Split (1)

train · 25k rows

text stringlengths 13 991
A belief bias is the tendency to judge the strength of arguments based on the plausibility of their conclusion rather than how strongly they support that conclusion. Some evidence suggests that this bias results from competition between logical (System 2) and belief-based (System 1) processes during evaluation of arguments.
Studies on belief-bias effect were first designed by Jonathan Evans to create a conflict between logical reasoning and prior knowledge about the truth of conclusions. Participants are asked to evaluate syllogisms that are: valid arguments with believable conclusions, valid arguments with unbelievable conclusions, invalid arguments with believable conclusions, and invalid arguments with unbelievable conclusions. Participants are told to only agree with conclusions that logically follow from the premises given. The results suggest when the conclusion is believable, people erroneously accept invalid conclusions as valid more often than invalid arguments are accepted which support unpalatable conclusions. This is taken to suggest that System 1 beliefs are interfering with the logic of System 2.
Vinod Goel and others produced neuropsychological evidence for dual-process accounts of reasoning using fMRI studies. They provided evidence that anatomically distinct parts of the brain were responsible for the two different kinds of reasoning. They found that content-based reasoning caused left temporal hemisphere activation whereas abstract formal problem reasoning activated the parietal system. They concluded that different kinds of reasoning, depending on the semantic content, activated one of two different systems in the brain.
A similar study incorporated fMRI during a belief-bias test. They found that different mental processes were competing for control of the response to the problems given in the belief-bias test. The prefrontal cortex was critical in detecting and resolving conflicts, which are characteristic of System 2, and had already been associated with that System 2. The ventral medial prefrontal cortex, known to be associated with the more intuitive or heuristic responses of System 1, was the area in competition with the prefrontal cortex.
Matching bias is a non-logical heuristic. The matching bias is described as a tendency to use lexical content matching of the statement about which one is reasoning, to be seen as relevant information and do the opposite as well, ignore relevant information that doesn't match. It mostly affects problems with abstract content. It doesn't involve prior knowledge and beliefs but it is still seen as a System 1 heuristic that competes with the logical System 2.
Studies have shown that you can train people to inhibit matching bias which provides neuropsychological evidence for the dual-process theory of reasoning. When you compare trials before and after the training there is evidence for a forward shift in activated brain area. Pre-test results showed activation in locations along the ventral pathway and post-test results showed activation around the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate. Matching bias has also been shown to generalise to syllogistic reasoning.
Dual-process theorists claim that System 2, a general purpose reasoning system, evolved late and worked alongside the older autonomous sub-systems of System 1. The success of "Homo sapiens" lends evidence to their higher cognitive abilities above other hominids. Mithen theorizes that the increase in cognitive ability occurred 50,000 years ago when representational art, imagery, and the design of tools and artefacts are first documented. She hypothesizes that this change was due to the adaptation of System 2.
Most evolutionary psychologists do not agree with dual-process theorists. They claim that the mind is modular, and domain-specific, thus they disagree with the theory of the general reasoning ability of System 2. They have difficulty agreeing that there are two distinct ways of reasoning and that one is evolutionarily old, and the other is new. To ease this discomfort, the theory is that once System 2 evolved, it became a 'long leash' system without much genetic control which allowed humans to pursue their individual goals.
Issues with the dual-process account of reasoning.
The dual-process account of reasoning is an old theory, as noted above. But according to Evans it has adapted itself from the old, logicist paradigm, to the new theories that apply to other kinds of reasoning as well. And the theory seems more influential now than in the past which is questionable. Evans outlined 5 "fallacies":
Another argument against dual-process accounts for reasoning which was outlined by Osman is that the proposed dichotomy of System 1 and System 2 does not adequately accommodate the range of processes accomplished. Moshman proposed that there should be four possible types of processing as opposed to two. They would be implicit heuristic processing, implicit rule-based processing, explicit heuristic processing, and explicit rule-based processing. Another fine-grained division is as follows: implicit action-centered processes, implicit non-action-centered processes, explicit action-centered processes, and explicit non-action-centered processes (that is, a four-way division reflecting both the implicit-explicit distinction and the procedural-declarative distinction).
In response to the question as to whether there are dichotomous processing types, many have instead proposed a single-system framework which incorporates a continuum between implicit and explicit processes.
According to Charles Brainerd and Valerie Reyna's fuzzy-trace theory of memory and reasoning, people have two memory representations: verbatim and gist. Verbatim is memory for surface information (e.g. the words in this sentence) whereas gist is memory for semantic information (e.g. the meaning of this sentence).
This dual process theory posits that we encode, store, retrieve, and forget the information in these two traces of memory separately and completely independently of each other. Furthermore, the two memory traces decay at different rates: verbatim decays quickly, while gist lasts longer.
In terms of reasoning, fuzzy-trace theory posits that as we mature, we increasingly rely more on gist information over verbatim information. Evidence for this lies in framing experiments where framing effects become stronger when verbatim information (percentages) are replaced with gist descriptions. Other experiments rule out predictions of prospect theory (extended and original) as well as other current theories of judgment and decision making.
Semantic memory builds schemas and scripts. With this, semantic memory is known as the knowledge that people gain from experiencing events in the everyday world. This information is then organized into a concept that people can understand in their own way. Semantic memory relates to scripts because scripts are made through the knowledge that one gains through these everyday experiences and habituation.
Behavioral scripts that people are taught allow them to make realistic assumptions about situations, places, and people. These assumptions stem from what are known as schemas. Schemas make our environments more approachable to understand, and therefore people are able to familiarize themselves with what is around them. When people become comfortable with what they find familiar, they are more likely to remember events, people or places that obscure from their initial thought or script.
Some people may have a tendency to habituate behavioral scripts in a manner that can act to limit consciousness in a subliminal way. This can negatively influence the subconscious mind and, subsequently, can negatively affect perceptions, judgments, values, beliefs, cognition and behavior. For example, over-reliance upon behavioral scripts combined with social norms that encourage an individual to use these behavioral scripts may influence one to stereotype and develop a prejudiced attitude toward others based on socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race, etc.
Some applied behavior analysts even use scripts to train new skills and 20 years of research supports script use as an effective way to build new language, social, and activity routines for adults and children with developmental disabilities. With language scripts fading, efforts are being made in an attempt to help the scripts recombine in order to approximate more natural language.
Much of the development of scripts first addresses language and how it influences what we know and understand. With language, many psychologists have used the specific study of language to develop theories about concepts and scripts. In particular, researchers recognize semantic memory development is mostly possible through verbal-linguistic stimuli. Language and memory are constantly used for people to be able to interpret what experiences or people mean to or relate to them. Here, language has influence on the scripts people use because of its relationship to semantic memory.
Depressive realism is the hypothesis developed by Lauren Alloy and Lyn Yvonne Abramson that depressed individuals make more realistic inferences than non-depressed individuals. Although depressed individuals are thought to have a negative cognitive bias that results in recurrent, negative automatic thoughts, maladaptive behaviors, and dysfunctional world beliefs, depressive realism argues not only that this negativity may reflect a more accurate appraisal of the world but also that non-depressed individuals' appraisals are positively biased.
When participants were asked to press a button and rate the control they perceived they had over whether or not a light turned on, depressed individuals made more accurate ratings of control than non-depressed individuals. Among participants asked to complete a task and rate their performance without any feedback, depressed individuals made more accurate self-ratings than non-depressed individuals. For participants asked to complete a series of tasks, given feedback on their performance after each task, and who self-rated their overall performance after completing all the tasks, depressed individuals were again more likely to give an accurate self-rating than non-depressed individuals. When asked to evaluate their performance both immediately and some time after completing a task, depressed individuals made accurate appraisals both immediately before and after time had passed.
In a functional magnetic resonance imaging study of the brain, depressed patients were shown to be more accurate in their causal attributions of positive and negative social events than non-depressed participants who demonstrated a positive bias. This difference was also reflected in the differential activation of the fronto-temporal network, higher activation for non self-serving attributions in non-depressed participants and for self-serving attributions in depressed patients, and reduced coupling of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex seed region and the limbic areas when depressed patients made self-serving attributions.
When asked to rate both their performance and the performance of others, non-depressed individuals demonstrated positive bias when rating themselves but no bias when rating others. Depressed individuals conversely showed no bias when rating themselves but a positive bias when rating others.
When assessing participant thoughts in public versus private settings, the thoughts of non-depressed individuals were more optimistic in public than private, while depressed individuals were less optimistic in public.
When asked to rate their performance immediately after a task and after some time had passed, depressed individuals were more accurate when they rated themselves immediately after the task but were more negative after time had passed whereas non-depressed individuals were positive immediately after and some time after.
Although depressed individuals make accurate judgments about having no control in situations where they in fact have no control, this appraisal also carries over to situations where they do have control, suggesting that the depressed perspective is not more accurate overall.
One study suggested that in real-world settings, depressed individuals are actually less accurate and more overconfident in their predictions than their non-depressed peers. Participants' attributional accuracy may also be more related to their overall attributional style rather than the presence and severity of their depressive symptoms.
Some have argued that the evidence is not more conclusive because no standard for reality exists, the diagnoses are dubious, and the results may not apply to the real world. Because many studies rely on self-report of depressive symptoms and self-reports are known to be biased, the diagnosis of depression in these studies may not be valid, necessitating the use of other objective measures. Due to most of these studies using designs that do not necessarily approximate real-world phenomena, the external validity of the depressive realism hypothesis is unclear. There is also concern that the depressive realism effect is merely a byproduct of the depressed person being in a situation that agrees with their negative bias.
An intrusive thought is an unwelcome, involuntary thought, image, or unpleasant idea that may become an obsession, is upsetting or distressing, and can feel difficult to manage or eliminate. When such thoughts are associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), depression, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), and sometimes attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the thoughts may become paralyzing, anxiety-provoking, or persistent. Intrusive thoughts may also be associated with episodic memory, unwanted worries or memories from OCD, post-traumatic stress disorder, other anxiety disorders, eating disorders, or psychosis. Intrusive thoughts, urges, and images are of inappropriate things at inappropriate times, and generally have aggressive, sexual, or blasphemous themes.
Many people experience the type of bad or unwanted thoughts that people with more troubling intrusive thoughts have, but most people can dismiss these thoughts. For most people, intrusive thoughts are a "fleeting annoyance". Psychologist Stanley Rachman presented a questionnaire to healthy college students and found that virtually all said they had these thoughts from time to time, including thoughts of sexual violence, sexual punishment, "unnatural" sex acts, painful sexual practices, blasphemous or obscene images, thoughts of harming elderly people or someone close to them, violence against animals or towards children, and impulsive or abusive outbursts or utterances. Such thoughts are universal among humans, and have "almost certainly always been a part of the human condition".
When intrusive thoughts occur with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), patients are less able to ignore the unpleasant thoughts and may pay undue attention to them, causing the thoughts to become more frequent and distressing. The suppression of intrusive thoughts often cause these thoughts to become more intense and persistent. The thoughts may become obsessions that are paralyzing, severe, and constantly present, these might involve such topics such as thoughts of violence, sex, or religious blasphemy to name a few examples. Distinguishing them from normal intrusive thoughts experienced by many people, the intrusive thoughts associated with OCD may be anxiety provoking, irrepressible, and persistent.
Intrusive thoughts may involve violent obsessions about hurting others or themselves. They can be related to primarily obsessional obsessive compulsive disorder. These thoughts can include harming a child; jumping from a bridge, mountain, or the top of a tall building; urges to jump in front of a train or automobile; and urges to push another in front of a train or automobile. Rachman's survey of healthy college students found that virtually all of them had intrusive thoughts from time to time, including:
These thoughts are part of being human, and need not ruin the quality of life. Treatment is available when the thoughts are associated with OCD and become persistent, severe, or distressing.
A variant of aggressive intrusive thoughts is L'appel du vide, or the call of the void. Sufferers of "L'appel du vide" generally describe the condition as manifesting in certain situations, normally as a wish or brief desire to jump from a high location.
Sexual obsession involves intrusive thoughts or images of "kissing, touching, fondling, oral sex, anal sex, intercourse, and rape" with "strangers, acquaintances, parents, children, family members, friends, coworkers, animals and religious figures", involving "heterosexual or homosexual content" with persons of any age.
Common sexual themes for intrusive thoughts for men involve “(a) having sex in a public place, (b) people I come in contact with being naked, and (c) engaging in a sexual act with someone who is unacceptable to me because they have authority over me.” While common sexual intrusive thoughts for women are (a) having sex in a public place, (b) engaging in a sexual act with someone who is unacceptable to me because they have authority over me, and (c) being sexually victimized.
Like other unwanted intrusive thoughts or images, most people have some inappropriate sexual thoughts at times, but people with OCD may attach significance to the unwanted sexual thoughts, generating anxiety and distress. The doubt that accompanies OCD leads to uncertainty regarding whether one might act on the intrusive thoughts, resulting in self-criticism or loathing.
One of the more common sexual intrusive thoughts occurs when an obsessive person doubts their sexual identity. As in the case of most sexual obsessions, sufferers may feel shame and live in isolation, finding it hard to discuss their fears, doubts, and concerns about their sexual identity.
According to Fred Penzel, a New York psychologist, some common religious obsessions and intrusive thoughts are:
Suffering can be greater and treatment complicated when intrusive thoughts involve religious implications; patients may believe the thoughts are inspired by Satan, and may fear punishment from God or have magnified shame because they perceive themselves as sinful. Symptoms can be more distressing for sufferers with strong religious convictions or beliefs.
Baer believes that blasphemous thoughts are more common in Catholics and evangelical Protestants than in other religions, whereas Jews or Muslims tend to have obsessions related more to complying with the laws and rituals of their faith, and performing the rituals perfectly. He hypothesizes that this is because what is considered inappropriate varies among cultures and religions, and intrusive thoughts torment their sufferers with whatever is considered most inappropriate in the surrounding culture.
Adults under the age of 40 seem to be the most affected by intrusive thoughts. Individuals in this age range tend to be less experienced at coping with these thoughts, and the stress and negative affect induced by them. Younger adults also tend to have stressors specific to that period of life that can be particularly challenging especially in the face of intrusive thoughts. Although, when introduced with an intrusive thought, both age groups immediately look for ways to reduce the recurrence of the thoughts.
Intrusive thoughts appear to occur at the same rate across the lifespan, however, older adults seem to be less negatively affected than younger adults. Older adults have more experience in ignoring or suppressing strong negative reactions to stress.
Intrusive thoughts are associated with OCD or OCPD, but may also occur with other conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, clinical depression, postpartum depression, and anxiety. One of these conditions is almost always present in people whose intrusive thoughts reach a clinical level of severity. A large study published in 2005 found that aggressive, sexual, and religious obsessions were broadly associated with comorbid anxiety disorders and depression. The intrusive thoughts that occur in a schizophrenic episode differ from the obsessional thoughts that occur with OCD or depression in that the intrusive thoughts of schizophrenics are false or delusional beliefs (i.e. held by the schizophrenic individual to be real and not doubted, as is typically the case with intrusive thoughts) .
The key difference between OCD and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is that the intrusive thoughts of PTSD sufferers are of content relating to traumatic events that actually happened to them, whereas OCD sufferers have thoughts of imagined catastrophes. PTSD patients with intrusive thoughts have to sort out violent, sexual, or blasphemous thoughts from memories of traumatic experiences. When patients with intrusive thoughts do not respond to treatment, physicians may suspect past physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. If a person who has experienced trauma practices looks for the positive outcomes, it is suggested they will experience less depression and higher self well-being. While a person may experience less depression for benefit finding, they may also experience an increased amount of intrusive and/or avoidant thoughts.
One study looking at women with PTSD found that intrusive thoughts were more persistent when the individual tried to cope by using avoidance-based thought regulation strategies. Their findings further support that not all coping strategies are helpful in diminishing the frequency of intrusive thoughts.
People who are clinically depressed may experience intrusive thoughts more intensely, and view them as evidence that they are worthless or sinful people. The suicidal thoughts that are common in depression must be distinguished from intrusive thoughts, because suicidal thoughts—unlike harmless sexual, aggressive, or religious thoughts—can be dangerous.
Non-depressed individuals have been shown to have a higher activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is the area of the brain that primarily functions in cognition, working memory, and planning, while attempting to suppress intrusive thoughts. This activation decreases in people at risk of or currently diagnosed with depression. When the intrusive thoughts re-emerge, non depressed individuals also show higher activation levels in the anterior cingulate cortices, which functions in error detection, motivation, and emotional regulation, than their depressed counterparts.
Roughly 60% of depressed individuals report experiencing bodily, visual, or auditory perceptions along with their intrusive thoughts. There is a correlation with experiencing those sensations with intrusive thoughts and more intense depressive symptoms as well as the need for heavier treatment.
Unwanted thoughts by mothers about harming infants are common in postpartum depression. A 1999 study of 65 women with postpartum major depression by Katherine Wisner "et al." found the most frequent aggressive thought for women with postpartum depression was causing harm to their newborn infants. A study of 85 new parents found that 89% experienced intrusive images, for example, of the baby suffocating, having an accident, being harmed, or being kidnapped.
Some women may develop symptoms of OCD during pregnancy or the postpartum period. Postpartum OCD occurs mainly in women who may already have OCD, perhaps in a mild or undiagnosed form. Postpartum depression and OCD may be comorbid (often occurring together). And though physicians may focus more on the depressive symptoms, one study found that obsessive thoughts did accompany postpartum depression in 57% of new mothers.
Wisner found common obsessions about harming babies in mothers experiencing postpartum depression include images of the baby lying dead in a casket or being eaten by sharks; stabbing the baby; throwing the baby down the stairs; or drowning or burning the baby (as by submerging it in the bathtub in the former case or throwing it in the fire or putting it in the microwave in the latter). Baer estimates that up to 200,000 new mothers with postpartum depression each year may develop these obsessional thoughts about their babies; and because they may be reluctant to share these thoughts with a physician or family member, or suffer in silence out of fear they could be "crazy", their depression can worsen.
Intrusive fears of harming immediate children can last longer than the postpartum period. A study of 100 clinically depressed women found that 41% had obsessive fears that they might harm their child, and some were afraid to care for their children. Among non-depressed mothers, the study found 7% had thoughts of harming their child—a rate that yields an additional 280,000 non-depressed mothers in the United States with intrusive thoughts about harming their children.
Treatment for intrusive thoughts is similar to treatment for OCD. Exposure and response prevention therapy—also referred to as habituation or desensitization—is useful in treating intrusive thoughts. Mild cases can also be treated with cognitive behavioral therapy, which helps patients identify and manage the unwanted thoughts.
Exposure therapy (or exposure and response prevention) is the practice of staying in an anxiety-provoking or feared situation until the distress or anxiety diminishes. The goal is to reduce the fear reaction, learning to not react to the bad thoughts. This is the most effective way to reduce the frequency and severity of the intrusive thoughts. The goal is to be able to "expose yourself to the thing that most triggers your fear or discomfort for one to two hours at a time, without leaving the situation, or doing anything else to distract or comfort you." Exposure therapy will not completely eliminate intrusive thoughts—everyone has bad thoughts—but most patients find that it can decrease their thoughts sufficiently that intrusive thoughts no longer interfere with their lives.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a newer therapy than exposure therapy, available for those unable or unwilling to undergo exposure therapy. Cognitive therapy has been shown to be useful in reducing intrusive thoughts, but developing a conceptualization of the obsessions and compulsions with the patient is important. One of the strategies sometimes used in Cognitive Behavioral Theory is mindfulness exercises. These include practices such as being aware of the thoughts, accepting the thoughts without judgement for them, and “being larger than your thoughts.”
Antidepressants or antipsychotic medications may be used for more severe cases if intrusive thoughts do not respond to cognitive behavioral or exposure therapy alone. Whether the cause of intrusive thoughts is OCD, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) drugs (a class of antidepressants) are the most commonly prescribed. Intrusive thoughts may occur in persons with Tourette syndrome (TS) who also have OCD; the obsessions in TS-related OCD are thought to respond to SSRI drugs as well.
Patients with intense intrusive thoughts that do not respond to SSRIs or other antidepressants may be prescribed typical and atypical neuroleptics including risperidone (trade name Risperdal), ziprasidone (Geodon), haloperidol (Haldol), and pimozide (Orap).
Studies suggest that therapeutic doses of inositol may be useful in the treatment of obsessive thoughts.
A 2007 study found that 78% of a clinical sample of OCD patients had intrusive images. Most people who suffer from intrusive thoughts have not identified themselves as having OCD, because they may not have what they believe to be classic symptoms of OCD, such as handwashing. Yet, epidemiological studies suggest that intrusive thoughts are the most common kind of OCD worldwide; if people in the United States with intrusive thoughts gathered, they would form the fourth-largest city in the US, following New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
The prevalence of OCD in every culture studied is at least 2% of the population, and the majority of those have obsessions, or bad thoughts, only; this results in a conservative estimate of more than 2 million sufferers in the United States alone (as of 2000). One author estimates that one in 50 adults have OCD and about 10–20% of these have sexual obsessions. A recent study found that 25% of 293 patients with a primary diagnosis of OCD had a history of sexual obsessions.
Human Computer Interaction has a huge part in cognitive ergonomics because we are in a time period where most of life is digitalized. This created new problems and solutions. Studies show that most of the problems that happen are due to the digitalization of dynamic systems. With this it created a rise in the diversity in methods on how to process many streams of information. The changes in our socio-technical contexts adds to the stress of methods of visualization and analysis, along with the capabilities regarding cognitive perceptions by the user.
A proposed way of expanding a users effectiveness with cognitive ergonomics is to expand the interdisciplinary connects related to normal dynamics. The method behind this is to transfer the pre-existing knowledge of the various mechanics in computers into structural patterns of the cognitive space that could be used. This will work with human factors in 1.) developing an intellectual learning support system 2.) apply a interdisciplinary methodology of training. This will help the effective interaction between the person and the computer with the strengthening of critical thinking and intuition.
Some of the best practices for accessible content include:
"Cognitive task analysis" is a general term for the set of methods used to identify the mental demands and cognitive skills needed to complete a task. Frameworks like GOMS provide a formal set of methods for identifying the mental activities required by a task and an artifact, such as a desktop computer system. By identifying the sequence of mental activities of a user engaged in a task, cognitive ergonomics engineers can identify bottlenecks and critical paths that may present opportunities for improvement or risks (such as human error) that merit changes in training or system behavior. It is the whole study of what we know, how we think, and how we organize new information.
As a design philosophy, cognitive ergonomics can be applied to any area where humans interact with technology. Applications include aviation (e.g., cockpit layouts), transportation (e.g., collision avoidance), the health care system (e.g., drug bottle labelling), mobile devices, appliance interface design, product design, and nuclear power plants.
The focus of cognitive ergonomics is to be simple, clear and "easy to use" and accessible to everyone. Softwares are designed to help make better use of this. Its aim is to design icons and visual cues that are "easy" to use and function by all.
Inhibitory control, also known as response inhibition, is a cognitive process and more specifically, an executive function – that permits an individual to inhibit their impulses and natural, habitual, or dominant behavioral responses to stimuli ( prepotent responses) in order to select a more appropriate behavior that is consistent with completing their goals. Self-control is an important aspect of inhibitory control. For example, successfully suppressing the natural behavioral response to eat cake when one is craving it while dieting requires the use of inhibitory control.
The prefrontal cortex, caudate nucleus, and subthalamic nucleus are known to regulate inhibitory control cognition. Inhibitory control is impaired in both addiction and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In healthy adults and ADHD individuals, inhibitory control improves over the short term with low (therapeutic) doses of methylphenidate or amphetamine. Inhibitory control may also be improved over the long-term via consistent aerobic exercise.
An inhibitory control test is a neuropsychological test that measures an individual's ability to override their natural, habitual, or dominant behavioral response to a stimulus in order to implement more adaptive behaviors. Some of the neuropsychological tests that measure inhibitory control include the Stroop task, go/no-go task, Simon task, Flanker task, antisaccade tasks, delay of gratification tasks, and stop-signal tasks.
Females tend to have a greater basal capacity to exert inhibitory control over undesired or habitual behaviors and respond differently to modulatory environmental contextual factors relative to males. For example, listening to music tends to significantly improve the rate of response inhibition in females, but reduces the rate of response inhibition in males.
Cultural learning is made possible by a deep understanding of social cognition. Humans have the unique capacity to identify and relate to others and view them as intentional beings. Humans are able to understand that others have intentions, goals, desires, and beliefs. It is this deep understanding, this cognitive adaptation, that allows humans to learn from and with others through cultural transmission (Tomasello, 1999).
Dogs have also shown some interesting but limited abilities at social cognition in a series of studies by Hare and Tomasello (2005). Dogs have the ability to read human social cues, even to a greater extent than chimpanzees. Dogs are able to respond to human pointing, the human gaze, and subtle human nods without training. Researchers now believe that these abilities are the result of convergent evolution between humans and dogs through domestication. Research with domesticated foxes has shown that the likely mechanism for this convergent evolution was the selection of tame behavior in dogs. This finding suggests that perhaps humans had to evolve a propensity to cooperate before cultural evolution was able to take place (Hare & Tomasello, 2005).
Sociogenesis refers to collaborative inventiveness. It is the process by which two or more humans collectively interact and invent something new which could not have been developed by one individual alone, such as language and mathematics (Tomasello, 1999). Sociogenesis can occur across time, or simultaneously (Tomasello, 1999). Socigenesis across times occurs through the ratchet effect, when one individual modifies something they had previously learned through others. Over time, ideas, tools, and language advance. Simultaneous sociogenesis occurs when two or more individuals work together at the same time and develop something new.
Hare, B., & Tomasello, M. (2005). Human-like social skills in dogs? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 9 (9), 439-444.
Tomasello, M., Call, J., & Hare, B. (2003). Chimpanzees understand psychological states – the question is which ones and to what extent. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 7 (4), 153-156. Tomasello (1999). The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press (Chapters. 1 & 2, pp. 1–55).
Lexicalization is the process of adding words, set phrases, or word patterns to a language's lexicon.
Whether or not word formation and lexicalization refer to the same process is a source of controversy within the field of linguistics. Most linguists assert that there is a distinction, but there are many ideas of what the distinction is. Lexicalization may be simple, for example borrowing a word from another language, or more involved, as in calque or loan translation, wherein a foreign phrase is translated literally, as in "marché aux puces", or in English, flea market.
Other mechanisms include compounding, abbreviation, and blending. Particularly interesting from the perspective of historical linguistics is the process by which "ad hoc" phrases become set in the language, and eventually become new words (see lexicon). Lexicalization contrasts with grammaticalization, and the relationship between the two processes is subject to some debate.
In psycholinguistics, lexicalization is the process of going from meaning to sound in speech production. The most widely accepted model, speech production, in which an underlying concept is converted into a word, is at least a two-stage process.
First, the semantic form (which is specified for meaning) is converted into a lemma, which is an abstract form specified for semantic and syntactic information (how a word can be used in a sentence), but not for phonological information (how a word is pronounced). The next stage is the lexeme, which is phonologically specified.
Some recent work has challenged this model, suggesting for example that there is no lemma stage, and that syntactic information is retrieved in the semantic and phonological stages.
Psychoanalytic conceptions of language refers to the intersection of psychoanalytic theory with linguistics and psycholinguistics. Language has been an integral component of the psychoanalytic framework since its inception, as evidenced by the fact that Anna O. (pseud. for Bertha Pappenheim), whose treatment via the cathartic method influenced the later development of psychoanalytic therapy, referred to her method of treatment as the "talking cure" (Freud & Breuer, 1895; de Mijolla, 2005).
Language is relevant to psychoanalysis in two key respects. First, it is important with respect to the therapeutic process, serving as the principal means by which unconscious mental processes are given expression through the verbal exchange between analyst and patient (e.g., free association, dream analysis, transference-countertransference dynamics). Secondly, psychoanalytic theory is linked in many ways to linguistic phenomena, such as parapraxes and the telling of jokes. According to Freud (1915, 1923), the essential difference between modes of thought characterized by "primary" (irrational, governed by the id) as opposed to "secondary" (logical, governed by the ego and external reality) thought processes is one of preverbal vs. verbal ways of conceptualizing the world.
According to Freud (1940), "...the function of speech…brings material in the ego into a firm connection with the residues of visual, but more particularly of auditory, perceptions" (p. 35). In other words, the mind is able to assimilate perceptual information through language - we are able to make sense of our perceptions by thinking about them in the form of words.
One of Freud's earliest papers, "On Aphasia" (1891), was concerned with speech disorders of neurological mechanisms of which had been investigated earlier in the century by Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke. Freud was skeptical of Wernicke's findings, citing a paucity of clinical observation as his reason. Although he conceded the fact that language is linked to neurological processes, Freud repudiated a model of localization of brain function, according to which specific regions of the brain are responsible for certain cognitive functions. In contrast to most of his contemporaries, Freud rejected the notion that in most cases pathological phenomena are manifestations of physiological dysfunctions (Lanteri-Laura, 2005a).
In this joke, we see multiple use of the same phrase with words in a different order, as well as the double meaning of the words "lay" and "lain." Ostensibly about a couple's financial status, this joke is effective because it allows for the overcoming of inhibition and the indirect expression of sexual impulses through the double meaning of words.
The new journal "Language and Psychoanalysis" is just devoted to research in the intersection between psychoanalysis and linguistics.
2. http://criminalisticassociation.org/Dokumenti/KTIP_12_20201219201241.pdf#page=8 (SCAN revisited through linguistic psychoanalysis)
A garden-path sentence is a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a reader's most likely interpretation will be incorrect; the reader is lured into a parse that turns out to be a dead end or yields a clearly unintended meaning. "Garden path" refers to the saying "to be led down [or up] the garden path", meaning to be deceived, tricked, or seduced. In "A Dictionary of Modern English Usage", Fowler describes such sentences as unwittingly laying a "false scent".
Such a sentence leads the reader toward a seemingly familiar meaning that is actually not the one intended. It is a special type of sentence that creates a momentarily ambiguous interpretation because it contains a word or phrase that can be interpreted in multiple ways, causing the reader to begin to believe that a phrase will mean one thing when in reality it means something else. When read, the sentence seems ungrammatical, makes almost no sense, and often requires rereading so that its meaning may be fully understood after careful parsing.
"The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families.".
This is another commonly cited example. Like the previous sentence, the initial parse is to read "the complex houses" as a noun phrase, but "the complex houses married" does not make semantic sense (houses do not marry) and "the complex houses married and single" makes no sense at all (after "married and...", the expectation is another verb to form a compound predicate). The correct parsing is "The complex" [noun phrase] "houses" [verb] "married and single soldiers" [noun phrase] "and their families" [noun phrase]. Rephrased, the sentence could be rewritten as "The complex provides housing for the soldiers, married or single, as well as their families."
"The horse raced past the barn fell.".
This example turns on the two meanings in German of , which can be either the adjective "modern" as in English, or the verb "modern" meaning, "to become moldy", "to rot".
The theme of the "picture exhibition" in the first clause lends itself to interpreting "modern" as an adjective meaning "contemporary", until the last two words of the sentence:
This causes dissonance at the end of the sentence, and forces back-tracking to recover the proper usage and sense (and different pronunciation) of the first word of the sentence, not as the adjective meaning "contemporary", but as the verb meaning "going moldy":
This example makes use of the ambiguity between the verb "suspeita" and the adjective "suspeita", which is also captured by the English word "suspect". It also makes use of a misreading in which the word is passed over by the parser, which lends to two different meanings.
Various strategies can be used when parsing a sentence, and there is much debate over which parsing strategy humans use. Differences in parsing strategies can be seen from the effects of a reader attempting to parse a part of a sentence that is ambiguous in its syntax or meaning. For this reason, garden-path sentences are often studied as a way to test which strategy humans use. Two debated parsing strategies that humans are thought to use are serial and parallel parsing.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.