Hypnosis and memory: two hundred years of adventures and still going!

One of the most persistent beliefs about hypnosis is its ability to transcend mnemonic abilities. This belief has paved the way to the use of hypnosis in the clinical and legal arenas. The authors review the phenomena of hypnotic hypermnesia, pseudo-memories, and amnesia in light of current knowledge of hypnosis and memory. The investigation of the relation between hypnosis and memory processes has played an important role in our understanding of memory in action. Hypnosis provides a fertile field to explore the social, neuropsychological, and cognitive variables at play when individuals are asked to remember or to forget their past. We suggest promising avenues of research that may further our knowledge of the building blocks of memories and the mechanisms that leads to forgetfulness

The social-cognitive development of children with severe learning difficulties

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis focuses upon the abilities of children with severe learning difficulties to contemplate the psychological states of other people, what is often referred to in the literature as 'mindreading' (Whiten and Perner, 1991). The first section contains a review of the literature on children's developing understanding of the mind and their conceptual representational abilities. This is followed by two studies investigating non-learning disabled children's abilities to attribute first-and second-order false belief. The first of these uses an adaptation of the Sally-Anne test (Baron-Cohen, et al., 1985). The second study uses an original false belief story scenario, which involves children in drama. The researcher uses a technique called 'split-briefing' to provide children with first-hand experience of first-and second-order false belief. Simplified versions of the two false belief story scenarios are then used with children with severe learning difficulties to investigate their abilities to represent first-and second-order false belief. The relationship between children's scores on belief attribution tasks and their scores on tests of non-verbal intellectual reasoning (Ravens Coloured Matrices) and receptive language ability (TROG) is also examined in this study. The third section outlines the findings of a questionnaire-based study examining parental reports of spontaneous internal state use by two groups of children: non-learning disabled children aged 1-5 years and pupils with Down's Syndrome aged 4-19 years with severe learning difficulties. 'Internal state language' is language which refers to intentions, cognitions and feeling states (Bretherton and Beeghly, 1981). This is followed by a further investigation of internal state language among a group of students with severe learning difficulties. This study uses a series of playlets written by the author to provide students with an interactive, participatory medium in which to draw their attention to people's internal states. The thesis concludes with a final statement on research into the social-cognitive development of children with severe learning difficulties, with recommendations for future research and intervention

On the adaptive advantage of always being right (even when one is not)

We propose another positive illusion – overconfidence in the generalisability of one’s theory – that fits with McKay & Dennett’s (M&D’s) criteria for adaptive misbeliefs. This illusion is pervasive in adult reasoning but we focus on its prevalence in children’s developing theories. It is a strongly held conviction arising from normal functioning of the doxastic system that confers adaptive advantage on the individual

The supernatural guilt trip does not take us far enough

Belief in souls is only one component of supernatural thinking in which individuals infer the presence of invisible mechanisms that explain events as paranormal rather than natural. We believe it is important to place greater emphasis on the prevalence of supernatural beliefs across other domains, if only to counter simplistic divisions between rationality and irrationality recently aligned with the contentious science/religion debate

Language and Theory of Mind: What are the Developmental relationships?

In this chapter I will try to ground the claim, both theoretically and empirically, that false-belief reasoning requires a sophisticated command of syntax. One of the oldest philosophical questions asks whether one can have thinking without language, and if so, what are its limits? In the domain of theory of mind this question achieves new significance. Is this what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom? Is this what language is good for? And not just words, but syntax? The first section of this chapter grapples with the fundamental issue of the contribution language makes, if any, to the formation of concepts. A tentative distinction will be drawn between concepts that require no language and concepts that are formed with the help of language. In that latter case, the question arises about whether language is strictly necessary, or just helpful in the normal course of development. The second section of the paper considers phenomena under theory of mind, and asks how the categories and distinctions formed there connect to language. A brief review of the theoretical discussions of the connections of language and certain theory of mind developments is undertaken, and then a specific alternative proposal is examined. The third section is a summary of the empirical data related to the role of language, specifically syntax, in false-belief reasoning. Data are reviewed from the course of development in preschool children, and also from the delayed acquisition seen in deaf children who are learning oral language. The fourth section of the paper points to some interesting new results in language acquisition, inspired and motivated by the work on theory of mind in child development. In this section, the focus of interest is the changes that become possible in language itself as a function of the child\u27s ability to take on different speaker perspectives. Finally, the implications of this framework for children with autism are discussed

Rethinking egocentric bias: a computer mouse tracking study of adult belief processing

Several theories of belief processing assume that processing another’s false belief requires overcoming an egocentric bias toward one’s current knowledge. The current evidence in support of this claim, however, is limited. In order to investigate the presence of egocentric bias in adult belief processing, computer mouse tracking was used across three experiments to measure attraction toward response options reflecting one’s current knowledge while reporting a false belief. Participants viewed scenarios in which an agent either had a true belief or a false belief about the location of a set of keys. Participants used a mouse to answer reality questions “where are the keys currently hidden?” and belief questions “where does she think the keys are?” Mouse-tracking measures indexing attraction toward response options during decision making were measured, along with time taken to make a response and accuracy. Experiment 1 found no evidence, in any measures, that participants showed a bias toward their own knowledge when reporting another’s false belief. Experiment 2 investigated whether differences in event timings between true belief and false belief scenarios in Experiment 1 masked an egocentric bias. Experiment 3 investigated whether the lack of egocentric bias could be explained by participants prioritizing encoding the other’s beliefs. Neither follow-up experiment found evidence supporting the presence of an egocentric bias. Overall, contrary to many theories of belief processing, our results suggest that adults are readily able to process other people’s beliefs without having to overcome a default bias toward their own knowledge. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved

On Properties of Update Sequences Based on Causal Rejection

We consider an approach to update nonmonotonic knowledge bases represented as extended logic programs under answer set semantics. New information is incorporated into the current knowledge base subject to a causal rejection principle enforcing that, in case of conflicts, more recent rules are preferred and older rules are overridden. Such a rejection principle is also exploited in other approaches to update logic programs, e.g., in dynamic logic programming by Alferes et al. We give a thorough analysis of properties of our approach, to get a better understanding of the causal rejection principle. We review postulates for update and revision operators from the area of theory change and nonmonotonic reasoning, and some new properties are considered as well. We then consider refinements of our semantics which incorporate a notion of minimality of change. As well, we investigate the relationship to other approaches, showing that our approach is semantically equivalent to inheritance programs by Buccafurri et al. and that it coincides with certain classes of dynamic logic programs, for which we provide characterizations in terms of graph conditions. Therefore, most of our results about properties of causal rejection principle apply to these approaches as well. Finally, we deal with computational complexity of our approach, and outline how the update semantics and its refinements can be implemented on top of existing logic programming engines.Comment: 59 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables, to be published in "Theory and Practice of Logic Programming

Christian Faith and the Scientific Explanation of Religion

The cognitive theory of religion seems to threaten to debunk religion, including Christianity, as irrational. The cognitive theory explains human religiosity as an accident, a mere byproduct, of the interaction of mental mechanisms evolved for other purposes. The threat to religion can be neutralized by finding good reasons for religious beliefs which can be identified independent of the operation of the cognitive mechanisms the theory posits. Christian faith should be understood not as sub-rational belief, but as trust in the God who resurrected Jesus Christ. Our natural religiosity, like our natural morality, has no necessary connection to God, but God finds aspects of it of use in his project of bringing humanity into fellowship with himself. Christian theology contends that the root human problem is not morally bad behavior, but unwillingness to trust God and the ensuing hopeless quest, largely through religiosity, for self-sufficiency and self-justification. God speaks his decisive good word to humankind, his refusal to accept our rejection of him as the last word, by way of religion, where that rejection makes its natural home. In light of this, persons of Christian faith have no reason to look askance on the cognitive theory of religion. That our religious proclivities have a humble, even risible, origin is a discovery we can with due humility embrace