False memory for analogical inferences: An indicator of text representational change but not of conceptual change

Se puso a prueba si la falsa memoria de inferencias analógicas implica un cambio conceptual acerca del análogo meta (AM), tal como sugieren, por ejemplo, Blanchette y Dunbar (2002), o sólo un cambio en la representación del texto meta. En el primer experimento un grupo que recibió un análogo base (AB) después de leer un análogo meta cometió falsos reconocimientos de inferencias analógicas en mayor medida que un grupo sin AB. No hubo sin embargo diferencias entre aquellos participantes que cometieron falsos reconocimientos y los que no en cuanto al grado de acuerdo con las inferencias. En el segundo experimento se obtuvieron los mismos resultados en un grupo en el que se controló que los participantes hubieran generado las inferencias esperadas. Se concluye que la falsa memoria de inferencias analógicas es un indicador de cambio en la representación del texto meta pero no de cambio conceptual con respecto al tema tratado por el texto meta.Two experiments investigated whether the false memory for analogical inferences implies a conceptual change of the target analog (TA), as suggested, for example, by Blanchette and Dunbar (2002), or only a representational change of the target text. In the first experiment a group of participants that received a source analog (SA) after having read a TA, produced more false recognitions of analogical inferences than a group without a SA. However, there was no difference between the participants who misrecognized analogical inferences and the ones who did not on the level of agreement with those inferences. In the second experiment the same results were obtained in a group where the generation of the expected inferences was controlled. These experiments show that the false memory for analogical inferences is an indicator of representational change of the target text but it is not an indicator of conceptual change of the target issue described by the target text

Combined action of SAMe, Folate, and Vitamin B12 in the treatment of mood disorders: a review.

Mood disorders affect more than 500 million people around the world. In the last decade, their prevalence has increased, and many people suffer from nervousness, anxiety, and stress at least once in their lives. The incidence of mood disorders and anxiety increases during perimenopause or under stressful conditions. The social restrictions introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic have significantly increased the normal burden of psychological and psychic disorders. In moderate to severe cases, pharmacological treatment is currently recommended, while in mild disorders, especially in the initial phase, psychological therapy is preferable. It is known that several nutrients are crucial for brain function. Among them, folate (vitamin B9), cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12), and S-adenosyl-L-methionine (SAMe) have been shown to influence various neurobiological processes. Overall, the available evidence suggests that dietary supplementation with folic acid, vitamin B12, and SAMe can be beneficial for people with mild mood disorders

Analogy, an Alternative Model. Critics to the standard model of analogical problems solving and proposals for an alternative one

Los autores realizaron una extensión de la crítica de Hofstadter al enfoque estándar sobre el pensamiento analógico, representado por la teoría de la proyección de la estructura de Gentner y la teoría de las múltiples restricciones de Holyoak y Thagard. Basados en esta extensión, propusieron un modelo no serial de solución de problemas por analogía. Contra el enfoque estándar, el modelo postula que: (a) las personas detectan y evalúan diferencias entre elementos puestos en correspondencia antes del subproceso de generación de inferencias y las consideran para controlar este subproceso, y (b) las propiedades de un elemento para un rol (PERs) juegan un rol crucial en estas operaciones de detección y evaluación, y también en los subprocesos post-inferenciales. Un experimento mostró que: (a) las personas detectan y evalúan la relevancia de diferencias entre elementos emparejados antes de la generación de inferencias, (b) inhiben las inferencias literales ante diferencias relevantes, y (c) detienen la transferencia ante diferencias insuperables. Los resultados mostraron también que las PERs base son reactivadas en diferentes momentos del proceso transferencial. Los datos obtenidos son incompatibles con el modelo estándar, que trata la generación de inferencias como un mecanismo sintáctico y excluye los análisis semánticos contextuales del estudio del proceso analógico.The authors made an extension of Hofstadter‘s criticisms against the standard approach in analogical thinking represented by the structure-mapping theory of Gentner and the multiconstraint theory of Holyoak and Thagard. Based on this extension, they proposed a non-serial model of analogical problem solving. Against the standard approach, the model postulates that: (a) people detect and evaluate differences between mapped elements before the subprocess of inference generation and consider them in order to control it, and (b) properties of an element that explain why the element could fill a certain role in the base problem resolution (PERs) play a crucial role in these detection and evaluation operations, and also in post-inferences subprocesses. An experiment showed that: (a) people detect and evaluate the relevance of differences between mapped elements before inference generation, (b) that they inhibit the generation of literal inferences when they face relevant differences, and (c) that they stop the subprocess when they recognize insuperable ones. The results also showed that base PERs are reactivated at different moments of analogical transfer. The data obtained are incompatible with the standard theories of analogical thinking, which treat inference generation as a syntactic mechanism and exclude contextual semantic analysis from the study of analogy.

Test of Emotional Comprehension: Exploring the underlying structure through Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Similarity Structure Analysis.

Some decades of research on emotional development have underlined the contribution of several domains to emotional understanding in childhood. Based on this research, Pons and colleagues (Pons & Harris, 2002; Pons, Harris & Rosnay, 2004) have proposed the Test of Emotional Comprehension (TEC) which assesses nine domains of emotional understanding, namely the recognition of emotions, based on facial expressions; the comprehension of external emotional causes; impact of desire on emotions; emotions based on beliefs; memory influence on emotions; possibility of emotional regulation; possibility of hiding an emotional state; having mixed emotions; contribution of morality to emotional experiences. This instrument was administered individually to 182 Portuguese children aged between 8 and 11 years, of 3rd and 4th grades, in public schools. Additionally, we used the Socially in Action-Peers (SAp) (Rocha, Candeias & Lopes da Silva, 2012) to assess TEC’s criterion-related validity. Mean differences results in TEC by gender and by socio-economic status (SES) were analyzed. The results of the TEC’s psychometric analysis were performed in terms of items’ sensitivity and reliability (stability, test-retest). Finally, in order to explore the theoretical structure underlying TEC a Confirmatory Factor Analysis and a Similarity Structure Analysis were computed. Implications of these findings for emotional understanding assessment and intervention in childhood are discussed

Test of Emotion Comprehension: Exploring the underlying structure through Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Similarity Structure Analysis

Some decades of research on emotional development have underlined the contribution of several domains to emotional understanding in childhood. Based on this research, Pons and colleagues (Pons & Harris, 2002; Pons, Harris & Rosnay, 2004) have proposed the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) which assesses nine domains of emotional understanding, namely the recognition of emotions, based on facial expressions; the comprehension of external emotional causes; impact of desire on emotions; emotions based on beliefs; memory influence on emotions; possibility of emotional regulation; possibility of hiding an emotional state; having mixed emotions; contribution of morality to emotional experiences. This instrument was administered individually to 182 Portuguese children aged between 8 and 11 years, of 3rd and 4th grades, in public schools. Additionally, we used the Socially in Action-Peers (SAp) (Rocha, Candeias & Lopes da Silva, 2012) to assess TEC’s criterion-related validity. Mean differences results in TEC by gender and by socio-economic status (SES) were analyzed. The results of the TEC’s psychometric analysis were performed in terms of items’ sensitivity and reliability (stability, test-retest). Finally, in order to explore the theoretical structure underlying TEC a Confirmatory Factor Analysis and a Similarity Structure Analysis were computed. Implications of these findings for emotional understanding assessment and intervention in childhood are discussed

Social competence and emotional comprehension: How are they related in children?

The developmental progression of emotional competence in childhood provides a robust evidence for its relation to social competence and important adjustment outcomes. This study aimed to analyze how this association is established in middle childhood. For this purpose, we tested 182 Portuguese children aged between 8 and 11 years, of 3rd and 4th grades, in public schools. Firstly, for assessing social competence we used an instrument directed to children using critical social situations within the relationships with peers in the school context - Socially in Action-Peers (SAp) (Rocha, Candeias & Lopes da Silva, 2012); children were assessed by three sources: themselves, their peers and their teacher. Secondly, we assessed children’s emotional understanding, individually, with the Test of Emotion Comprehension (Pons & Harris, 2002; Pons, Harris & Rosnay, 2004). Relations between social competence levels (in a composite score and using self, peers and teachers’ scores) and emotional comprehension components (comprehension of the recognition of emotions, based on facial expressions; external emotional causes; contribute of desire to emotion; emotions based on belief; memory influence under emotional state evaluation; possibility of emotional regulation; possibility of hiding an emotional state; having mixed emotions; contribution of morality to emotion experience) were investigated by means of two SSA (Similarity Structure Analysis) - a Multidimensional Scaling procedure and the external variable as points technique. In the first structural analysis (SSA) we will consider self, peers and teachers’ scores on Social Competence as content variables and TEC as external variable; in the second SSA we will consider TEC components as content variables and Social Competence in their different levels as external variable. The implications of these MDS procedures in order to better understand how social competence and emotional comprehension are related in children is discussed, as well as the repercussions of these findings for social competence and emotional understanding assessment and intervention in childhood is examined

False memory for analogical inferences: An indicator of text representational change but not of conceptual change

Se puso a prueba si la falsa memoria de inferencias analógicas implica un cambio conceptual acerca del análogo meta (AM), tal como sugieren, por ejemplo, Blanchette y Dunbar (2002), o sólo un cambio en la representación del texto meta. En el primer experimento un grupo que recibió un análogo base (AB) después de leer un análogo meta cometió falsos reconocimientos de inferencias analógicas en mayor medida que un grupo sin AB. No hubo sin embargo diferencias entre aquellos participantes que cometieron falsos reconocimientos y los que no en cuanto al grado de acuerdo con las inferencias. En el segundo experimento se obtuvieron los mismos resultados en un grupo en el que se controló que los participantes hubieran generado las inferencias esperadas. Se concluye que la falsa memoria de inferencias analógicas es un indicador de cambio en la representación del texto meta pero no de cambio conceptual con respecto al tema tratado por el texto meta.Two experiments investigated whether the false memory for analogical inferences implies a conceptual change of the target analog (TA), as suggested, for example, by Blanchette and Dunbar (2002), or only a representational change of the target text. In the first experiment a group of participants that received a source analog (SA) after having read a TA, produced more false recognitions of analogical inferences than a group without a SA. However, there was no difference between the participants who misrecognized analogical inferences and the ones who did not on the level of agreement with those inferences. In the second experiment the same results were obtained in a group where the generation of the expected inferences was controlled. These experiments show that the false memory for analogical inferences is an indicator of representational change of the target text but it is not an indicator of conceptual change of the target issue described by the target text

La Teoría de la Asignación Categorial Sobre el Pensamiento Analógico: un Desafío a la Teoría de la Proyección de Estructura

The dominant theory of analogical thinking since the 1980s is the structure mapping theory. In this paper, a new theory about reasoning by analogy is presented: the category assignment theory. It is argued that this theory is able to explain better than the first how a specific type of analogies are interpreted and evaluated, namely, those in which the facts compared constitute examples of a schema-governed category. The arguments presented are accompanied by brief descriptions of the studies that provided support for the new theory. The responses of the structure-mapping theory to the objections raised by the category proposal are discussed.La teoría dominante sobre el pensamiento analógico desde los 80 hasta la actualidad es la teoría de proyección de estructura. En este trabajo se presenta una nueva teoría sobre el razonamiento por analogía: la teoría de la asignación categorial. Se argumenta que esta teoría es capaz de explicar mejor que la primera cómo se interpretan y evalúan un tipo específico de analogías, a saber, aquellas en las que los hechos comparados constituyen ejemplares de una categoría relacional de esquema. Los argumentos presentados son acompañados por breves descripciones de los estudios que brindan apoyo a la nueva teoría. Se discuten las respuestas de la teoría de proyección de estructura a las objeciones formuladas por la teoría de la asignación categorial