scholarly journals Children's moral judgments of commission and omission based on their understanding of second-order mental states

2007 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 261-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
HAJIMU HAYASHI
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Moral Judgments

Theory of mind impairments in schizophrenia: symptomatology, severity and specificity

2001 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
GRAHAM J. PICKUP ◽  
CHRISTOPHER D. FRITH
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Matched Control ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Problem Solving Skills ◽  
Weak Evidence ◽  
Schizophrenic Patients ◽  
Paranoid Symptoms ◽  
Low Iq

Background. Several studies have examined the ability of schizophrenic patients to represent mental states (‘theory of mind'; ToM). There is consensus that some patients have impaired ToM, but there is disagreement about the relation between ToM and symptomatology, and about the severity and specificity of the deficit.Methods. Two first-order and one second-order false belief tests of ToM were given to groups of schizophrenic patients and psychiatric and normal controls. The relation between ToM and symptomatology was explored using regression and symptom subgroup analyses. Severity was investigated by using the same task methodology as in autism research, to enable direct comparison with that disorder. Specificity was investigated using matched control tasks which were as difficult as the ToM tasks, but did not require ToM.Results. Symptom subgroup analysis showed that schizophrenic patients with behavioural signs were impaired relative to controls on ToM, and that remitted patients and a single case with passivity symptoms performed as well as controls. Regression analysis showed that ratings of behavioural signs predicted impaired ToM in schizophrenia. There was weak evidence that a subgroup with paranoid symptoms had ToM impairments, although these were associated with low IQ. Schizophrenic patients only showed ToM deficits on the second-order task. No impairments appeared on the matched control tasks which did not require ToM.Conclusions. There is a clear association between ToM impairment and behavioural signs in schizophrenia. Deficits in paranoid patients are harder to detect with current tasks and may be compensated for by IQ-dependent problem-solving skills. ToM impairments in schizophrenia are less severe than in autism, but are specific and not a reflection of general cognitive deficits.

scholarly journals Asking ‘why?’ enhances theory of mind when evaluating harm but not purity violations

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. 699-708 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A Dungan ◽  
Liane Young
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
Task Instructions ◽  
Right Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
The Right

Abstract Recent work in psychology and neuroscience has revealed important differences in the cognitive processes underlying judgments of harm and purity violations. In particular, research has demonstrated that whether a violation was committed intentionally vs accidentally has a larger impact on moral judgments of harm violations (e.g. assault) than purity violations (e.g. incest). Here, we manipulate the instructions provided to participants for a moral judgment task to further probe the boundary conditions of this intent effect. Specifically, we instructed participants undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging to attend to either a violator’s mental states (why they acted that way) or their low-level behavior (how they acted) before delivering moral judgments. Results revealed that task instructions enhanced rather than diminished differences between how harm and purity violations are processed in brain regions for mental state reasoning or theory of mind. In particular, activity in the right temporoparietal junction increased when participants were instructed to attend to why vs how a violator acted to a greater extent for harm than for purity violations. This result constrains the potential accounts of why intentions matter less for purity violations compared to harm violations and provide further insight into the differences between distinct moral norms.

scholarly journals YOUNG CHILDREN’S UNDERSTANDING OF SECOND-ORDER MENTAL STATES

PSYCHOLOGIA ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hajimu HAYASHI
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Second Order

scholarly journals “An Erring Conscience is an Absurdity”: The Later Kant on Certainty, Moral Judgment and the Infallibility of Conscience

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz Knappik ◽  
Erasmus Mayr
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
On Certainty ◽  
First Order ◽  
Major Shift ◽  
Characteristic Features

Abstract This article explores Kant’s view, found in several passages in his late writings on moral philosophy, that the verdicts of conscience are infallible. We argue that Kant’s infallibility claim must be seen in the context of a major shift in Kant’s views on conscience that took place around 1790 and that has not yet been sufficiently appreciated in the literature. This shift led Kant to treat conscience as an exclusively second-order capacity which does not directly evaluate actions, but one’s first-order moral judgments and deliberation. On the basis of this novel interpretation, we develop a new defence of Kant’s infallibility claim that draws on Kant’s account of the characteristic features of specifically moral judgments.

Moral Severity is Represented as a Domain-General Magnitude

2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Powell ◽  
Zachary Horne
Keyword(s):  
Response Times ◽  
Distance Effect ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Congruity Effect ◽  
Semantic Congruity ◽  
First Order ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Semantic Congruity Effect

Abstract. The severity of moral violations can vary by degree. For instance, although both are immoral, murder is a more severe violation than lying. Though this point is well established in Ethics and the law, relatively little research has been directed at examining how moral severity is represented psychologically. Most prominent moral psychological theories are aimed at explaining first-order moral judgments and are silent on second-order metaethical judgments, such as comparisons of severity. Here, the relative severity of 20 moral violations was established in a preliminary study. Then, a second group of participants were asked to decide which of two moral violations was more severe for all possible combinations of these 20 violations. Participant’s response times exhibited two signatures of domain-general magnitude comparisons: we observed both a distance effect and a semantic congruity effect. These findings suggest that moral severity is represented in a similar fashion as other continuous magnitudes.

scholarly journals Theory of mind and the frontal lobes

2006 ◽  
Vol 64 (2a) ◽  
pp. 202-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glauco C. Igliori ◽  
Benito P. Damasceno
Keyword(s):  
Social Behavior ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Frontal Lobes ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Delayed Recall ◽  
Background Theory ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Relevant Role ◽  
Frontal Lesions

BACKGROUND: Theory of mind (ToM) is the ability to attribute mental states to other individuals. Its cerebral organization is not enough established, even though the literature suggests the relevant role of the frontal lobes. OBEJECTIVE: To evaluate frontal lobe patients and controls in ToM tests. METHOD:We studied 20 patients with lesions limited to the frontal lobes (as shown by CT or MRI), and 10 normal control subjects by means of ToM tests (recognizing himself in mirrors, false belief, first and second order ToM tasks), as well as tests of other cognitive functions (counter-proofs). RESULTS: Patients and controls performed similarly in ToM tests. There was significant difference between frontal subgroups (left, right, bifrontal) in the double-bluff task (second order ToM) (p=0.021), without relation to verbal fluency (p=0.302) or delayed recall ability (p=0.159). The only two patients with deficits in ToM tasks had impairment of social behavior. CONCLUSION: Frontal lesions do not necessarily implicate in ToM deficits, which may occur when such lesions are associated to disturbance of social behavior.

scholarly journals The Cognitive Philosophy of Reflection

Erkenntnis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Stephens ◽  
Trond A. Tjøstheim
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Restricted Sense ◽  
Separate Form ◽  
Hilary Kornblith

Abstract Hilary Kornblith argues that many traditional philosophical accounts involve problematic views of reflection (understood as second-order mental states). According to Kornblith, reflection does not add reliability, which makes it unfit to underlie a separate form of knowledge. We show that a broader understanding of reflection, encompassing Type 2 processes, working memory, and episodic long-term memory, can provide philosophy with elucidating input that a restricted view misses. We further argue that reflection in fact often does add reliability, through generalizability, flexibility, and creativity that is helpful in newly encountered situations, even if the restricted sense of both reflection and knowledge is accepted. And so, a division of knowledge into one reflexive (animal) form and one reflective form remains a plausible, and possibly fruitful, option.

scholarly journals Moral Dynamics: Grounding Moral Judgment in Intuitive Physics and Intuitive Psychology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Sosa ◽  
Tomer David Ullman ◽  
Joshua Tenenbaum ◽  
Samuel J. Gershman ◽  
Tobias Gerstenberg
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Visual Stimuli ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Visual Features ◽  
Dynamic Interactions ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Intuitive Physics ◽  
Intuitive Theory

When holding others morally responsible, we care about what they did, and what they thought. Traditionally, research in moral psychology has relied on vignette studies, in which a protagonist's actions and thoughts are explicitly communicated. While this research has revealed what variables are important for moral judgment, such as actions and intentions, it is limited in providing a more detailed understanding of exactly how these variables affect moral judgment. Using dynamic visual stimuli that allow for a more fine-grained experimental control, recent studies have proposed a direct mapping from visual features to moral judgments. We embrace the use of visual stimuli in moral psychology, but question the plausibility of a feature-based theory of moral judgment. We propose that the connection from visual features to moral judgments is mediated by an inference about what the observed action reveals about the agent's mental states, and what causal role the agent's action played in bringing about the outcome. We present a computational model that formalizes moral judgments of agents in visual scenes as computations over an intuitive theory of physics combined with an intuitive theory of mind. We test the model's quantitative predictions in three experiments across a wide variety of dynamic interactions between agent and patient.

scholarly journals Universality claim of attachment theory: Children’s socioemotional development across cultures

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (45) ◽  
pp. 11414-11419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Keller
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Cultural Socialization ◽  
Farming Families

The first part of this paper reviews the basic tenets of attachment theory with respect to differences in cultural socialization strategies. In one strategy infants have the lead, and the social environment is responsive to the infant’s wishes and preferences. In another strategy the caregivers—children or adults—are experts who know what is best for a baby without exploring his or her mental states. Accordingly, the definition of attachment is conceived as a negotiable emotional bond or a network of responsibilities. Attachment theory represents the Western middle-class perspective, ignoring the caregiving values and practices in the majority of the world. However, attachment theory claims universality in all its components. Since the claim of universality implies moral judgments about good and bad parenting, ethical questions need to be addressed. These issues are discussed in the second part of the paper. It is first demonstrated that sensitive responsiveness in attachment theory is built on a different concept of the person and self than concepts of good caregiving in many rural subsistence-based farming families. Evaluating one system with the standards of another ignores different realities and different value systems. The common practice of large-scale interventions in rural subsistence-based contexts promoting Western-style parenting strategies without knowing the local culture positions a false understanding of scientific evidence against cultural knowledge. This practice is unethical. Diversity needs to be recognized as the human condition, and the recognition of diversity is an obligation for better science as well as for improving people’s lives.

Mentalizing during social interaction: the development and validation of the interactive mentalizing questionnaire

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haiyan Wu ◽  
Bowen John Fung ◽  
dean mobbs
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Discriminant Validity ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Convergent And Discriminant Validity ◽  
Development And Validation

Studies have shown that during social interaction a shared system underlies inferring one’s own mental state, and the mental states of others – processes often referred to as mentalization. However, no validated assessment has been developed to measure second order mentalization (one’s beliefs about how transparent one’s thoughts are to others), or whether this capacity plays a significant role in social interaction. The current work presents a interactive mentalization theory, which divides these directional and second order aspects of mentalization, and investigates whether these constructs are measurable, stable, and meaningful in social interactions. We developed a 20-item, self-report interactive mentalization questionnaire (IMQ) in order to assess the different sub-components of mentalization: self-self, self-other, and other-self mentalization (Study 1). We then tested this scale on a large, online sample, and report convergent and discriminant validity in the form of correlations with other measures (Study 2), as well as correlations with social deception behaviors in real interaction with Mturk studies (Study 3 and Study 4). These results validate the IMQ, and support the idea that these three factors can predict mentalization in social interaction.

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