen diferencias entre niños y niñas en algunas de las dimensiones estratégicas así como también respecto a la edad de los mismos y (c) las estrategias de aprendizaje se encuentran notablemente relacionadas con los procesos atribucionales, el autoconcepto, las metas de estudio y el rendimiento de los alumnos. En el último punto del trabajo, en primer lugar, advertimos de la naturaleza exploratoria y provisionalidad de los datos obtenidos así como de la neceidad de la realización de otras investigaciones con el fin de disipar ciertas discrepancias y, en segundo lugar, interpretamos los resultados de nuestro trabajo contextualiz ándolos dentro de las actuales teorías metacognitiv as de la instrucción.     

Zone Morality

Traditional moral theory usually has either of two emphases: virtuous moral character or principles for distributing duties or goods. “Zone morality” introduces a third: families and businesses are systems created by the causal reciprocities of their members. These relations embody the duties and permissions of a system's moral code. Core systems satisfy basic interests and needs; we move easily among them, hardly noticing that moral demands vary from system to system. Moral conflicts arise because of discord within or among systems but also because morality has three competing sites: personal attitudes and practices (benevolence or hostility), the moral codes of systems, and regulative principles that enhance social cohesion. A strong church or central government reduces conflict by imposing its rules. A democracy responds by encouraging persons and systems to participate in forums where claims are made; it promises fairness by requiring that all satisfy its legal procedures.     

Impact of genetic testing on causal models of heart disease and arthritis: An analogue study

Abstract

An analogue study investigated the impact of genetic testing on perceptions of disease. Using a 2 × 2 design, participants (n = 212) imagined receiving the information that they were at increased risk for either heart disease or arthritis. The type of risk information was either genetic or unspecified. Presentation of genetic risk information resulted in the condition being perceived as less preventable. Causal models of disease where investigated using principal components analysis. When hem disease was the stimulus condition, attributions to genes and chance were positively associated following unspecified risk information, and negatively associated following genetic risk information. When arthritis was the stimulus condition, presentation of genetic risk information was associated with attributions to genes becoming separated from the other attributions. One explanation for this is that providing genetic risk information may decrease perceptions of a sense of randomness or uncertainty in disease causation. The extent to which these effects occur in clinical populations. and their behavioural consequences. needs to be established.     

Logic Games are Complete for Game Logics

Game logics describe general games through powers of players for forcing outcomes. In particular, they encode an algebra of sequential game operations such as choice, dual and composition. Logic games are special games for specific purposes such as proof or semantical evaluation for first-order or modal languages. We show that the general algebra of game operations coincides with that over just logical evaluation games, whence the latter are quite general after all. The main tool in proving this is a representation of arbitrary games as modal or first-order evaluation games. We probe how far our analysis extends to product operations on games. We also discuss some more general consequences of this new perspective for standard logic.     

10‐month‐old infants’ inference of invisible agent: Distinction in causality between object motion and human action1

Abstract: Two habituation experiments investigated 10‐month‐old infants’ interpretation of events where a stationary object began to move without any visible causes. During habituation, infants saw that an object partly hidden by an occluder began to move away from the occluder. Then, they were tested with three test events without the occluder: the ?rst event showed a hand pushing the object, the second event showed a hand failing to touch the object, and the last event had no agent. The objects were a ball in Experiment 1, and a person in Experiment 2. The test event that the infants looked at for the shortest duration in Experiment 1 was where the hand pushed the ball, whereas they looked at the three test events almost equal amounts of time in Experiment 2. These results indicate that 10‐month‐old infants responded to the events in terms of causality and could infer the presence of the agent behind the occluder only when they saw the habituation event featuring the ball.