Definitions of Rationality in Philosophy, Cognitive Science, and Lay Discourse

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith E. Stanovich ◽  
Richard F. West ◽  
Maggie E. Toplak
Keyword(s):  
Probability Theory ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Utility Theory ◽  
Instrumental Rationality ◽  
Heuristics And Biases ◽  
Wide Range

Because rationality is an issue across many disciplines, it has acquired many different definitions. This chapter describes definitions of rationality from cognitive science that are amenable to a program of measuring individual differences. Definitions of both epistemic and instrumental rationality are described in terms in terms of axiomatic utility theory and probability theory. It is argued that the wide range of tasks investigated in the heuristics and biases literature captures most aspects of epistemic and instrumental rationality.

Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate?

2000 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 645-665 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith E. Stanovich ◽  
Richard F. West
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Utility Theory ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Heuristics And Biases ◽  
Minor Factor ◽  
Performance Errors ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
The Subject ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Behavior And Cognition

Much research in the last two decades has demonstrated that human responses deviate from the performance deemed normative according to various models of decision making and rational judgment (e.g., the basic axioms of utility theory). This gap between the normative and the descriptive can be interpreted as indicating systematic irrationalities in human cognition. However, four alternative interpretations preserve the assumption that human behavior and cognition is largely rational. These posit that the gap is due to (1) performance errors, (2) computational limitations, (3) the wrong norm being applied by the experimenter, and (4) a different construal of the task by the subject. In the debates about the viability of these alternative explanations, attention has been focused too narrowly on the modal response. In a series of experiments involving most of the classic tasks in the heuristics and biases literature, we have examined the implications of individual differences in performance for each of the four explanations of the normative/descriptive gap. Performance errors are a minor factor in the gap; computational limitations underlie non-normative responding on several tasks, particularly those that involve some type of cognitive decontextualization. Unexpected patterns of covariance can suggest when the wrong norm is being applied to a task or when an alternative construal of the task should be considered appropriate.

Group Experiences and Individual Differences in Stuttering

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (12) ◽  
pp. 4335-4350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth E. Tichenor ◽  
J. Scott Yaruss
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Support Groups ◽  
Support Group ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Life Outcomes ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Group Experiences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Adults Who Stutter

Purpose This study explored group experiences and individual differences in the behaviors, thoughts, and feelings perceived by adults who stutter. Respondents' goals when speaking and prior participation in self-help/support groups were used to predict individual differences in reported behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. Method In this study, 502 adults who stutter completed a survey examining their behaviors, thoughts, and feelings in and around moments of stuttering. Data were analyzed to determine distributions of group and individual experiences. Results Speakers reported experiencing a wide range of both overt behaviors (e.g., repetitions) and covert behaviors (e.g., remaining silent, choosing not to speak). Having the goal of not stuttering when speaking was significantly associated with more covert behaviors and more negative cognitive and affective states, whereas a history of self-help/support group participation was significantly associated with a decreased probability of these behaviors and states. Conclusion Data from this survey suggest that participating in self-help/support groups and having a goal of communicating freely (as opposed to trying not to stutter) are associated with less negative life outcomes due to stuttering. Results further indicate that the behaviors, thoughts, and experiences most commonly reported by speakers may not be those that are most readily observed by listeners.

Précis ofUnified theories of cognition

1992 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Newell
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Cognitive Architecture ◽  
Convincing Evidence ◽  
Syllogistic Reasoning ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Unified Theories

AbstractThe book presents the case that cognitive science should turn its attention to developing theories of human cognition that cover the full range of human perceptual, cognitive, and action phenomena. Cognitive science has now produced a massive number of high-quality regularities with many microtheories that reveal important mechanisms. The need for integration is pressing and will continue to increase. Equally important, cognitive science now has the theoretical concepts and tools to support serious attempts at unified theories. The argument is made entirely by presenting an exemplar unified theory of cognition both to show what a real unified theory would be like and to provide convincing evidence that such theories are feasible. The exemplar is SOAR, a cognitive architecture, which is realized as a software system. After a detailed discussion of the architecture and its properties, with its relation to the constraints on cognition in the real world and to existing ideas in cognitive science, SOAR is used as theory for a wide range of cognitive phenomena: immediate responses (stimulus-response compatibility and the Sternberg phenomena); discrete motor skills (transcription typing); memory and learning (episodic memory and the acquisition of skill through practice); problem solving (cryptarithmetic puzzles and syllogistic reasoning); language (sentence verification and taking instructions); and development (transitions in the balance beam task). The treatments vary in depth and adequacy, but they clearly reveal a single, highly specific, operational theory that works over the entire range of human cognition, SOAR is presented as an exemplar unified theory, not as the sole candidate. Cognitive science is not ready yet for a single theory – there must be multiple attempts. But cognitive science must begin to work toward such unified theories.

Individual Differences in Behavioral Reactions of Psychiatric Patients to Brief Partial Sensory Deprivation

1972 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry B. Adams ◽  
G. David Cooper ◽  
Richard N. Carrera
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Psychiatric Patients ◽  
Sensory Deprivation ◽  
Intellectual Functioning ◽  
Personality Characteristics ◽  
Behavioral Reactions ◽  
Personality Variables ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Therapeutic Procedures ◽  
Complex Relationships

30 hospitalized psychiatric in-patients exposed to a few hours of partial sensory deprivation (SD) showed a wide range of individual differences in their reactions. Reduced symptoms and improved intellectual functioning after SD were the predominant group trends, but some individuals showed substantial changes in opposite directions. Individual differences in behavioral reactions during and after SD were significantly related to MMPI personality characteristics. Symptom reduction after SD was a function of characteristics quite different from those usually associated with prognosis for conventional verbal psychotherapy. The results suggested that many persons unlikely to benefit from traditional therapeutic procedures might show improved personality and intellectual functioning after a brief exposure to SD. There were many other complex relationships between personality variables and reactions to SD.

scholarly journals Microstructural Integrity of White Matter Moderates an Association Between Childhood Adversity and Adult Trait Anger

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Justin Kim ◽  
Maxwell L. Elliott ◽  
Tracy C. d’Arbeloff ◽  
Annchen R. Knodt ◽  
Spenser R. Radtke ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
White Matter ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Childhood Adversity ◽  
Trait Anger ◽  
Uncinate Fasciculus ◽  
Imaging Data ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Microstructural Integrity

AbstractAmongst a number of negative life sequelae associated with childhood adversity is the later expression of a higher dispositional tendency to experience anger and frustration to a wide range of situations (i.e., trait anger). We recently reported that an association between childhood adversity and trait anger is moderated by individual differences in both threat-related amygdala activity and executive control-related dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity, wherein individuals with relatively low amygdala and high dlPFC activity do not express higher trait anger even when having experienced childhood adversity. Here, we examine possible structural correlates of this functional dynamic using diffusion magnetic resonance imaging data from 647 young adult men and women volunteers. Specifically, we tested whether the degree of white matter microstructural integrity as indexed by fractional anisotropy modulated the association between childhood adversity and trait anger. Our analyses revealed that higher microstructural integrity of multiple pathways was associated with an attenuated link between childhood adversity and adult trait anger. Amongst these pathways was the uncinate fasciculus, which not only provides a major anatomical link between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex but also is associated with individual differences in regulating negative emotion through top-down cognitive reappraisal. These findings suggest that higher microstructural integrity of distributed white matter pathways including but not limited to the uncinate fasciculus may represent an anatomical foundation serving to buffer against the expression of childhood adversity as later trait anger, which is itself associated with multiple negative health outcomes.

scholarly journals Individual Differences in Subphonemic Sensitivity and Phonological Skills

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Yin Chen Li ◽  
David Braze ◽  
Anuenue Kukona ◽  
Clinton L. Johns ◽  
Whitney Tabor ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Community Sample ◽  
Reading Difficulty ◽  
Phonological Representations ◽  
Phonological Skills ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Phonological Categories ◽  
Phonemic Category ◽  
Phonological Abilities

Many studies have established a link between phonological abilities (indexed by phonological awareness and phonological memory tasks) and typical and atypical reading development. Individuals who perform poorly on phonological assessments have been mostly assumed to have underspecified (or “fuzzy”) phonological re- presentations, with typical phonemic categories, but with greater category overlap due to imprecise encoding. An alternative posits that poor readers have overspecified phonological representations, with speech sounds perceived allophonically (phonetically distinct variants of a single phonemic category). On both accounts, mismatch between phonological categories and orthography leads to reading difficulty. Here, we consider the implications of these accounts for online speech processing. We used eye tracking and an individual differences approach to assess sensitivity to subphonemic detail in a community sample of young adults with a wide range of reading-related skills. Subphonemic sensitivity inversely correlated with meta-phonological task performance, consistent with overspecification.

Gone with the wind: Individual differences in heuristics and biases undermine the implication of systematic irrationality

2000 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 673-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Funder
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Heuristics And Biases ◽  
Gone With The Wind ◽  
Human Thought

The target article's finding of stable and general individual differences in solving of problems in heuristics-and-biases experiments is fundamentally subversive to the Meliorist research program's attention-getting claim that human thought is “systematically irrational.” Since some people get these problems right, studies of heuristics and biases may reduce to repeated demonstrations that difficult questions are hard to solve.

An alternate route toward a science of mind

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 702-703
Author(s):  
David A. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Alternate Route ◽  
Psychological Phenomena ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Science Of Mind ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Mental Events

Shepard has challenged psychologists to identify nonarbitrary principles of mind upon which to build a more explanatory and general cognitive science. I suggest that such nonarbitrary principles may fruitfully be sought not only in the laws of physics and mathematics, but also in the logical entailments of different categories of representation. In the example offered here, conceptualizing mental events as indexical with respect to the events they represent enables one to account parsimoniously for a wide range of empirical psychological phenomena. [Shepard]

Introductory remarks

1990 ◽  
Vol 332 (1627) ◽  
pp. 417-418
Keyword(s):  
Probability Theory ◽  
Brownian Motion ◽  
Random Walk ◽  
Stochastic Processes ◽  
Statistical Physics ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Influential Paper ◽  
Telephone Traffic

Stochastic processes are systems that evolve in time probabilistically; their study is the ‘dynamics’ of probability theory as contrasted with rather more traditional ‘static’ problems. The analysis of stochastic processes has as one of its main origins late 19th century statistical physics leading in particular to studies of random walk and brownian motion (Rayleigh 1880; Einstein 1906) and via them to the very influential paper of Chandrasekhar (1943). Other strands emerge from the work of Erlang (1909) on congestion in telephone traffic and from the investigations of the early mathematical epidemiologists and actuarial scientists. There is by now a massive general theory and a wide range of special processes arising from applications in many fields of study, including those mentioned above. A relatively small part of the above work concerns techniques for the analysis of empirical data arising from such systems.

Movies About Intelligence

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 95-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Flynn
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Strong Tendency ◽  
General Intelligence ◽  
Nature Versus Nurture ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Trends Over Time ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Iq Tests

There is a strong tendency for the same people to do better or worse on a wide variety of IQ tests. On this basis, some psychologists posit the concept of g, or a general intelligence factor. Does g show that performance on a wide range of cognitive tasks is influenced by individual differences in brain quality? It may, but if so, g lacks a sociological dimension and cannot explain cognitive trends over time or assess their significance. It also encourages a paradox about nature versus nurture and oversimplifies the causes of the Black-White IQ gap.

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