Methodological Challenges in Causal Research on Racial and Ethnic Patterns of Cognitive Trajectories: Measurement, Selection, and Bias

Research focused on understanding how and why cognitive trajectories differ across racial and ethnic groups can be compromised by several possible methodological challenges. These difficulties are especially relevant in research on racial and ethnic disparities and neuropsychological outcomes because of the particular influence of selection and measurement in these contexts. In this article, we review the counterfactual framework for thinking about causal effects versus statistical associations. We emphasize that causal inferences are key to predicting the likely consequences of possible interventions, for example in clinical settings. We summarize a number of common biases that can obscure causal relationships, including confounding, measurement ceilings/floors, baseline adjustment bias, practice or retest effects, differential measurement error, conditioning on common effects in direct and indirect effects decompositions, and differential survival. For each, we describe how to recognize when such biases may be relevant and some possible analytic or design approaches to remediating these biases.     

糖尿病血糖控制的理性思考

糖尿病是严重威胁人类健康的疾病之一,其发病率逐年增加。血糖控制是糖尿病治疗的基石。糖尿病的血糖控制要根据不同患者的具体情况,选择适宜的药物和治疗方案,平稳适度的控制血糖,以达到最有利于患者的治疗效果。用认识论和联系的观点对糖尿病血糖控制的依据、措施和目的进行综合分析。     

论医疗差错

医疗差错是危及医疗安全、制约医疗质量、影响医患关系、引发医惠纠纷的核心问题,是医院管理的重点和难点。国内对医疗差错尚缺乏系统的理论研究。本文探讨的问题是：医疗差错概念的逻辑研究;医疗差错致因的假说分析;医疗差错诱因的理论探索和医疗差错管理的思路创新。     

基于结构方程模型的多层中介效应分析

近年社科领域常见使用多层线性模型进行多层中介研究。尽管多层线性模型区分了多层中介的组间和组内效应, 仍然存在抽样误差和测量误差。比较好的方法是, 将多层线性模型整合到结构方程模型中, 在多层结构方程模型框架下设置潜变量和多指标, 可有效校正抽样误差和测量误差、得到比较准确的中介效应值, 还能适用于更多种类的多层中介分析并提供模型的拟合指数。在介绍新方法后, 总结出一套多层中介的分析流程, 通过一个例子来演示如何用MPLUS软件进行多层中介分析。最后展望了多层结构方程和多层中介研究的拓展方向。     

错误意识判断对ADHD儿童错误觉察的影响特点

将GO/NO-GO任务范式和错误意识判断范式相结合,对21名ADHD儿童,27名正常儿童,在错误监控中的错误觉察水平进行考察,结果表明:1)ADHD儿童能够正常觉察到自己的错误反应;2)错误意识判断任务诱发出ADHD儿童的错误延迟效应,这种作用,既是因为该任务能够刺激ADHD儿童的有意觉察,又因为该任务无形中增加了GO/NO-GO任务中的刺激间隔时间。该结果表明,增加刺激间隔时间,可能会促使ADHD儿童改变错误后的反应策略,对错误反应进行错误调节,提高其错误监控水平。     

判断与决策中的证实性偏差

证实性偏差是指个体在决策时, 倾向于有意或无意地寻找支持已有信念、预期或假设的信息和解释, 忽视可能与之不一致的信息和解释。目前, 研究者主要从肯定检验策略、认知失调理论以及错误规避三个方面解释证实性偏差的心理机制。证实性偏差还受到条件性参考框架、任务的抽象性、个体经验以及认知闭合的需要等因素的影响。虽然证实性偏差不能完全消除, 但是可以通过竞争性假设分析法和考虑对立面的方法降低其程度。未来的研究可以从证实性偏差的产生根源、研究范式、群体决策中的证实性偏差以及拓展应用研究这四个方面进行探讨。     

Stopping points: ‘I’, immunity and the real guarantee

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to bring out exactly what makes first-personal (and more generally indexical and demonstrative) contents special, by showing that they perform a distinctive cognitive function. Namely, they are stopping points of inquiry. First, I articulate this idea and then I use it to clear the ground from a troublesome conflation. That is, the conflation of this particular function all first-person thoughts have with the property of immunity to error through misidentification, which only some I-thoughts enjoy. Afterward, I show the implications of this idea for a theory of first-person content and of immunity to error though misidentification. I then make some comparisons with Pryor’s notion of wh-misidentification and immunity thereof and with Cappelen and Dever’s position on immunity to error through misidentification and show why they are defective.     

Facing the mirror: A relativist account of immune nonconceptual self-representations

There is a consensus among philosophers that some “I”-thoughts are immune to error through misidentification. In some recent papers, this property has been formulated in the following deflationist way: an “I”-thought is immune to error through misidentification when it can misrepresent the mental or bodily property self-ascribed but cannot misrepresent the subject (if any) possessing that property. However, it has been put forward that the range of mental and bodily states that are immune in that limited sense cannot include nonconceptual forms of self-representation. In this paper, I claim the opposite. I argue in favor of a theoretical framework inspired by semantic relativism that solves the problem of immune nonconceptual self-representations. In order to do so, I refute an argument against the relativist account which is based on the existence of shared representations. This argument, I contend, rests on a confusion between two conditions to which a relativist may appeal when considering whether a certain mental content is relative to the self: a strong invariance condition and a weak invariance condition. I then argue that even if we acknowledge the existence of shared representations, the weak invariance condition is still satisfied, and consequently the relativist framework can make sense of INSRs. I argue that this weak invariance condition is satisfied by a representational function that self-relativizes certain representations. I then provide an empirical instance of such a function by discussing some of the recent literature on motor representations and the sense of agency. In the last part of the paper, I answer several potential objections. These potential objections lead me to distinguish two fundamental kinds of error relative to the self: error through misidentification and error through misapplication. This distinction allows me to answer a fundamental question raised by the very idea of de facto immunity to error through misidentification.     

Transcending the evidentiary boundary: Prediction error minimization,embodied interaction,and explanatory pluralism

In a recent paper, Jakob Hohwy argues that the emerging predictive processing (PP) perspective on cognition requires us to explain cognitive functioning in purely internalistic and neurocentric terms. The purpose of the present paper is to challenge the view that PP entails a wholesale rejection of positions that are interested in the embodied, embedded, extended, or enactive dimensions of cognitive processes. I will argue that Hohwy’s argument from analogy, which forces an evidentiary boundary into the picture, lacks the argumentative resources to make a convincing case for the conceptual necessity to interpret PP in solely internalistic terms. For this reason, I will reconsider the postulation and explanatory role of the evidentiary boundary. I will arrive at an account of prediction error minimization and its foundation on the free energy principle that is fully consistent with approaches to cognition that emphasize the embodied and interactive properties of cognitive processes. This gives rise to the suggestion that explanatory pluralism about the application of PP is to be preferred over Hohwy’s explanatory monism that follows from his internalistic and neurocentric view of predictive cognitive systems.     

Noise,uncertainty, and interest: Predictive coding and cognitive penetration

This paper concerns how extant theorists of predictive coding conceptualize and explain possible instances of cognitive penetration. Section 1 offers brief clarification of the predictive coding framework and of cognitive penetration. Section 2 develops more precise ways that the predictive coding framework can explain genuine top-down causal effects on perceptual experience. Section 3 develops these insights further with an eye towards tracking one extant criterion for cognitive penetration, namely, that the relevant cognitive effects on perception must be sufficiently direct. In Section 4, we analyze and criticize a claim made by some theorists of predictive coding, namely, that (interesting) instances of cognitive penetration tend to occur in perceptual circumstances involving substantial noise or uncertainty. We argue that, when applied, the claim fails to explain (or perhaps even be consistent with) a large range of important and uncontroversially interesting possible cases of cognitive penetration. We conclude with a general speculation about how the recent work on the predictive mind may influence the current dialectic concerning top-down effects on perception.