The objective of this research is to interaction between perception in job characteristic model, psychological well - being, and performance. Job characteristic model are explained by skill variety, task identity, task significan, autonomy, and feedback about the job. Psychological well - being is explained by autonomy, environment mastery, good relationship with others, self acceptance, and personal growth. Performance measured by how employee done their task according their responsibility. Subject of this research are employees of PT. X. The result (...) of this study shows that all of the variables have positive interaction between each other.  . (shrink)

This book offers a systematic account of the reduction of psychological models of behavior to underlying neural mechanisms. "Clark has approached an extremely difficult and important issue in a systematic masnner and has done much to clarify concepts that are all too often mismanaged and confused in the psychological literature." --American Scientist.

Creating agents that proficiently interact with people is critical for many applications. Towards creating these agents, models are needed that effectively predict people's decisions in a variety of problems. To date, two approaches have been suggested to generally describe people's decision behavior. One approach creates a-priori predictions about people's behavior, either based on theoretical rational behavior or based on psychological models, including bounded rationality. A second type of approach focuses on creating models based exclusively on observations of people's behavior. (...) At the forefront of these types of methods are various machine learning algorithms. This paper explores how these two approaches can be compared and combined in different types of domains. In relatively simple domains, both psychological models and machine learning yield clear prediction models with nearly identical results. In more complex domains, the exact action predicted by psychological models is not even clear, and machine learning models are even less accurate. Nonetheless, we present a novel approach of creating hybrid methods that incorporate features from psychological models in conjunction with machine learning in order to create significantly improved models for predicting people's decisions. To demonstrate these claims, we present an overview of previous and new results, taken from representative domains ranging from a relatively simple optimization problem and complex domains such as negotiation and coordination without communication. (shrink)

University Abstract Philosophers have sought to improve upon the logical empiricists’ model of scientific reduction. While opportunities for integration between the cognitive and the neural sciences have increased, most philosophers, appealing to the multiple realizability of mental states and the irreducibility of consciousness, object to psychoneural reduction. New Wave reductionists offer a continuum of comparative goodness of intertheoretic mapping for assessing reductions. Their insistence on a unified view of intertheoretic relations obscures epistemically significant crossscientific relations and engenders dismissive conclusions about (...) psychology. Richer, more sensitive accounts of explanatory pluralism and mechanistic explanation in science advocate multi-level approaches in cross-scientific settings and criticize the distance of the standard philosophical objections from working scientists’ practices and discoveries. The Heuristic Identity Theory, a new, scientifically informed version of the psycho-physical identity theory, incorporates these insights, showing how multiple realizability is an argument for (not against) identities in science and why, therefore, consciousness is not irreducible. (shrink)

What is the mind? How does it work? How does it influence behavior? Some psychologists hope to answer such questions in terms of concepts drawn from computer science and artificial intelligence. They test their theories by modeling mental processes in computers. This book shows how computer models are used to study many psychological phenomena--including vision, language, reasoning, and learning. It also shows that computer modeling involves differing theoretical approaches. Computational psychologists disagree about some basic questions. For instance, should the (...) mind be modeled by digital computers, or by parallel-processing systems more like brains? Do computer programs consist of meaningless patterns, or do they embody (and explain) genuine meaning? (shrink)

"Cognitive psychology," "cognitive neuroscience," and "philosophy of mind" are names for three very different scientific fields, but they label aspects of the same scientific goal: to understand the nature of mental phenomena. Today, the three disciplines strongly overlap under the roof of the cognitive sciences. The book's purpose is to present views from the different disciplines on one of the central theories in cognitive science: the theory of mental models. Cognitive psychologists report their research on the representation and processing of (...) mental models in human memory. Cognitive neuroscientists demonstrate how the brain processes visual and spatial mental models and which neural processes underlie visual and spatial thinking. Philosophers report their ideas about the role of mental models in relation to perception, emotion, representation, and intentionality. The single articles have different and mutually complementing goals: to introduce new empirical methods and approaches, to report new experimental results, and to locate competing approaches for their interpretation in the cross-disciplinary debate. The book is strongly interdisciplinary in character. It is especially addressed to researchers in any field related to mental models theory as both a reference book and an overview of present research on the topic in other disciplines. However, it is also an ideal reader for a specialized graduate course. (shrink)

David Danks. Psychological Theories of Categorizations as Probabilistic Models.

Mechanistic explanation has an impressive track record of advancing our understanding of complex, hierarchically organized physical systems, particularly biological and neural systems. But not every complex system can be understood mechanistically. Psychological capacities are often understood by providing cognitive models of the systems that underlie them. I argue that these models, while superficially similar to mechanistic models, in fact have a substantially more complex relation to the real underlying system. They are typically constructed using a range of techniques for (...) abstracting the functional properties of the system, which may not coincide with its mechanistic organization. I describe these techniques and show that despite being non-mechanistic, these cognitive models can satisfy the normative constraints on good explanations. (shrink)

I argue that everyday folk-psychological skill might best be explained in terms of the deployment of something like a model, in a specific sense drawn from recent philosophy of science. Theoretical models in this sense do not make definite commitments about the systems they are used to understand; they are employed with a particular kind of flexibility. This analysis is used to dissolve the eliminativism debate of the 1980s, and to transform a number of other questions about the status (...) and role of folk psychology. (shrink)

We show that a popular class of connectionist models (which we label 'first order connectionism') looks unlikely to provide the kind of resources required by the hypothesis. We examine some alternative hybrid models that seem more promising. Finally, we raise a more purely philosophical issue concerning the conditions under which a being can count as a genuine believer or cognizer.".

This book explores a new approach to understanding the human mind - rational analysis - that regards thinking as a facility adapted to the structure of the world. This approach is most closely associated with the work of John R Anderson, who published the original book on rational analysis in 1990. Since then, a great deal of work has been carried out in a number of laboratories around the world, and the aim of this book is to bring this work (...) together for the benefit of the general psychological audience. The book contains chapters by some of the world's leading researchers in memory, categorisation, reasoning, and search, who show how the power of rational analysis can be applied to the central question of how humans think. It will be of interest to students and researchers in cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and animal behaviour. (shrink)

A review of the literature indicates that linear models are frequently used in situations in which decisions are made on the basis of multiple codable inputs. These models are sometimes used normatively to aid the decision maker, as a contrast with the decision maker in the clinical vs statistical controversy, to represent the decision maker "paramorphically" and to "bootstrap" the decision maker by replacing him with his representation. Examination of the contexts in which linear models have been successfully employed indicates (...) that the contexts have the following structural characteristics in common: each input variable has a conditionally monotone relationship with the output; there is error of measurement; and deviations from optimal weighting do not make much practical difference. These characteristics ensure the success of linear models, which are so appropriate in such contexts that random linear models may perform quite well. 4 examples involving the prediction of such codable output variables as GPA and psychiatric diagnosis are analyzed in detail. In all 4 examples, random linear models yield predictions that are superior to those of human judges. (shrink)

This outstanding book contains inspiring stories of late 20th century women who broke new ground in psychological knowledge and its applications. The lives and careers of 53 women are examined within social and historical contexts using three levels of analysis--the individual, the group, and the universal. The thoughtful autobiographies and the perceptive, integrative analyses increase understanding of the personal and professional development of these women, provide insights into their patterns of achievement, and illuminate new ways of thinking about and (...) perceiving women. This extraordinary book is a valuable resource for libraries and researchers, provides knowledge and inspiration for a wide range of readers, and is an excellent supplementary text for courses in the psychology of women, history of psychology, lifespan development, career development, and women's studies. (shrink)

In recent philosophical and (neuro)psychological discussions of phenomena such as motivated forgetting, memory inhibition, self-deception, and implicit bias, various authors have suggested that repression might be a useful notion to make sense of these phenomena, or that these phenomena indeed provide evidence for repression. However, surprisingly, these claims usually do not rely on any explicit model of repression. Consequently, it remains unclear whether invoking repression in these discussions is justified. In this paper, I propose a psychological “how-possibly” model (...) that can serve as a basis for scientific research that I call the hybrid model of repression. This model combines the advantages while avoiding the problems of two types of models of repression—the higher-order model and the separation model—that have been discussed and defended by different authors and that both have their origin in Freud. This “how-possibly” model may then set the stage for further empirical research, which can form the basis for a “how-actually” model in the longer run. (shrink)

Psychopathy is increasingly in the public eye. However, it is yet to be fully and effectively understood. Within the context of the DSM-IV, for example, it is best regarded as a complex family of disorders. The upside is that this family can be tightly related along common dimensions. Characteristic marks of psychopaths include a lack of guilt and remorse for paradigm case immoral actions, leading to the common conception of psychopathy rooted in affective dysfunctions. An adequate portrait of psychopathy is (...) much more complicated, however. Though some neural regions and corresponding functions are commonly indicated, they range across those responsible for action planning and learning, as well as emotional processes. Accordingly, a complete fine-grained map of all neural mechanisms responsible for psychopathy has not been realized, and even if it were, such a map would have limited utility outside of the context of surgical or chemical intervention. The utility of a neural-level understanding of psychopathy is further limited by the fact that it is only applicable in the clinical identification of individual subjects, and the neuro-chemical/biological correction of those subjects after they are positively identified as psychopaths. On the other hand, an information processing model of moral cognition provides for wider-ranging applications. The theoretical and practical implications for such a feasible working model of psychopathic personalities are assessed. Finally, this chapter raises the possibility of directed modification of social-environmental factors (including at the meta-organizational level) discouraging the development of psychopathic personalities in the first place, modifications which are also open to simulation and testing in terms of the same model of moral cognition. (shrink)

Diagnoses of rationality often arise from the experimental investigation of human reasoning. We suggest that such diagnoses can be disputed on various grounds and provide a classification. We then argue that much fruitful research done with classical experimental paradigms was triggered by normative concerns and yet fostered insight in properly psychological terms. Our examples include the selection task, the conjunction fallacy, and so-called pseudodiagnosticity. We conclude that normative considerations retain a constructive role in the psychology of reasoning, contrary to (...) recent complaints in the literature. (shrink)

It is argued that the traditional distinction between artificial intelligence and cognitive simulation amounts to little more than a difference in style of research - a different ordering in goal priorities and different methodological allegiances. Both enterprises are constrained by empirical considerations and both are directed at understanding classes of tasks that are defined by essentially psychological criteria. Because of the different ordering of priorities, however, they occasionally take somewhat different stands on such issues as the power/generality trade-off and (...) on the relevance of the sort of data collected in experimental psychology laboratories. (shrink)

The abbreviation ARCS in the ARCS motivational model comprises the first letters of four English words: Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. The ARCS motivation model is based on a systematic and easy-to-operate motivation theory. Many research studies have verified the applicability and effectiveness of the ARCS model in education worldwide. The proposed optimized ARCS motivation model takes the traditional ARCS motivation model and systematically optimizes it to make it suitable for the coding of data from videos of music classes. The (...) case analysis method selected 14 high-quality music lessons as the research object. The optimized ARCS model involves text conversion, coding, and statistical analysis of the transcripts of videos of high-quality music classes. The data analysis was used to analyze the characteristics of students’ emotional and behavioral motivation incentive strategies in each section of the ARCS motivation model in combination with specific high-quality case lesson fragments. This paper summarizes ways and means of using a motivational approach in the teaching of quality music classes, providing theoretical support for the practice of music teaching. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider how latent variables of mainstream quantitative psychology fits with two different models of scientific kinds. On the one hand, there is a good reason to think they fit with taxonomic and predictive success criteria that are popular within an epistemic understanding of scientific kinds. On the other hand, they conflict with widely shared person-based ontological commitments that underwrite psychological kinds because this research rests in large part on between-individual studies. We explore the implications of (...) the different views on scientific kinds and argue that this is indeed a dilemma for the scientific discipline of psychology. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers have identified a number of moral and psychological harms associated with the attention economy (Alysworth & Castro, 2021; Castro & Pham, 2020; Williams, 2018). Missing from many of these accounts of the attention economy, however, is what exactly attention is. As a result of this neglect of the cognitive science of attention, many of these accounts are not empirically credible. They rely on oversimplified and unsophisticated accounts of not only attention, but self- control, and addiction (...) as well. Of note are accounts of the attention economy that rely on the ‘brain disease’ rhetoric of addiction and subsequent control failures (Aylsworth & Castro, 2021; Bhargava & Velasquez, 2021), accounts that rely on a strict dichotomy of top-down vs. bottom-up attention (Williams, 2018; Aylsworth & Castro, 2021), and accounts that construe attention as a limited resource (Williams, 2018). -/- Drawing on recent work from the neuroscience and psychology of attention, I demonstrate the shortcomings of these accounts and sketch a way forward for an empirically grounded account of the attention economy. These accounts tend to uphold strict dichotomies of voluntary control (e.g., compulsion versus choice, dual-process models of self-control, and top-down versus bottom-up) that cannot account for the complexities of attentional control, mental agency, and decision-making. As such, these empirically and conceptually impoverished accounts cannot adequately address the current so-called crisis of attention. To better understand the harms associated with the attention economy, we need an empirically responsible account of the nature and function of attention and mental agency. (shrink)

In this paper we will show you a part of a course “Clinical Psychology of Religion” that has been developed in the Netherlands for introducing mental health professionals in the field of clinical psychology of religion. Clinical psychology of religion applies insights from general psychology of religion to the field of the clinical psychologist. Clinical psychology of religion can be defined as that part of the psychology of religion dealing with the relation between religion, worldview and mental health. Like the (...) clinical psychologist, the clinical psychologist of religion deals with psychodiagnostics and psychotherapy, but concentrates on the role religion or worldview plays in mental health problems. The relation between religion and mental health has been a subject for study since the start of the psychology of religion at the end of the last century. A number of authors have elaborated on the ways in which religion can be beneficial or detrimental to psychological health. In recent research we have found that there is a great need among psychotherapists to become better equipped in this field. (shrink)

This paper discusses how we understand and use a concept or the meaningof a general term to identify the objects falling under the term. There aretwo distinct approaches to research on the problems of concepts and meaningthe psychological approach and the formal (or logical) approach. My majorconcern is to consider the possibility of reconciling these two differentapproaches, and for this I propose to build a psychologically plausibleformal system of conceptualization. That is, I will develop a theory-basedaccount of concepts and (...) propose an explanation of how an agent activates aperspective (which consists of theories) in response to a situation in whichreasoning using a concept is called for. Theories are represented as sets offacts and rules, both strict and defeasible. Each theory is organized in acoherent perspective which stands for an agent's mental state or an agent'smodel of another agent's perspective. Perspectives are organized intohierarchies and the theory for a concept in one perspective may defeat thetheory for the same concept in another perspective. Which perspective issuperior is context-dependent. (shrink)

(2013). Formal Models of Reasoning in Cognitive Psychology. Argument & Computation: Vol. 4, Formal Models of Reasoning in Cognitive Psychology, pp. 1-3. doi: 10.1080/19462166.2013.767559.

Linear mixed-effect models (LMMs) are being increasingly widely used in psychology to analyse multi-level research designs. This feature allows LMMs to address some of the problems identified by Speelman and McGann ( 2013 ) about the use of mean data, because they do not average across individual responses. However, recent guidelines for using LMM to analyse skewed reaction time (RT) data collected in many cognitive psychological studies recommend the application of non-linear transformations to satisfy assumptions of normality. Uncritical adoption (...) of this recommendation has important theoretical implications which can yield misleading conclusions. For example, Balota et al. ( 2013 ) showed that analyses of raw RT produced additive effects of word frequency and stimulus quality on word identification, which conflicted with the interactive effects observed in analyses of transformed RT. Generalized linear mixed-effect models (GLMM) provide a solution to this problem by satisfying normality assumptions without the need for transformation. This allows differences between individuals to be properly assessed, using the metric most appropriate to the researcher's theoretical context. We outline the major theoretical decisions involved in specifying a GLMM, and illustrate them by reanalysing Balota et al.'s datasets. We then consider the broader benefits of using GLMM to investigate individual differences. (shrink)

Microbes perfect social interactions with intuitive logics and goal-directed reciprocity. These multilevel, cognition-resembling adaptations in Dictyostelid cellular molds enable individual-to-group viability through public/private bacterial farming and dynamic marketspaces. Like humans and animals, Dictyostelid livestock-ownership depends on environmental sensing, cooperation, and competition. Moreover, social-norm policing of cosmopolitan colonies coordinates farmer decisions, phenotypes, and ownership identities with bacteria herding, privatization, and consumption.

Choice modellers are frequently criticized for failing to provide accurate representations of the neuro-psychological substrates of decisions. Several authors maintain that recent neuro-psychological findings enable choice modellers to overcome this alleged shortcoming. Some advocate a realistic interpretation of neuro-psychological models of choice, according to which these models posit sub-personal entities with specific neuro-psychological counterparts and characterize those entities accurately. In this article, I articulate and defend three complementary arguments to demonstrate that, contrary to emerging consensus, even (...) the best available neuro-psychological models of choice cannot be justifiably given this realistic interpretation. Moreover, I explicate what challenges will continue to hamper neuro-psychological modellers’ attempts to substantiate a realistic interpretation of their models. In doing so, I draw on the literature on scientific modelling to advance the ongoing philosophical discussion concerning the ontological status of the sub-personal entities posited in distinct decision sciences, the resemblance relations that supposedly connect choice models and the neuro-psychological substrates of decisions, and what conditions these models must satisfy to be regarded as realistic representations of their target systems. (shrink)

We commend Menninghaus et al. for tackling the role of negative emotions in art reception. However, their model suffers from shortcomings that reduce its applicability to empirical studies of the arts: poor use of evidence, lack of integration with other models, and limited derivation of testable hypotheses. We argue that theories about art experiences should be based on empirical evidence.

The phenomenon of consciousness has always been a central question for philosophers and scientists. Emerging in the past decade are new approaches to the understanding of consciousness in a scientific light. This book presents a series of essays by leading thinkers giving an account of the current ideas prevalent in the scientific study of consciousness. The value of the book lies in the discussion of this interesting though complex subject from different points of view ranging from physics, computer science to (...) the cognitive sciences. Reviews of controversial ideas related to the philosophy of mind from western and eastern sources including classical Indian first person methodologies provide a breadth of coverage that has seldom been attempted in a book before. Additionally, chapters relating to the new approaches in computational modelling of higher order cognitive function and consciousness are included. The book is of great value for established as well as young researchers from a wide cross-section of interdisciplinary scientific backgrounds, aiming to pursue research in this field, as well as an informed public. * Presents the latest developments in the scientific study of consciousness * Critically reviews different theoretical and philosophical explanations related to the subject * An important book for both students and researchers in designing research projects on consciousness. (shrink)

At a time when there is increasing need to offer psychotherapeutic approaches which accommodate clients' religious and spiritual beliefs, and acknowledge the potential for healing and growth offered by religious frameworks, this book explores psychology from an Islamic paradigm and demonstrates how Islamic understandings of human nature, the self, and the soul can inform an Islamic psychotherapy. Drawing on a qualitative, grounded theory analysis of interviews with Islamic scholars and clinicians, this unique volume distils complex religious concepts to reconcile Islamic (...) theology with contemporary notions of psychology. Chapters offer nuanced explanations of relevant Islamic tradition and theological sources, consider how this relates to Western notions of psychotherapy and common misconceptions, and draw uniquely on first-hand data to develop a new theory of Islamic psychology. This in turn, informs an innovative and empirically driven model of practice which translates Islamic understandings of human psychology into a clinical framework for Islamic psychotherapy. An outstanding scholarly contribution to the modern and emerging discipline of Islamic psychology, this book makes a pioneering contribution to the integration of the Islamic sciences and clinical mental health practice. It will be a key resource for scholars, researchers, and practicing clinicians with an interest in Islamic psychology and Muslim mental health, as well as religion, spirituality and psychology more broadly. (shrink)

Adults (more than 18 years old) are likely to reproduce the habits that they acquired during childhood and adolescence (from 6 to 16 years old). For that reason, teachers and parents have the responsibility to promote an active and healthy lifestyle in children and adolescents. Even though every school subject should promote healthy activities, Physical Education (PE) is the most important subject to foster well-being habits associated to healthy lifestyle during sport practice and other kinds of active tasks. Indeed, there (...) are many factors that influence the acquisition of healthy habits that should be taken into account when programs and activities are implemented in both educational and extracurricular context. In this sense, psychological and social factors are of utmost importance to achieve optimal experiences for an active and healthy lifestyle. However, due to the myriad of studies analyzing different factors in different contexts, there could be confusion when programs and pedagogical strategies are applied in educational or extracurricular contexts. The objective of this investigation is to analyze the state of art of the psychosocial factors which influence the engagement in physical activities and sport practice. The keywords used in this review were mainly: ‘Self-Determination Theory’, ‘motivation’, ‘Psychological need satisfaction, ‘physical activity and sport engagement’, ‘Elementary Education’, ‘Secondary Education’, ‘Physical Education’. The articles were selected according to the following criteria: (a) peer-reviewed original research published in international journals indexed in JCR or SJR, (b) published in English or Spanish, (c) about psychosocial factors which influence the physical activity and sport engagement, (b) in educational or extracurricular context. Research articles selected were found through nine databases. It was observed that physical activities and sport practice engagement are closely related to psychological factors. In particularly, intrinsic motivation was able to determine the active participation in any activity, including physical activity and sport practice during the implementation of Small-Sided Games and other kinds of pedagogical strategies (e.g., Pedagogical Models). Motivation was also closely related to flow state. Finally, these variables should be considered in order to organize effective programs to promote an active and healthy lifestyle in Physical Education classes. (shrink)

Humans and animals make inferences about the world under limited time and knowledge. In contrast, many models of rational inference treat the mind as a Laplacean Demon, equipped with unlimited time, knowledge, and computational might. Following H. Simon's notion of satisficing, the authors have proposed a family of algorithms based on a simple psychological mechanism: one-reason decision making. These fast and frugal algorithms violate fundamental tenets of classical rationality: They neither look up nor integrate all information. By computer simulation, (...) the authors held a competition between the satisficing "Take The Best" algorithm and various "rational" inference procedures. The Take The Best algorithm matched or outperformed all competitors in inferential speed and accuracy. This result is an existence proof that cognitive mechanisms capable of successful performance in the real world do not need to satisfy the classical norms of rational inference. (shrink)

Models of psychological time / Richard A. Block -- Implicit and explicit representations of time / John A. Michon -- The evasive art of subjective time...

The paper pores over the recent conceptions of normative judgement developed against the background of advances in psychology and neuroscience. It begins by analyzing what normative claim of morality and law consists of before presenting and criticizing the Social Intuitionist Model of normative judgement developed by Jonathan Haidt. The model poses serious challenges for well-established normative concepts, and the concept of normativity as objective reason for action in particular. A question is asked of what the relationship between philosophical conceptions and (...) the findings of neuroscience should be. The conclusion is that, in the face of new scientific facts, philosophers have no choice but to carefully revise their conceptual schemes. (shrink)

Debates about bodily ownership and psychological ownership have typically proceeded independently of each other. This paper explores the relation between them, with particular reference to how each is illuminated by psychopathology. I propose a general framework for studying ownership that is applicable both to bodily ownership and psychological ownership. The framework proposes studying ownership by starting with explicit judgments of ownership and then exploring the bases for those judgments. Section 3 discusses John Campbell’s account of ψ-ownership in the (...) light of that general framework, emphasizing in particular his fractionation of ψ-ownership into two dissociable components. Section 4 briefly presents an account of φ-ownership that I have developed in more detail elsewhere. Section 5 explores the suggestion, originating with Alexandre Billon, that there needs to be an integrated account of φ-ownership and ψ-ownership because depersonalization disorders typically involve breakdowns of both φ-ownership and ψ-ownership. The argument from depersonalization is not compelling, but Section 6 proposes a different way of reaching the same conclusion. Section 7 shows how reflecting on agency and practical reasoning offers a common thread between the models of φ-ownership and ψ-ownership discussed earlier in the paper. (shrink)

The Marburg neo-Kantians argue that Hermann von Helmholtz's empiricist account of the a priori does not account for certain knowledge, since it is based on a psychological phenomenon, trust in the regularities of nature. They argue that Helmholtz's account raises the 'problem of validity' (Gueltigkeitsproblem): how to establish a warranted claim that observed regularities are based on actual relations. I reconstruct Heinrich Hertz's and Ludwig Wittgenstein's Bild theoretic answer to the problem of validity: that scientists and philosophers can depict (...) the necessary a priori constraints on states of affairs in a given system, and can establish whether these relations are actual relations in nature. The analysis of necessity within a system is a lasting contribution of the Bild theory. However, Hertz and Wittgenstein argue that the logical and mathematical sentences of a Bild are rules, tools for constructing relations, and the rules themselves are meaningless outside the theory. Carnap revises the argument for validity by attempting to give semantic rules for translation between frameworks. Russell and Quine object that pragmatics better accounts for the role of a priori reasoning in translating between frameworks. The conclusion of the tale, then, is a partial vindication of Helmholtz's original account. (shrink)

Mathematics and logic are indispensable in science, yet how they are deployed and why they are so effective, especially in the natural sciences, is poorly understood. In this paper, I focus on the how by analysing Jean Piaget’s application of mathematics to the empirical content of psychological experiment; however, I do not lose sight of the application’s wider implications on the why. In a case study, I set out how Piaget drew on the stock of mathematical structures to model (...) psychological content, namely, the operations of thought involved in reasoning. In particular, I show how operations of thought form structured wholes that initially resisted modelling by either lattices or groups but could be modelled adequately by modifications of these mathematical structures. Piaget coined the term ‘grouping’ for the modified structure, and I conclude that it represents a non-canonical application of mathematics to the empirical content of experimental psychology. I also touch on the role external factors played in Piaget’s development of the grouping. According to the genetic epistemology conceived by Piaget, the origin of intelligence lies in the biological organism and develops in stages over time, and, via the grouping, Piaget established a genetic relationship between two stages of reasoning. I show how this relationship explains why mathematics and logic fit the psychological content of reasoning whilst simultaneously making their successful deployment in the natural sciences more mysterious. Finally, I turn to the explanation Piaget envisaged for the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences and consider some consequences for naturalism and Pythagoreanism. (shrink)

Over the last decade, fully distributed models have become dominant in connectionist psychological modelling, whereas the virtues of localist models have been underestimated. This target article illustrates some of the benefits of localist modelling. Localist models are characterized by the presence of localist representations rather than the absence of distributed representations. A generalized localist model is proposed that exhibits many of the properties of fully distributed models. It can be applied to a number of problems that are difficult for (...) fully distributed models, and its applicability can be extended through comparisons with a number of classic mathematical models of behaviour. There are reasons why localist models have been underused, though these often misconstrue the localist position. In particular, many conclusions about connectionist representation, based on neuroscientific observation, can be called into question. There are still some problems inherent in the application of fully distributed systems and some inadequacies in proposed solutions to these problems. In the domain of psychological modelling, localist modelling is to be preferred. Key Words: choice; competition; connectionist modelling; consolidation; distributed; localist; neural networks; reaction-time. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that intentional psychology (i.e. the interpretation of human behaviour in terms of intentional states and propositional attitudes) plays an essential role in the sciences of the mind. However, this role is not one of identifying scientifically respectable states of the world. Rather, I argue that intentional psychology acts as a type of phenomenological model, as opposed to a mechanistic one. I demonstrate that, like other phenomenological models in science, intentional psychology is a methodological tool with (...) its own benefits and insights that complements our mechanistic understanding of systems. As a result, intentional psychology's distinctive scientific benefit is its ability to model systems in unique, non-mechanistic, ways. This allows us to generate predictions that we cannot otherwise generate using the mechanistic models of neuroscience and cognitive psychology necessary for various scientific tasks. (shrink)

Background: Pediatric COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy hinders the establishment of immune barrier in children. Psychological flexibility may be a key contributing factor to pediatric COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, and self-efficacy and coping style play an important role in the relationship, but the underlying mechanisms remain unknown.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on parents from June 2021 to July 2021. A total of 382 parents were recruited for an online-investigation. Serial mediation models were used to examine whether self-efficacy and coping style mediated (...) in the psychological flexibility-pediatric COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy linkage.Result: Psychological flexibility was negatively related to pediatric COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Coping styles rather than self-efficacy played a mediating role independently. Serial mediation analyses indicated that self-efficacy and coping style co-play a serial mediating role in the association of psychological flexibility and pediatric COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.Conclusion: The present study showed that high psychological flexibility, high self-efficacy, and positive coping style were conducive to the lower pediatric COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. (shrink)

Extensions of ongoing research identified in the introduction to this special issue are discussed here with farther reaching objectives: researching more intensely psychological universals thought to underlie religion, taking a more inclusive approach to psychology of religion, and constructing more comprehensive models. All three involve conscious experience, to which some observations are devoted. Remarks about the relationships between these research areas conclude the article.

Cooperation is common across nonhuman animal taxa, from the hunting of large game in lions to the harvesting of building materials in ants. Theorists have proposed a number of models to explain the evolution of cooperative behavior. These ultimate explanations, however, rarely consider the proximate constraints on the implementation of cooperative behavior. Here we review several types of cooperation and propose a suite of cognitive abilities required for each type to evolve. We propose that several types of cooperation, though theoretically (...) possible and functionally adaptive, have not evolved in some animal species because of cognitive constraints. We argue, therefore, that future modeling efforts and experimental investigations into the adaptive function of cooperation in animals must be grounded in a realistic assessment of the psychological ingredients required for cooperation. Such an approach can account for the puzzling distribution of cooperative behaviors across taxa, especially the seemingly unique occurrence of cooperation observed in our own species. (shrink)