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Neuroscience Research Apr 2024How well do we distinguish between different memory sources when the information from imagination and perception is similar? And how do metacognitive (confidence)... (Review)
Review
How well do we distinguish between different memory sources when the information from imagination and perception is similar? And how do metacognitive (confidence) judgments differ across different sources of experiences? To study these questions, we developed a reality monitoring task using semantically related words from the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm of false memories. In an orientation phase, participants either perceived word pairs or had to voluntarily imagine the second word of a word pair. In a test phase, participants viewed words and had to judge whether the paired word was previously perceived, imagined, or new. Results revealed an interaction between memory source and judgment type on both response rates and confidence judgments: reality monitoring was better for new and perceived (compared to imagined) sources, and participants often incorrectly reported imagined experiences to be perceived. Individuals exhibited similar confidence between correct imagined source judgments and incorrect imagined sources reported to be perceived. Modeling results indicated that the observed judgments were likely due to an externalizing bias (i.e., a bias to judge the memory source as perceived). Additionally, we found that overall metacognitive ability was best in the perceived source. Together, these results reveal a source-dependent effect on response rates and confidence ratings, and provide evidence that observers are surprisingly prone to externalizing biases when monitoring their own memories.
Topics: Humans; Judgment; Memory; Imagination; Mental Recall
PubMed: 38007192
DOI: 10.1016/j.neures.2023.11.007 -
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and... Mar 2019Recent visualization research efforts have incorporated experimental techniques and perceptual models from the vision science community. Perceptual laws such as Weber's...
Recent visualization research efforts have incorporated experimental techniques and perceptual models from the vision science community. Perceptual laws such as Weber's law, for example, have been used to model the perception of correlation in scatterplots. While this thread of research has progressively refined the modeling of the perception of correlation in scatterplots, it remains unclear as to why such perception can be modeled using relatively simple functions, e.g., linear and log-linear. In this paper, we investigate a longstanding hypothesis that people use visual features in a chart as a proxy for statistical measures like correlation. For a given scatterplot, we extract 49 candidate visual features and evaluate which best align with existing models and participant judgments. The results support the hypothesis that people attend to a small number of visual features when discriminating correlation in scatterplots. We discuss how this result may account for prior conflicting findings, and how visual features provide a baseline for future model-based approaches in visualization evaluation and design.
Topics: Computer Graphics; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Models, Statistical; Psychophysics; Visual Perception
PubMed: 29993809
DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2018.2810918 -
Progress in Brain Research 2019As a result of globalization, millions of people operate in a language that they comprehend well but is not their native tongue. This paper focuses on how the nativeness... (Review)
Review
As a result of globalization, millions of people operate in a language that they comprehend well but is not their native tongue. This paper focuses on how the nativeness of the language of a communication influences judgments and decisions. We review studies that compare decision making while people use a native language to when they use a nonnative language they understand well. The evidence shows that a nonnative language decreases the impact that emotions and socio-moral norms have on users, thereby reducing well-known judgmental biases and norm-related behavior. This effect of nonnative or foreign language brings to light the important role that the native language plays routinely in judgment and decision making. It suggests that the native language is not a simple carrier of meaning. Instead, it reveals that our native language serves as a carrier of emotions and socio-moral norms which in turn govern judgments and choices.
Topics: Brain; Decision Making; Emotions; Humans; Judgment; Language; Morals
PubMed: 31196437
DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2019.02.003 -
The International Journal of Social... Jun 2017The clinical assessment of insight solely employs biomedical perspectives and criteria to the complete exclusion of context and culture and to the disregard of values... (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
The clinical assessment of insight solely employs biomedical perspectives and criteria to the complete exclusion of context and culture and to the disregard of values and value judgments.
AIM
The aim of this discussion article is to examine recent research from India on insight and explanatory models in psychosis and re-examine the framework of assessment, diagnosis and management of insight and explanatory models.
METHODS
Recent research from India on insight in psychosis and explanatory models is reviewed.
RESULTS
Recent research, which has used longitudinal data and adjusted for pretreatment variables, suggests that insight and explanatory models of illness at baseline do not predict course, outcome and treatment response in schizophrenia, which seem to be dependent on the severity and quality of the psychosis. It supports the view that people with psychosis simultaneously hold multiple and contradictory explanatory models of illness, which change over time and with the trajectory of the illness. It suggests that insight, like all explanatory models, is a narrative of the person's reality and a coping strategy to handle with the varied impact of the illness.
CONCLUSION
This article argues that the assessment of insight necessarily involves value entailments, commitments and consequences. It supports a need for a broad-based approach to assess awareness, attribution and action related to mental illness and to acknowledge the role of values and value judgment in the evaluation of insight in psychosis.
Topics: Adaptation, Psychological; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Humans; India; Judgment; Models, Educational; Psychotic Disorders; Schizophrenic Psychology
PubMed: 28504043
DOI: 10.1177/0020764017693655 -
Nature Communications Oct 2021Judgments of whether an action is morally wrong depend on who is involved and the nature of their relationship. But how, when, and why social relationships shape moral...
Judgments of whether an action is morally wrong depend on who is involved and the nature of their relationship. But how, when, and why social relationships shape moral judgments is not well understood. We provide evidence to address these questions, measuring cooperative expectations and moral wrongness judgments in the context of common social relationships such as romantic partners, housemates, and siblings. In a pre-registered study of 423 U.S. participants nationally representative for age, race, and gender, we show that people normatively expect different relationships to serve cooperative functions of care, hierarchy, reciprocity, and mating to varying degrees. In a second pre-registered study of 1,320 U.S. participants, these relationship-specific cooperative expectations (i.e., relational norms) enable highly precise out-of-sample predictions about the perceived moral wrongness of actions in the context of particular relationships. In this work, we show that this 'relational norms' model better predicts patterns of moral wrongness judgments across relationships than alternative models based on genetic relatedness, social closeness, or interdependence, demonstrating how the perceived morality of actions depends not only on the actions themselves, but also on the relational context in which those actions occur.
Topics: Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Judgment; Morals; Social Perception
PubMed: 34599174
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26067-4 -
Consciousness and Cognition Feb 2023It has recently been argued that a person's moral judgments (about both their own and others' actions) are constrained by the nature and extent of their relevant...
It has recently been argued that a person's moral judgments (about both their own and others' actions) are constrained by the nature and extent of their relevant ignorance and, thus, that such judgments are determined in the first instance by the person's epistemic circumstances. It has been argued, in other words, that the epistemic is logically prior to other normative (e.g., ethical, prudential, pecuniary) considerations in human decision-making, that these other normative considerations figure in decision-making only after (logically and temporally) relevant ignorance has constrained the decision-maker's menu of options. If this is right, then a person's moral judgments in some set of circumstances should vary with their knowledge and ignorance of these circumstances. In this study, we test the hypothesis of the logical priority of the epistemic. We describe two experiments in which subjects' knowledge and ignorance of relevant consequences were manipulated. In the second experiment, we also compared the effect of ignorance on moral judgments with that of personal force, a factor previously shown to influence moral judgments. We found broad empirical support for the armchair arguments that epistemic considerations are logically prior to normative considerations.
Topics: Humans; Judgment; Morals; Gravitation
PubMed: 36724707
DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2023.103472 -
Cognition & Emotion Dec 2022Research on the Spatial Quantity Association of Response Codes (SQUARC) has documented associations between spatial position and mental representations of quantity....
Research on the Spatial Quantity Association of Response Codes (SQUARC) has documented associations between spatial position and mental representations of quantity. Large quantities are associated with right and top, small quantities are associated with left and bottom. Resulting compatibility effects have largely been documented for response speed and judgment accuracy. Recently, employing luminance as quantity, Löffler et al. (2022) generalised such SQUARC compatibility effects to affective judgments, showing that horizontally SQUARC-compatible stimulus arrangements (i.e. bright on the right, dark on the left side) are liked more than SQUARC-incompatible arrangements. The present Experiment 1 ( = 296) replicated this horizontal compatibility effect, = .18, and generalised it to vertical luminance SQUARC compatibility (i.e. bright on the top, dark on the bottom), = .22. Experiments 2a-b (total = 259; Experiment 2b preregistered) employed stimulus arrangements tilted by 45° to manipulate horizontal and vertical (in)compatibility simultaneously within the same stimulus, finding robust horizontal compatibility effects, but mixed evidence regarding vertical compatibility.
Topics: Humans; Judgment; Space Perception; Reaction Time; Cognition; Emotions
PubMed: 36263873
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2022.2132221 -
Journal of Comparative Psychology... Aug 2019In this essay, the author notes that for the past half-century, psychologists have examined how humans make use of spatial representations when making judgments about...
In this essay, the author notes that for the past half-century, psychologists have examined how humans make use of spatial representations when making judgments about numerical properties of sets of items. This line of work was initiated by Frank Restle (1970), who asked college students at Indiana University to choose the larger number, either the sum of A + B or C, as rapidly as possible. Restle found that the timing of people's choices fit an analog model of numerical judgment that had been proposed a few years earlier (Moyer & Landauer, 1967) and that people seemed to judge the magnitude of numbers by their position on a mental number line. The hypothetical number line is now called the "mental number line," and the effect on latency to respond to questions about numbers that results from use of the mental number line has been labeled the "Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes" or SNARC for short. The author notes that she has parodied Frank Beach's (1950) title for his classic essay about the state of comparative psychology at the mid-20th century for the title of this piece. Beach, in turn, was inspired by Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem, " The Hunting of the Snark," published in 1876. The poem chronicles "the impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature," the snark. According to the poem, most species of snarks are relatively harmless. The boojum, however, is a dangerous snark, because those who catch sight of a boojum "suddenly vanish away." Here, the author wants to turn the meaning of the homonym SNARC a bit to suggest that the SNARC might itself vanish, perhaps to metamorphose into a more complex entity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Animals; Behavior, Animal; Functional Laterality; Humans; Judgment; Psychology, Comparative; Space Perception
PubMed: 31380680
DOI: 10.1037/com0000192 -
Death Studies 2022This paper concerns the ethical judgment that lies at the heart of assessing requests for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) in Canada and Quebec, namely is it ethically... (Review)
Review
This paper concerns the ethical judgment that lies at the heart of assessing requests for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) in Canada and Quebec, namely is it ethically right to help the person requesting assistance to end his or her life? We address situations in which making this judgment may be challenging despite the person fulfilling legal eligibility requirements. Using three clinical cases that are challenging by virtue of the legal requirement that a person experience intolerable suffering we explore this issue. We review practice guidance provided to providers and assessors in six jurisdictions and discuss potential resources to inform the ethical judgments involved in MAID assessments.
Topics: Canada; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Quebec; Suicide, Assisted
PubMed: 34097584
DOI: 10.1080/07481187.2021.1926636 -
Cognition & Emotion Aug 2018Empathy represents a fundamental ability that allows for the creation and cultivation of social bonds. As part of the empathic process, individuals use their own...
Empathy represents a fundamental ability that allows for the creation and cultivation of social bonds. As part of the empathic process, individuals use their own emotional state to interpret the content and intensity of other people's emotions. Therefore, the current study was designed to test two hypotheses: (1) empathy for the pain of another will result in biased emotional intensity judgment; and (2) changing one's emotion via emotion regulation will modulate these biased judgments. To test these hypotheses, in experiment one we used a modified version of a well-known task that triggers an empathic reaction We found that empathy resulted in biased emotional intensity judgment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a bias in the recognition of emotional facial expressions as a function of empathy for pain. In experiment two, we replicated these findings in an independent sample, and further found that this biased emotional intensity judgment can be moderated via reappraisal. Taken together, our findings suggest that the novel task used here can be employed to further explore the relation between emotion regulation and empathy.
Topics: Adult; Emotions; Empathy; Facial Expression; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Recognition, Psychology; Young Adult
PubMed: 28891381
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2017.1372366