scholarly journals Invisible gorillas in the mind: Internal inattentional blindness and the prospect of introspection training

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Morris
Keyword(s):  
Indirect Evidence ◽  
Inattentional Blindness ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Mindfulness Practices ◽  
Internal Event ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Mind

Much of high-level cognition appears inaccessible to consciousness. Countless studies have revealed mental processes -- like those underlying our choices, beliefs, judgments, intuitions, etc. -- which people do not notice or report, and these findings have had a widespread influence on the theory and application of psychological science. However, the interpretation of these findings is uncertain. Making an analogy to perceptual consciousness research, I argue that much of the unconsciousness of high-level cognition is plausibly due to internal inattentional blindness: missing an otherwise consciously-accessible internal event because your attention was elsewhere. In other words, rather than being structurally unconscious, many higher mental processes might instead be "preconscious", and would become conscious if a person attended to them. I synthesize existing indirect evidence for this claim, argue that it is a foundational and largely untested assumption in many applied interventions (such as therapy and mindfulness practices), and suggest that, with careful experimentation, it could form the basis for a long-sought-after science of introspection training.

A pragmatist philosophy of psychological science and its implications for replication

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Gantman ◽  
Robin Gomila ◽  
Joel E. Martinez ◽  
J. Nathan Matias ◽  
Elizabeth Levy Paluck ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Behavioral Measurement ◽  
The World ◽  
Pragmatist Philosophy

AbstractA pragmatist philosophy of psychological science offers to the direct replication debate concrete recommendations and novel benefits that are not discussed in Zwaan et al. This philosophy guides our work as field experimentalists interested in behavioral measurement. Furthermore, all psychologists can relate to its ultimate aim set out by William James: to study mental processes that provide explanations for why people behave as they do in the world.

Similarity of Computations Across Domains Does Not Imply Shared Implementation: The Case of Language Comprehension

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 526-534
Author(s):  
Evelina Fedorenko ◽  
Cory Shain
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Fluid Intelligence ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Cognitive Operations ◽  
High Level ◽  
General Circuits ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Language Network

Understanding language requires applying cognitive operations (e.g., memory retrieval, prediction, structure building) that are relevant across many cognitive domains to specialized knowledge structures (e.g., a particular language’s lexicon and syntax). Are these computations carried out by domain-general circuits or by circuits that store domain-specific representations? Recent work has characterized the roles in language comprehension of the language network, which is selective for high-level language processing, and the multiple-demand (MD) network, which has been implicated in executive functions and linked to fluid intelligence and thus is a prime candidate for implementing computations that support information processing across domains. The language network responds robustly to diverse aspects of comprehension, but the MD network shows no sensitivity to linguistic variables. We therefore argue that the MD network does not play a core role in language comprehension and that past findings suggesting the contrary are likely due to methodological artifacts. Although future studies may reveal some aspects of language comprehension that require the MD network, evidence to date suggests that those will not be related to core linguistic processes such as lexical access or composition. The finding that the circuits that store linguistic knowledge carry out computations on those representations aligns with general arguments against the separation of memory and computation in the mind and brain.

scholarly journals Redundancy and reducibility in the formats of spatial representations

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami Ryan Yousif
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representations ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Spatial Behavior ◽  
Polar Coordinates ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
Spatial Representations ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Mind

Mental representations are the essence of cognition. Yet, to understand how the mind works, we must understand not just the content of mental representations (i.e., what information is stored), but also the format of those representations (i.e., how that information is stored). But what does it mean for representations to be formatted? How many formats are there? Is it possible that the mind represents some pieces of information in multiple formats at once? To address these questions, I discuss a ‘case study’ of representational format: the representation of spatial location. I review work (a) across species and across development, (b) across spatial scales, and (c) across levels of analysis (e.g., high-level cognitive format vs. low-level neural format). Along the way, I discuss the possibility that the same information may be organized in multiple formats simultaneously (e.g., that locations may be represented in both Cartesian and polar coordinates). Ultimately, I argue that seemingly ‘redundant’ formats may support the flexible spatial behavior observed in humans, and that we should approach the study of all mental representations with this possibility in mind.

scholarly journals From Text to Thought: How Analyzing Language Can Advance Psychological Science

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Conrad Jackson ◽  
Joseph Watts ◽  
Johann-Mattis List ◽  
Ryan Drabble ◽  
Kristen Lindquist
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Statistical Power ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Language Analysis ◽  
The Mind

Humans have been using language for thousands of years, but psychologists seldom consider what natural language can tell us about the mind. Here we propose that language offers a unique window into human cognition. After briefly summarizing the legacy of language analyses in psychological science, we show how methodological advances have made these analyses more feasible and insightful than ever before. In particular, we describe how two forms of language analysis—comparative linguistics and natural language processing—are already contributing to how we understand emotion, creativity, and religion, and overcoming methodological obstacles related to statistical power and culturally diverse samples. We summarize resources for learning both of these methods, and highlight the best way to combine language analysis techniques with behavioral paradigms. Applying language analysis to large-scale and cross-cultural datasets promises to provide major breakthroughs in psychological science.

Behaviourism, methodological and scientific

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.R. Gallistel
Keyword(s):  
General Purpose ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Private Data ◽  
Observable Data

Methodological behaviourism is the doctrine that the data on which a psychological science must rest are behavioural data – or, at the very least, publicly observable data – not the private data provided to introspection by the contents of an observer’s consciousness. Scientific, or, as it was sometimes called, ‘radical’, behaviourism contends that scientific psychology ought to be concerned only with the formulation of laws relating observables such as stimuli and responses; not with unobservable mental processes and mechanisms such as attention, intention, memory and motivation. Methodological behaviourism is all but universally embraced by contemporary experimental psychologists, whereas scientific behaviourism is widely viewed as a doctrine in decline. Both forms of behaviourism were articulated by J.B. Watson in 1913. B.F. Skinner was the most prominent radical behaviourist. In addition to its empiricist strictures against inferred mental mechanisms, radical behaviourism was also empiricist in its assumptions about learning, assuming that: (1) organisms have no innate principles that guide their learning; (2) learning is the result of a general-purpose process, not of a collection of mechanisms tailored to the demands of different kinds of problems; and (3) learning is a change in the relation between responses and the stimuli that control or elicit them. Many of these ideas continue to be influential, for example, in connectionism.

scholarly journals Norms and high-level cognition: Consequences, trends, and antidotes

2011 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 260-261
Author(s):  
Simon McNair ◽  
Aidan Feeney
Keyword(s):  
Bayes Nets ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Causal Bayes Nets ◽  
High Level

AbstractWe are neither as pessimistic nor as optimistic as Elqayam & Evans (E&E). The consequences of normativism have not been uniformly disastrous, even among the examples they consider. However, normativism won't be going away any time soon and in the literature on causal Bayes nets new debates about normativism are emerging. Finally, we suggest that to concentrate on expert reasoners as an antidote to normativism may limit the contribution of research on thinking to basic psychological science.

scholarly journals The Effect of the Glossary on the Reliability and Performance of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Toloza-Muñoz ◽  
Jean González-Mendoza ◽  
Ramón D. Castillo ◽  
Diego Morales-Bader
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Secondary Task ◽  
Temporal Stability ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Self ◽  
Validity And Reliability ◽  
Before And After ◽  
And Performance ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Mind

AbstractThe Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) is used to measure high-level Theory of Mind. RMET consists of images of the regions surrounding the eyes and a glossary of terms that defines words associated with the gazes depicted in the images. People must identify the meaning associated with each gaze and can consult the glossary as they respond. The results indicate that typically developed adults perform better than adults with neurodevelopmental disorders. However, the evidence regarding the validity and reliability of the test is contradictory. This study evaluated the effect of the glossary on the performance, internal consistency, and temporal stability of the test. A total of 89 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to three conditions. The first group used the original glossary (Ori-G). The second group developed a self-generated glossary of gazes (Self-G). Finally, the third group developed a glossary that did not define gazes, but unrelated words instead (No-G). The test was administered before and after participants drew a randomly assigned image as a secondary task. The findings show that the number of correct answers was similar among the three conditions before and after the secondary task. However, the Self-G and No-G groups took less time to finish the test. The type of glossary affected the consistency and stability of the test. In our case, the Self-G condition made the responses faster, more consistent, and more stable. The results are discussed in terms of levels of processing and the detection of mental states based on gazes.

scholarly journals Digesting Losses

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 66
Author(s):  
Marjorie Lee Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Metabolic Syndrome ◽  
Psychiatric Rehabilitation ◽  
Health Condition ◽  
Relaxation Response ◽  
Mindful Eating ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Mindfulness Practices ◽  
First Person Plural ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Anxiety Depression

Psychiatric rehabilitation aims to promote health recovery from significant losses that have derailed the lives of adults and young adults in order for them to actively participate in rebuilding and recreating themselves. Most of the mind-body, rehabilitation interventions I design and teach utilize music to boost mood and motivation, meditation (sometimes combined with nature sounds) to elicit the relaxation response, and a variety of mindfulness practices to cultivate attention and awareness, acceptance, compassion, an expanded perspective, accurate perceptions, and optimism. The poem Digesting Losses was inspired primarily by my 14-week, mindful eating intervention entitled Eat, Drink & Be Merry the Mindful. The participants were adults with a comorbidity of mental illness (trauma- and stressor related disorders, anxiety, depression, eating disorders,) and a physical health condition(s) (obesity, diabetes, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and/or metabolic syndrome). I wrote Digesting Acrid Losses in the first-person plural narrative to express the experiences of my students.  It is about their engaging in walking meditation, singing, listening to calming sounds (a gong and recorded ocean breakers), and mindful eating to help process and transform significant losses.  The poem alludes to the connection between the gut microbiome and health. 

scholarly journals How did that individual make that perceptual decision?

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Booth
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Mechanistic Theory ◽  
High Level

AbstractSuboptimality of decision making needs no explanation. High-level accounts of suboptimality in diverse tasks cannot add up to a mechanistic theory of perceptual decision making. Mental processes operate on the contents of information brought by the experimenter and the participant to the task, not on the amount of information in the stimuli without regard to physical and social context.

scholarly journals RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTAL WORK AIMED TO IDENTIFY SCHOOL ANXIETY AMONG TEENAGERS

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2(42)) ◽  
pp. 9-15
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Igorevna Blauvelt
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Work ◽  
School Psychologist ◽  
Educational Environment ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Teacher Student ◽  
School Anxiety ◽  
Personal Anxiety ◽  
High Level ◽  
Experiment Individual

The article describes the concepts of «anxiety» and «school anxiety»: interpretation and development in psychological science. This article studies the reasons and factors of anxiety of school anxiety in teenagers. The relevance of this topic caused by an increasing number of teenagers who get increasing anxiety and experiencing negative emotions. This article identifies the level of school and personal anxiety of teenagers (5th-7th grade) and discusses possible causes of anxiety in this age group. The article presents the results of the work of a school psychologist aimed to identify the level of school anxiety: results of the ascertaining experiment, forming experiment, individual and group consultations with elements of psychological theater, aimed at reducing the high level of anxiety of teenagers. The article describes productive options for teacher-student cooperation aimed to decrease the level of anxiety among teenagers. The article explains the recommendations for formation a psychologically safe educational environment.

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