Are insomniacs sleepy during the day? A pupillometric assessment.

A biodevelopmental model of insomnia is articulated specifying coordinated nighttime (disturbed sleep pattern) and daytime (no excessive daytime sleepiness) characteristics defining an insomnoid classification in at-risk groups: short sleepers and older adults. Pupillometry is proposed as a useful means of discriminating degree of daytime sleepiness to aid in the differential diagnosis of insomnia and insomnoid states, and the present study tested the discriminative validity of this approach. Noninsomniac (n = 34) and insomniac (n = 29) college students submitted to four 10 min pupillometry sessions tracking daytime sleepiness from morning arising to bedtime. Pupil diameter proved to be an able discriminator of these two groups though substantial overlap of the two distributions was also noted. The results supported the sensitivity of pupillometry in detecting daytime sleepiness, but yielded alternative interpretations. We observed statistical differentiation in insomniac and noninsomniac daytime sleepiness, but substantial, functional overlap between these groups. Assessment and treatment implications arising from the biodevelopmental model were hypothesized.     

Vigilance, personality and strength of the nervous system

Numerous attempts have been made to explain the overall level of performance and the change in performance over time in vigilance tasks in terms of the proposed inverted U relationship between performance and ‘arousal’. The present experiment investigated the effects on vigilance performance of the following variables: introversion, neuroticism, time of day, accessory sensory stimulation, ‘signal frequency’ and time on task. Some measures of subjective state and body temperature were also included. The behavioural measures of overall performance revealed interactions involving neuroticism and time of day, and between neuroticism and frequency. This may reflect the operation of response bias factors, though these may be influenced by ‘arousal’. There were also main effects for several of the factors which may have practical significance. There was a significant effect of time on task on all the behavioural measures but no clearcut effects of personality on the vigilance ‘decrement’. It is argued that the latter may not provide the most satisfactory test of the inverted U model and its relationship to personality. However, interactions between noise and time on task for some of the measures may have practical importance. Measures of subjective state showed a fall in the reported level of ‘arousal’ accompanied by a rise in reported ‘stress’ and ‘anxiety’ with time on task. Body temperature was higher after the task than before.     

Representativeness and fallacies of probability judgment

Representativeness is the name given to the heuristic people often employ when they judge the probability of a sample by how well it represents certain salient features of the population from which it was drawn. The representativeness heuristic has also been used to account for how people judge the probability that a given population is the source of some sample. The latter probability, however, depends on other factors (e.g., the population's prior probability) as well as on the sample characteristics. A review of existing evidence suggests that the ignoring of such factors, a central finding of the heuristics approach to judgment under uncertainty, is a phenomenon which is conceptually distinct from the representativeness heuristic. These factors (base rates, sample size, and predictability) do not always exert the proper influence on people's first-order probability judgments, but they are not ignored when people make second-order (i.e., confidence) judgments. Other fallacies and biases in subjective evaluations of probability are, however, direct causal results of the employment of representativeness. For example, representativeness may be applied to the wrong features. Most devastating, perhaps, is that subjective probability judgments obey a logic of representativeness judgments, even though probability ought to obey an altogether different logic. Yet although the role of representativeness judgments in probability estimation leaves a lot to be desired, it is hard to envision prediction and inference completely unaided by representativeness.     

Inoculation against conspiracy theories: A consumer side approach to India's fake news problem

We attempt to replicate Roozenbeek and van der Linden's Western-based study in India by employing the Bad News Game, an online game, in which players take on the role of a misinformation tycoon. They are exposed to weakened doses of the strategies employed in conspiracy and fake news production with the aim to cognitively inoculate them against misinformation. The proliferation of inexpensive mobile connections coupled with a lack of digital literacy has resulted in a conspiratorial pandemic in developing countries like India. We test the game's impact on an Indian sample (n = 1002) using a within-subject design. We provide evidence of significant improvement in the ability of participants to identify the misinformation produced using Conspiracy, Impersonation, and to a lesser extent, the Discrediting technique, while observing greater truth discernment in correctly identifying true news. We also conduct sub-sample analyses. These findings have positive implications for methods that protect users from malignant online content.     

The effects of narrative context on French verbal inflections: A developmental perspective

This experiment examines how narrative context affects French subjects' selection of past imperfective (imparfait) vs. perfective inflections with different predicate types. Adults and 10-year-old children were asked to inflect verbs presented in their written infinitive form in two conditions: (a) in isolated sentences; (b) embedded in the beginning, middle, or end of narratives. Regardless of conditions, the adults rarely used theimparfait with punctual resultative predicates. In both conditions, the frequency ofimparfait was high with durative predicates, particularly with aresultative ones, but it varied with position in the narratives, being highest at the beginning and lowest at the end. Although the children also used the imparfait frequently with durative predicates, they overgeneralized it to punctual resultative ones, regardless of conditions and of positions. These results show that adult uses of the imperfective/perfective distinction are determined by both predicate properties and grounding in narrative context. The children are less sensitive to some predicate properties than the adults and they do not differentiate imperfective/perfective aspect consistently as a function of discourse context.     

Commentary on Wolford,Taylor, and Beck: The conjunction fallacy?

AlthoughP(A&B|X) can never exceedP(A|X) (the conjunction rule), it is possible forP(X|A&B) to exceedP(X|A). Hence, people who rankA&B as more probable thanA are not necessarily violating any normative rule if the ranking is done in terms of the probability of these events to yield an eventX. Wolford, Taylor, and Beck (1990) have argued that this indeed is what happens in some problems (e.g. Tversky& Kahneman’s [1983] Linda problem). The claim made here is that the Linda problem is hard to reconcile with this interpretation; that there is little if any evidence that subjects utilize this interpretation; and that in any case, representativeness can account for all Linda problem results.     

Ideal evidence, relevance and second-order probabilities

Conclusion The concepts of supportive evidence and of relevant evidence seem very closely related to each other. Supportive evidence is clearly always relevant as well. But must relevant evidence be defined as evidence which is either supportive or weakeking? In an explicit or implicit manner, this is indeed the position of many philosophers. The paradox of ideal evidence, however, shows us that this is to restrictive. Besides increasing or decreasing the probability attached to some hypothesis, evidence can alter or interact with the background assumptions underlying the hypothesis.In most circumstances, the (post hoc) relevance of evidence can indeed be judged by its effect on the confidence one attaches to hypotheses. Occasionally, as in the circumstances described by Example I, and more generally called the Paradox of Ideal Evidence, the relevance of evidence to an hypothesis can only be understood by appeal to a broader sense.In Memory of My Father. Yehoshua Bar-HillelThe author wishes to thank Haim Gaifman for a most thoughtful and constructive review of an earlier draft of this paper.     

Adam Marushak on the hypothetical given

Adam Marushak raises a dilemma for the proponents of the hypothetical given. On one of its horns, the proponents are said to be committed to rationalism; and on the other horn, to skepticism. I argue, in response, that even if we grant that the arguments of both horns are sound, the commitments incurred are light and unproblematic. I argue also that the dilemma is based on a reading of the hypothetical that, though valuable, needs to be refined in light of certain distinctions. These distinctions concern the different support relations that can obtain between beliefs are various elements of a view.