Linking metacognition and mindreading: Evidence from autism and dual-task investigations

Questions of how we know our own and other minds, and whether metacognition and mindreading rely on the same processes, are longstanding in psychology and philosophy. In Experiment 1, children/adolescents with autism (who tend to show attenuated mindreading) showed significantly lower accuracy on an explicit metacognition task than neurotypical children/adolescents, but not on an allegedly metacognitive implicit one. In Experiment 2, neurotypical adults completed these tasks in a single-task condition, or a dual-task condition that required concurrent completion of a secondary task that tapped mindreading. Metacognitive accuracy was significantly diminished by the dual-mindreading-task on the explicit task, but not the implicit task. In Experiment 3, we included additional dual-tasks to rule out the possibility that any secondary task (regardless of whether it required mindreading) would diminish metacognitive accuracy. Finally, in both experiments 1 and 2, metacognitive accuracy on the explicit task, but not the implicit task, was associated significantly with performance on a measure of mindreading ability. These results suggest that explicit metacognitive tasks (used frequently to measure metacognition in humans) share metarepresentational processing resources with mindreading, whereas implicit tasks (which are claimed by some comparative psychologists to measure metacognition in non-human animals) do not

The Self-reference Effect on Memory is Not Diminished in Autism: Three Studies of Incidental and Explicit Self-referential Recognition Memory in Autistic and Neurotypical Adults and Adolescents

Three experiments investigated the extent to which a) individuals with autism show a self-reference effect (i.e., better memory for self-relevant information), and b) the size of the self-reference effect is associated with autism traits. Participants studied trait adjectives in relation to their own name (self-referent) or a celebrity’s name (other-referent) under explicit and incidental/implicit encoding conditions. Explicit encoding involved judging whether the adjectives applied to self or other (denoted by proper names). Implicit encoding involved judging whether the adjectives were presented to the right or left of one’s own or a celebrity’s name. Recognition memory for the adjectives was tested using a yes/no procedure. Experiment 1 (individual differences; N = 257 neurotypical adults) employed the Autism-spectrum Quotient as a measure of autistic traits. Experiments 2 (N = 60) and 3 (N = 52) involved case-control designs with closely-matched groups of autistic and neurotypical adults and children/adolescents, respectively. Autistic traits were measured using the Autism-spectrum Quotient and Social Responsiveness Scale, respectively. In all experiments, a significant self-reference effect was observed in both explicit and implicit encoding conditions. Most importantly, however, there was (a) no significant relation between size of the self-reference effect and number of autistic traits (Experiments 1, 2 and 3), and (b) no significant difference in the size of the self-reference effect between autistic and neurotypical participants (Experiments 2 and 3). In these respects, Bayesian analyses consistently suggested that the data supported the null hypothesis. These results challenge the notion that subjective or objective self-awareness are impaired in autism. It is generally easier to remember information that is relevant to oneself than to remember other kinds of information. This is known as the “self-reference effect”. Previously, it has been claimed that people with autism show a reduced self-reference effect (implying diminished self-awareness) but this study provides robust evidence that people with autism are, in fact, just as susceptible to this effect as neurotypical people

Integral correlation measures for multiparticle physics

We report on a considerable improvement in the technique of measuring multiparticle correlations via integrals over correlation functions. A modification of measures used in the characterization of chaotic dynamical sytems permits fast and flexible calculation of factorial moments and cumulants as well as their differential versions. Higher order correlation integral measurements even of large multiplicity events such as encountered in heavy ion collisons are now feasible. The change from ``ordinary'' to ``factorial'' powers may have important consequences in other fields such as the study of galaxy correlations and Bose-Einstein interferometry.Comment: 23 pages, 6 tar-compressed uuencoded PostScript figures appended, preprint TPR-92-4

Relationships between implicit and explicit uncertainty monitoring and mindreading: Evidence from autism spectrum disorder

We examined performance on implicit (non-verbal) and explicit (verbal) uncertaintymonitoring tasks among neurotypical participants and participants with autism, while also testing mindreading abilities in both groups. We found that: (i) performance of autistic participants was unimpaired on the implicit uncertainty-monitoring task, while being significantly impaired on the explicit task; (ii) performance on the explicit task was correlated with performance on mindreading tasks in both groups, whereas performance on the implicit uncertainty-monitoring task was not; and (iii) performance on implicit and explicit uncertainty-monitoring tasks was not correlated. The results support the view that (a) explicit uncertainty-monitoring draws on the same cognitive faculty as mindreading whereas (b) implicit uncertainty-monitoring only test first-order decision making. These findings support the theory that metacognition and mindreading are underpinned by the same meta-representational faculty/resources, and that the implicit uncertainty-monitoring tasks that are frequently used with nonhuman animals fail to demonstrate the presence of metacognitive abilities

Multiplicity Distributions of Squeezed Isospin States

Multiplicity distributions of neutral and charged particles arising from squeezed coherent states are investigated. Projections onto global isospin states are considered. We show how a small amount of squeezing can significantly change the multiplicity distributions. The formalism is proposed to describe the phenomenological properties of neutral and charged particles anomalously produced in hadronic and nuclear collisions at very high energies.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures sent upon request ([email protected]

Multiplicity Distributions and Rapidity Gaps

I examine the phenomenology of particle multiplicity distributions, with special emphasis on the low multiplicities that are a background in the study of rapidity gaps. In particular, I analyze the multiplicity distribution in a rapidity interval between two jets, using the HERWIG QCD simulation with some necessary modifications. The distribution is not of the negative binomial form, and displays an anomalous enhancement at zero multiplicity. Some useful mathematical tools for working with multiplicity distributions are presented. It is demonstrated that ignoring particles with pt<0.2 has theoretical advantages, in addition to being convenient experimentally.Comment: 24 pages, LaTeX, MSUHEP/94071

Factorial Moments in a Generalized Lattice Gas Model

We construct a simple multicomponent lattice gas model in one dimension in which each site can either be empty or occupied by at most one particle of any one of $D$ species. Particles interact with a nearest neighbor interaction which depends on the species involved. This model is capable of reproducing the relations between factorial moments observed in high--energy scattering experiments for moderate values of $D$. The factorial moments of the negative binomial distribution can be obtained exactly in the limit as $D$ becomes large, and two suitable prescriptions involving randomly drawn nearest neighbor interactions are given. These results indicate the need for considerable care in any attempt to extract information regarding possible critical phenomena from empirical factorial moments.Comment: 15 pages + 1 figure (appended as postscript file), REVTEX 3.0, NORDITA preprint 93/4

Random and Correlated Phases of Primordial Gravitaional Waves

The phases of primordial gravity waves is analysed in detail within a quantum mechanical context following the formalism developed by Grishchuk and Sidorov. It is found that for physically relevant wavelengths both the phase of each individual mode and the phase {\it difference} between modes are randomly distributed. The phase {\it sum} between modes with oppositely directed wave-vectors, however, is not random and takes on a definite value with no rms fluctuation. The conventional point of view that primordial gravity waves appear after inflation as a classical, random stochastic background is also addressed.Comment: 14 pages, written in REVTE

The Millstone Grit Group (Pennsylvanian) of the Northumberland-Solway Basin and Alston Block of northern England

In the Northumberland–Solway Basin and Alston Block of northern England, some aspects of the stratigraphical and sedimentological relationships between the Millstone Grit Group, the Stainmore Formation (Namurian part of the Yoredale Group) and the Westphalian Pennine Coal Measures Group are uncertain. Also, confusion has resulted from discontinuation of Millstone Grit as a formal lithostratigraphical term north of the Stainmore Basin. This paper presents the evidence for, and describes the nature of, a Kinderscoutian (early Pennsylvanian) abrupt transition from typical ‘Yoredale cyclicity’, characterized by marine limestones in a dominantly siliciclastic succession but including marked fluvial channels, to a sandstone-dominated fluvial succession recognizable as the Millstone Grit Group. Sandbodies present in this region are probably the fluvial feeder systems to many of the fluvio-deltaic successions recorded farther south in the Central Pennine Basin. However, onset of the Millstone Grit Group occurs much earlier to the south, during the Pendleian (late Mississippian), despite the entry of fluvial systems into the Central Pennines Basin from the north. In addition to explaining this counter-intuitive relationship, the paper also recognizes continuation of the fluvial regime into the lowermost part of the Pennine Coal Measures Group

Collisional Semiclassical Aproximations in Phase-Space Representation

The Gaussian Wave-Packet phase-space representation is used to show that the expansion in powers of $\hbar$ of the quantum Liouville propagator leads, in the zeroth order term, to results close to those obtained in the statistical quasiclassical method of Lee and Scully in the Weyl-Wigner picture. It is also verified that propagating the Wigner distribution along the classical trajectories the amount of error is less than that coming from propagating the Gaussian distribution along classical trajectories.Comment: 20 pages, REVTEX, no figures, 3 tables include