Character and theory of mind: an integrative approach

Traditionally, theories of mindreading have focused on the representation of beliefs and desires. However, decades of social psychology and social neuroscience have shown that, in addition to reasoning about beliefs and desires, human beings also use representations of character traits to predict and interpret behavior. While a few recent accounts have attempted to accommodate these findings, they have not succeeded in explaining the relation between trait attribution and belief-desire reasoning. On my account, character-trait attribution is part of a hierarchical system for action prediction, and serves to inform hypotheses about agents’ beliefs and desires, which are in turn used to predict and interpret behavior

A Review of Instruments for Assessing Family History

The influence of family history on one\u27s development has long been a focus of psychological theory, research, and practice. In recent years, however, conceptualizations of family influences on development have evolved considerably, and there has also been increased concern about the reliability of individuals\u27 memory for their childhoods in general. Current knowledge regarding these and other issues are applied to reviewing the instruments that have been developed to assess aspects of family history. The complexity of this type of assessment is emphasized, and a variety of problems with the reliability and validity of the currently available instruments are discussed. Suggestions for future research are also offered

The implicit relational assessment procedure: emerging reliability and validity data

The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) is a measure of ‘implicit cognition' developed on the basis of a contemporary behavioural analysis of language and cognition. The IRAP has now been applied to a range of foci over five years of published research. A frequently-cited caveat in publications to date is the need for further research to gauge the reliability and validity of the IRAP as an implicit measure. This review paper will provide a critical synthesis of available evidence for reliability and validity. The review applies a multifaceted test-theory approach to validity, and reliability is assessed through meta-analysis of published data. The discussion critically considers reviewed IRAP evidence with reference to the extant literature on alternative implicit measures, limitations of studies to date, and consideration of broader conceptual issues

Getting to know you: Accuracy and error in judgments of character

Character judgments play an important role in our everyday lives. However, decades of empirical research on trait attribution suggest that the cognitive processes that generate these judgments are prone to a number of biases and cognitive distortions. This gives rise to a skeptical worry about the epistemic foundations of everyday characterological beliefs that has deeply disturbing and alienating consequences. In this paper, I argue that this skeptical worry is misplaced: under the appropriate informational conditions, our everyday character-trait judgments are in fact quite trustworthy. I then propose a mindreading-based model of the socio-cognitive processes underlying trait attribution that explains both why these judgments are initially unreliable, and how they eventually become more accurate

A descriptive review and classification of organizational information security awareness research

Information security awareness (ISA) is a vital component of information security in organizations. The purpose of this research is to descriptively review and classify the current body of knowledge on ISA. A sample of 59 peer-reviewed academic journal articles, which were published over the last decade from 2008 to 2018, were analyzed. Articles were classified using coding techniques from the grounded theory literature-review method. The results show that ISA research is evolving with behavioral research studies still being explored. Quantitative empirical research is the dominant methodology and the top three theories used are general deterrence theory, theory of planned behavior, and protection motivation theory. Future research could focus on qualitative approaches to provide greater depth of ISA understanding

Catecholamine-Based Treatment in AD Patients: Expectations and Delusions.

In Alzheimer disease, the gap between excellence of diagnostics and efficacy of therapy is wide. Despite sophisticated imaging and biochemical markers, the efficacy of available therapeutic options is limited. Here we examine the possibility that assessment of endogenous catecholamine levels in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) may fuel new therapeutic strategies. In reviewing the available literature, we consider the effects of levodopa, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and noradrenaline (NE) modulators, showing disparate results. We present a preliminary assessment of CSF concentrations of dopamine (DA) and NE, determined by HPLC, in a small dementia cohort of either Alzheimer's disease (AD) or frontotemporal dementia patients, compared to control subjects. Our data reveal detectable levels of DA, NE in CSF, though we found no significant alterations in the dementia population as a whole. AD patients exhibit a small impairment of the DA axis and a larger increase of NE concentration, likely to represent a compensatory mechanism. While waiting for preventive strategies, a pragmatic approach to AD may re-evaluate catecholamine modulation, possibly stratified to dementia subtypes, as part of the therapeutic armamentarium

Preference purification and the inner rational agent:A critique of the conventional wisdom of behavioural welfare economics

Neoclassical economics assumes that individuals have stable and context-independent preferences, and uses preference-satisfaction as a normative criterion. By calling this assumption into question, behavioural findings cause fundamental problems for normative economics. A common response to these problems is to treat deviations from conventional rational-choice theory as mistakes, and to try to reconstruct the preferences that individuals would have acted on, had they reasoned correctly. We argue that this preference purification approach implicitly uses a dualistic model of the human being, in which an inner rational agent is trapped in an outer psychological shell. This model is psychologically and philosophically problematic

Topological map of the body in post-stroke patients: lesional and hodological aspects

Objective: It has been repeatedly hypothesized that at least 3 distinct types of body representations do exist: body schema, a representation derived from multiple sensory and motor inputs; topological map of the body, a structural description of spatial relations among the body parts; and body semantics, a lexical-semantic representation. Although several studies have assessed neural correlates of the topological map of the body in healthy participants, a systematic investigation of neural underpinnings of the topological map of the body in brain-damaged patients is still lacking. Method: Here we investigated the neural substrates of topological map of the body in 23 brain-damaged patients, both from a topological and an hodological perspectives, using Voxel Lesion Symptom Mapping and atlas-based track-wise statistical analysis. Besides neuroimaging investigation, consisting of T1-weighted and FLAIR sequences, patients underwent the frontal body-evocation subtest (FBE) to assess the topological map of the body. Results: The present results reveal a large-scale brain network involved in the topological map of the body assessed with FBE, encompassing both regions of primary elaboration and multisensory associative areas, in the temporal, parietal, frontal, and insular cortices. Hodological analysis revealed significant association between processing of the body topological map and the disconnection of the frontomarginal tract. Conclusions: These findings suggest that the topological map of the body is built up basing on both external and internal information that comes from the body and are constantly updated and integrated. The theoretical and clinical relevance of these results is discussed