Engaño,intenciones y creencias en el desarrollo y evolución de una psicología natural

Resumen

Los comportamientos de engaño suelen relacionarse con la intencionalidad y la conciencia, aunque desde una perspectiva evolutiva amplia puede apreciarse que el engaño es una estrategia evolutiva bastante antigua. En este artículo se discutirá en qué medida los engaños que producen los seres humanos y algunos otros primates pueden entenderse como el producto de una competencia básica para atribuir mente a los demás y no a uno mismo. El criterio más aceptado para determinar si un organismo posee tal capacidad mentalista es que demuestre la comprensión de las creencias falsas. Las situaciones de engaño en las que se crean deliberadamente creencias falsas en otros para conseguir beneficios cumplen teóricamente bien los criterios de mentalismo que los humanos alcanzan hacia la edad de cuatro años y medio. En otros primates no se ha demostrado experimentalmente con claridad la comprensión de las creencias falsas. Sin embargo, si atendemos a los datos de observación naturalista vemos numerosos comportamientos de engaño tanto en algunos primates no humanos como en niños menores de cuatro años. ¿Son estos engaños el producto de una teoría de la mente? ¿De una capacidad mentalista previa? ¿Quéotros estados mentale estarían implicados? Tras una revisión crítica de los trabajos que nos proporcionan estos datos, se discutirá el papel de la manipulaión y detección de intenciones como un proceso anterior a la manipulación de creencias falsas y las implicaciones que esta postura tiene para la consideración evolutiva de la capacidad mental.     

MATERNAL SELF‐REPORTED DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS AND MATERNAL CORTISOL LEVELS INTERACT TO PREDICT INFANT CORTISOL LEVELS

Three basic findings have emerged from research on maternal depressive symptoms and offspring hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal functioning: (a) Mothers’ depressive symptoms are positively associated with their offsprings’ cortisol stress response, (b) numerous individual and interpersonal maternal characteristics moderate this association, and (c) maternal and infant cortisol levels are highly correlated. In combination, these findings have suggested that maternal cortisol levels may moderate the relation between maternal depressive symptoms and infant cortisol responsivity; the current study assessed this hypothesis. Participants were 297 mother–infant dyads who were recruited from the community. Maternal depressive symptoms were assessed via self‐report. Dyads participated in two differentially stressful infant challenges when infants were 16 and 17 months old. Mother and infant salivary cortisol was collected before and after challenges. Results indicate that maternal cortisol levels moderated associations between maternal depressive symptoms and infant cortisol levels across both challenges. Infants showed higher cortisol levels if their mothers had both higher depressive symptoms and higher cortisol levels, as compared to infants of mothers with higher depressive symptoms and lower cortisol, and to infants of mothers with lower depressive symptoms and either higher or lower cortisol levels. We discuss findings in relation to environmental and biological factors that may contribute to the intergenerational transmission of depressive symptoms.     

Automated verbal credibility assessment of intentions: The model statement technique and predictive modeling

Recently, verbal credibility assessment has been extended to the detection of deceptive intentions, the use of a model statement, and predictive modeling. The current investigation combines these 3 elements to detect deceptive intentions on a large scale. Participants read a model statement and wrote a truthful or deceptive statement about their planned weekend activities (Experiment 1). With the use of linguistic features for machine learning, more than 80% of the participants were classified correctly. Exploratory analyses suggested that liars included more person and location references than truth‐tellers. Experiment 2 examined whether these findings replicated on independent‐sample data. The classification accuracies remained well above chance level but dropped to 63%. Experiment 2 corroborated the finding that liars' statements are richer in location and person references than truth‐tellers' statements. Together, these findings suggest that liars may over‐prepare their statements. Predictive modeling shows promise as an automated veracity assessment approach but needs validation on independent data.     

Promoting the emergence of advanced knowledge: A review of peak relational training system: Direct training module by Mark R. Dixon

Mark Dixon's (2014) manual, PEAK Relational Training System: Direct Training Module, proposes a novel approach to manualized evaluation and curriculum development. Dixon's PEAK system, introduced in the book as the first of four modules, translates derived relational responding methodology into a new verbal‐behavior approach. The PEAK system is firmly rooted in the basic, conceptual, and applied behavior‐analytic tradition; however, it differs substantially from the competition in its unique application of relational frame theory to produce efficient learning. The manual's accessible nature renders it a viable product for many users and readers. The growing empirical support for PEAK’s efficacy, usability, and psychometrics is impressive and provides a robust empirical basis for the system that is not described within the pages of the manual. Behavior analysts may shy away from a manualized system that explicitly omits discussion of scholarship and empirical bases but would be remiss in doing so, given the potential of PEAK to revolutionize the way clinicians and parents apply the verbal behavior approach.     

Stepfamilies Doing Family: A Meta‐Ethnography

The present review examines how stepfamily members without a shared history co‐construct a shared family identity and what family processes are relevant in this stepfamily formation. Three databases (Web of Science, PsycInfo, and ProQuest) were systematically searched, resulting in 20 included qualitative studies. The meta‐ethnography approach of Noblit and Hare allowed synthesizing these qualitative studies and constructing a comprehensive framework of stepfamilies doing family. Three interdependent family tasks were identified: (a) honoring the past, (b) marking the present, and (c) investing in the future. Stepfamily members’ experiences of these family tasks are strongly affected by the dominant societal perspectives and characterized by an underlying dialectical tension between wanting to be like a first‐time family and feeling the differences in their family structure at the same time. These findings clearly demonstrate the family work that all stepfamily members undertake and provide a broader context for interpreting stepfamilies’ co‐construction of a new family identity.     

Discriminated interresponse times: role of autoshaped responses.

When discriminated interresponse-time (IRT) procedures have been used to assess preference relations among temporally extended operants, deviations from matching have been obtained. Using a yoked-control procedure, the present study found that key pecking in a discriminated IRT procedure has two sources of strength--that arising from the response-reinforcer contingency that is explicitly arranged, and that arising from a stimulus-reinforcer contingency that is a by-product of the explicitly arranged contingency. The key pecking of all lead birds, and that of 3 of the 4 birds exposed to a yoked autoshaping procedure, was controlled by the keylight that signaled the lead birds' criterion IRTs. Because stimulus control of key pecking by the keylight, whether autoshaped or discriminative, fosters deviations from matching, the discriminated IRT procedure does not provide an appropriate basis for conclusions about preference relations among IRTs.     

Teaching mands for information using ‘when’ to children with autism

Previous research has evaluated contrived motivating operations to teach mands for information. However, literature evaluating acquisition of the mand when? is comparatively limited. As an extension of Shillingsburg, Bowen, Valentino, & Pierce (2014), we taught three children with autism to engage in mands for information using when under alternating conditions in which a contrived establishing operation was present (EOP ) or absent (EOA ). Following training with a constant prompt delay, all participants acquired the mand for information and demonstrated correct use of the provided information and a decrease in inappropriate attempts to access restricted items.     

Reducing reactive aggression in schoolchildren through child,parent, and conjoint parent‐child group interventions: An efficacy study of longitudinal outcomes

This study was the first to evaluate the effectiveness of three different group interventions to reduce children's reactive aggression based on the social information processing (SIP) model. In the first stage of screening, 3,734 children of Grades 4–6 completed the Reactive–Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ) to assess their reactive and proactive aggression. Respondents with a total score of z ≥ 1 on the RPQ were shortlisted for the second stage of screening by qualitative interview. Interviews with 475 children were conducted to select those who showed reactive aggression featuring a hostile attributional bias. Finally, 126 children (97 males and 29 females) aged 8 to 14 (M = 9.71, SD = 1.23) were selected and randomly assigned to one of the three groups: a child group, a parent group, and a parent–child group. A significant Time × Intervention effect was found for general and reactive aggression. The parent–child group and child group showed a significant drop in general aggression and reactive aggression from posttest to 6‐month follow‐up, after controlling for baseline scores, sex, and age. However, the parent group showed no treatment effect: reactive aggression scores were significantly higher than those in the child group at 6‐month follow‐up. This study has provided strong evidence that children with reactive aggression need direct and specific treatment to reconstruct the steps of the SIP involving the selection and interpretation of cues. The intervention could help to prevent severe violent crimes at the later stage of a reactive aggressor.     

Anger Can Help: A Transactional Model and Three Pathways of the Experience and Expression of Anger

Anger is a significant human emotion with far‐reaching implications for individuals and relationships. We propose a transactional model of anger that highlights its relational relevance and potentially positive function, in addition to problematic malformations. By evolutionary design, physical, self‐concept, or attachment threats all similarly trigger diffuse physiological arousal, psychologically experienced as anger‐emotion. Anger is first a signaling and motivational system. Anger is then formed to affirming, productive use or malformed to destructive ends. A functional, prosocial approach to anger organizes it for protective and corrective personal and relational adaptation. In our model, threat perception interacts with a person's view of self in relation to other to produce helpful or harmful anger. Inflated or collapsed views of self in relation to other produce distinct manifestations of destructive anger that are harmful to self, other, and relationship. Conversely, a balanced view of self in relation to other promotes constructive anger and catalyzes self, other, and relationship healing. Clinical use of the model to shape healing personal and relational contact with anger is explored.