The Power of Social Attribution: Perspectives on the Healing Efficacy of Ayahuasca

During the last decades, ayahuasca gained much popularity among non-Indigenous and out-of-Amazonia based populations. In popular culture, it has been advertised as a natural remedy that was discovered by Indigenous peoples ante millennia and that has been used for shamanic healing of all kinds of ailments. This “neo-shamanic,” and often recreational, use of ayahuasca, however, has to be distinguished from traditional Indigenous praxes on the one hand, and, on the other hand, from medical investigation in the modern world. The former, Indigenous use mainly understands ayahuasca as an amplifying power for interacting with non-human beings in the animal, plant, or spirit realms. Within this paradigm, efficacy is not dependent on the drug, but on the correct communication between the healer (or sorcerer) and the non-human powers that are considered real and powerful also without resorting to ayahuasca. The latter, modern mode of understanding, contrastingly treats the neurochemical processes of MAO inhibition and dimethyltryptamine activity as trigger mechanisms for a series of psychological as well as somatic responses, including positive outcomes in the treatment of various mental conditions. I argue that there is an ontological incommensurability occurring especially between the Indigenous and medicinal concepts of ayahuasca use (with recreational use in its widest understanding trying to make sense from both sides). Modern medical applications of ayahuasca are so fundamentally different from Indigenous concepts that the latter cannot be used to legitimate or confirm the former (and vice versa). Finally, the deep coloniality in the process of appropriation of the Indigenous by the modern has to be questioned and resolved in any case of ayahuasca application.

Do shapes have feelings? Social attribution in children with autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Theory of mind (ToM) deficits are common in children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which contribute to their social and cognitive difficulties. The social attribution task (SAT) involves geometrical shapes moving in patterns that depict social interactions and is known to recruit brain regions from the classic ToM network. To better understand ToM in ASD and ADHD children, we examined the neural correlates using the SAT and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a cohort of 200 children: ASD (N = 76), ADHD (N = 74) and typically developing (TD; N = 50) (4–19 years). In the scanner, participants were presented with SAT videos corresponding to social help, social threat, and random conditions. Contrasting social vs. random, the ASD compared with TD children showed atypical activation in ToM brain areas—the middle temporal and anterior cingulate gyri. In the social help vs. social threat condition, atypical activation of the bilateral middle cingulate and right supramarginal and superior temporal gyri was shared across the NDD children, with between-diagnosis differences only being observed in the right fusiform. Data-driven subgrouping identified two distinct subgroups spanning all groups that differed in both their clinical characteristics and brain–behaviour relations with ToM ability.

CHILDREN SOCIAL ATTRIBUTION BASED ON GENDER PERSPECTIVE

Social attribution can appear spontaneously or through long considerations and thinking process. Factors influencing attribution is the attribution style; planned and unplanned attribution. This kind of behavior can arise due to emotional factors. Meanwhile, children's social attributions arise because of stereotypes or labeling that have been attached to society, thus it has an impact on children's understanding of gender since they were born. The existence of social construction regarding gender roles cannot be separated from how the paradigm views the labeling of the characteristics of women and men is. In children, this social attribution usually occurs because of the stereotype of gender roles taught to children. This stereotype is a labeling that begins based on the perception or point of view of a person. While gender role stereotypes are part of the discussion about gender "sex", namely social expectations that define how men and women think, feel, and act, which are part of the product of the stereotype itself.

Aligning Faithful Interpretations with their Social Attribution

We find that the requirement of model interpretations to be faithful is vague and incomplete. With interpretation by textual highlights as a case study, we present several failure cases. Borrowing concepts from social science, we identify that the problem is a misalignment between the causal chain of decisions (causal attribution) and the attribution of human behavior to the interpretation (social attribution). We reformulate faithfulness as an accurate attribution of causality to the model, and introduce the concept of aligned faithfulness: faithful causal chains that are aligned with their expected social behavior. The two steps of causal attribution and social attribution together complete the process of explaining behavior. With this formalization, we characterize various failures of misaligned faithful highlight interpretations, and propose an alternative causal chain to remedy the issues. Finally, we implement highlight explanations of the proposed causal format using contrastive explanations.

The “War” on Expertise

Five communities actively disparage the benefits of expertise. This chapter explains why their criticisms are misguided. Experimental psychologists have shown that linear models can outperform experts, but the factors driving these models are drawn from experts’ judgments. The Heuristics and Biases community asserts that experts are prone to flawed reasoning, but ignores the ways that heuristics let us handle complexity and ambiguity. The evidence-based performance community wants practitioners to rely on best practices identified through carefully designed research, but ignores the cognitive challenges of handling incidents that involve multiple interactions and demand adaptation. Computer scientists have shown that artificial intelligence can outperform experts in games such as chess and Go—fixed tasks with little ambiguity. Some sociologists argue that expertise is just a social attribution, an ideological position that minimizes the contributions of individual experts. Studying these criticisms can help us discover better methods for supporting experts and fostering expertise.