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Animal Cognition Mar 2024We are said to experience insight when we suddenly and unexpectedly become aware of the solution to a problem that we previously took ourselves to be unable to solve. In...
We are said to experience insight when we suddenly and unexpectedly become aware of the solution to a problem that we previously took ourselves to be unable to solve. In the field of comparative cognition, there is rising interest in the question of whether non-human animals are capable of insightful problem-solving. Putative cases of animals demonstrating insight have generally attracted two types of criticism: first, that insight is being conflated with other cognitive capacities (e.g., causal cognition, or mental trial and error); and, second, that the relevant performances merely reflect associative learning-and on the received understanding of insight within comparative cognition, insight necessarily involves non-associative processes. I argue that even if we grant that some cases of animal insight do withstand these two criticisms, these cases of purported animal insight cannot shed light on the nature of insightful problem-solving in humans. For the phenomenon studied by cognitive psychologists under the heading of insight is fundamentally different from that studied in comparative cognition. In light of this impasse, I argue that the reinterpretation of the extant research on animal insight in terms of other high-level cognitive capacities (means-end reasoning in particular) can improve the prospect of a successful comparative research program.
Topics: Animals; Cognition; Problem Solving; Awareness; Conditioning, Classical
PubMed: 38429535
DOI: 10.1007/s10071-024-01844-y -
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Dec 2020The term process model is widely used, but rarely agreed upon. This paper proposes a framework for characterizing and building cognitive process models. Process models... (Review)
Review
The term process model is widely used, but rarely agreed upon. This paper proposes a framework for characterizing and building cognitive process models. Process models model not only inputs and outputs but also model the ongoing information transformations at a given level of abstraction. We argue that the following dimensions characterize process models: They have a scope that includes different levels of abstraction. They specify a hypothesized mental information transformation. They make predictions not only for the behavior of interest but also for processes. The models' predictions for the processes can be derived from the input, without reverse inference from the output data. Moreover, the presumed information transformation steps are not contradicting current knowledge of human cognitive capacities. Lastly, process models require a conceptual scope specifying levels of abstraction for the information entering the mind, the proposed mental events, and the behavior of interest. This framework can be used for refining models before testing them or after testing them empirically, and it does not rely on specific modeling paradigms. It can be a guideline for developing cognitive process models. Moreover, the framework can advance currently unresolved debates about which models belong to the category of process models.
Topics: Cognition; Humans; Models, Psychological
PubMed: 32632887
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-020-01747-2 -
The Oncologist Nov 2019An internist describes preparing to run a marathon in memory of her mother and the injury that prevented her from completing the race. Her perspective on this setback...
An internist describes preparing to run a marathon in memory of her mother and the injury that prevented her from completing the race. Her perspective on this setback was shaped by her own loss and memories of patients whose lives were interrupted by cancer, reminding us that a cancer diagnosis comes without preparation and without choosing. While more cancer patients are surviving, there are still those whose life journeys end much too soon.
Topics: Attitude to Health; Humans; Mental Processes; Narration; Neoplasms; Physical Endurance; Physicians; Running
PubMed: 31431559
DOI: 10.1634/theoncologist.2019-0586 -
Acta Psychologica Feb 2023Laboratory tasks have revealed that mental representations (e.g., mental imagery) can enter consciousness in a manner that is involuntary, reliable, and insuppressible....
Laboratory tasks have revealed that mental representations (e.g., mental imagery) can enter consciousness in a manner that is involuntary, reliable, and insuppressible. These effects illuminate the capacities of involuntary processes as well as the function of voluntary, conscious processing. The Reflexive Imagery Task was developed a decade ago to investigate these involuntary effects systematically. Can refreshing yield such involuntary effects? Refreshing is the reactivating in mind of a mental representation that was activated moments ago. It is associated with mental rehearsal and executive function. We investigated whether a mental representation (subvocalization of an object name) can arise in consciousness involuntarily after a delayed interval, when the relevant stimulus is no longer present, and in response to a cue. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed not to refresh a previously presented (6 s before) stimulus in response to a cue. Involuntary refreshing occurred on a substantive proportion (0.56) of the trials. Experiment 2 replicated and extended this finding (proportion of the trials = 0.53) with a refreshing task that was more challenging than that of Experiment 1. Our findings suggest that mental representations arising from processes such as refreshing can occur involuntarily. We discuss the theoretical implications of this conclusion.
Topics: Humans; Consciousness; Executive Function; Imagery, Psychotherapy; Learning; Mental Recall
PubMed: 36571895
DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103819 -
Journal of Evaluation in Clinical... Jun 2024Early descriptions of clinical reasoning have described a dual process model that relies on analytical or nonanalytical approaches to develop a working diagnosis. In... (Review)
Review
Early descriptions of clinical reasoning have described a dual process model that relies on analytical or nonanalytical approaches to develop a working diagnosis. In this classic research, clinical reasoning is portrayed as an individual-driven cognitive process based on gathering information from the patient encounter, forming mental representations that rely on previous experience and engaging developed patterns to drive working diagnoses and management plans. Indeed, approaches to patient safety, as well as teaching and assessing clinical reasoning focus on the individual clinician, often ignoring the complexity of the system surrounding the diagnostic process. More recent theories and evidence portray clinical reasoning as a dynamic collection of processes that takes place among and between persons across clinical settings. Yet, clinical reasoning, taken as both an individual and a system process, is insufficiently supported by theories of cognition based on individual clinicals and lacks the specificity needed to describe the phenomenology of clinical reasoning. In this review, we reinforce that the modern healthcare ecosystem - with its people, processes and technology - is the context in which health care encounters and clinical reasoning take place.
Topics: Humans; Clinical Reasoning; Cognition; Clinical Decision-Making; Clinical Competence
PubMed: 38300231
DOI: 10.1111/jep.13969 -
Topics in Cognitive Science Oct 2020Unlike behaviorism, cognitive psychology relies on mental concepts to explain behavior. Yet mental processes are not directly observable and multiple explanations are...
Unlike behaviorism, cognitive psychology relies on mental concepts to explain behavior. Yet mental processes are not directly observable and multiple explanations are possible, which poses a challenge for finding a useful framework. In this article, I distinguish three new frameworks for explanations that emerged after the cognitive revolution. The first is called tools-to-theories: Psychologists' new tools for data analysis, such as computers and statistics, are turned into theories of mind. The second proposes as-if theories: Expected utility theory and Bayesian statistics are turned into theories of mind, describing an optimal solution of a problem but not its psychological process. The third studies the adaptive toolbox (formal models of heuristics) that describes mental processes in situations of uncertainty where an optimal solution is unknown. Depending on which framework researchers choose, they will model behavior in either situations of risk or of uncertainty, and construct models of cognitive processes or not. The frameworks also determine what questions are asked and what kind of data are generated. What all three frameworks have in common, however, is a clear preference for formal models rather than explanations by general dichotomies or mere verbal concepts. The frameworks have considerable potential to inform each other and to generate points of integration.
Topics: Bayes Theorem; Cognition; Heuristics; Humans
PubMed: 31692281
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12480 -
Psychological Research Mar 2023Mind wandering is a universal phenomenon in which our attention shifts away from the task at hand toward task-unrelated thoughts. Despite it inherently involving a shift... (Review)
Review
Mind wandering is a universal phenomenon in which our attention shifts away from the task at hand toward task-unrelated thoughts. Despite it inherently involving a shift in mental set, little is known about the role of cognitive flexibility in mind wandering. In this article we consider the potential of cognitive flexibility as a mechanism for mediating and/or regulating the occurrence of mind wandering. Our review begins with a brief introduction to the prominent theories of mind wandering-the executive failure hypothesis, the decoupling hypothesis, the process-occurrence framework, and the resource-control account of sustained attention. Then, after discussing their respective merits and weaknesses, we put forward a new perspective of mind wandering focused on cognitive flexibility, which provides an account more in line with the data to date, including why older populations experience a reduction in mind wandering. After summarizing initial evidence prompting this new perspective, drawn from several mind-wandering and task-switching studies, we recommend avenues for future research aimed at further understanding the importance of cognitive flexibility in mind wandering.
Topics: Humans; Attention; Mental Processes
PubMed: 35348846
DOI: 10.1007/s00426-022-01676-w -
PeerJ 2024Collaborative clinical reasoning (CCR) among healthcare professionals is crucial for maximizing clinical outcomes and patient safety. This scoping review explores CCR to... (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
Collaborative clinical reasoning (CCR) among healthcare professionals is crucial for maximizing clinical outcomes and patient safety. This scoping review explores CCR to address the gap in understanding its definition, structure, and implications.
METHODS
A scoping review was undertaken to examine CCR related studies in healthcare. Medline, PsychInfo, SciVerse Scopus, and Web of Science were searched. Inclusion criteria included full-text articles published between 2011 to 2020. Search terms included cooperative, collaborative, shared, team, collective, reasoning, problem solving, decision making, combined with clinical or medicine or medical, but excluded shared decision making.
RESULTS
A total of 24 articles were identified in the review. The review reveals a growing interest in CCR, with 14 articles emphasizing the decision-making process, five using Multidisciplinary Team-Metric for the Observation of Decision Making (MDTs-MODe), three exploring CCR theory, and two focusing on the problem-solving process. Communication, trust, and team dynamics emerge as key influencers in healthcare decision-making. Notably, only two articles provide specific CCR definitions.
CONCLUSIONS
While decision-making processes dominate CCR studies, a notable gap exists in defining and structuring CCR. Explicit theoretical frameworks, such as those proposed by Blondon et al. and Kiesewetter et al., are crucial for advancing research and understanding CCR dynamics within collaborative teams. This scoping review provides a comprehensive overview of CCR research, revealing a growing interest and diversity in the field. The review emphasizes the need for explicit theoretical frameworks, citing Blondon et al. and Kiesewetter et al. The broader landscape of interprofessional collaboration and clinical reasoning requires exploration.
Topics: Humans; Problem Solving; Delivery of Health Care; Health Personnel; Decision Making, Shared; Clinical Reasoning
PubMed: 38464754
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.17042 -
Psychological Science Aug 2021Giving people more time to process information in working memory improves their performance on working memory tasks. It is often assumed that free time given after...
Giving people more time to process information in working memory improves their performance on working memory tasks. It is often assumed that free time given after presentation of an item enables maintenance processes to counteract forgetting of this item, suggesting that time has a retroactive benefit. Two other hypotheses-short-term consolidation and temporal distinctiveness-entail a local effect of time on immediately preceding and following items. Here, we show instead a novel global and proactive benefit of time in working memory. In three serial-recall experiments (s = 21, 25, and 26 young adults, respectively), we varied the position and duration of the free time within a seven-item list of consonants. Experiment 1 showed that the effect is global and not local. Experiments 2a and 2b showed that increased interitem time benefited performance only for the subsequent items, implying a proactive benefit. This finding rules out maintenance processes, short-term consolidation, and temporal distinctiveness as explanations of the free-time benefit but is consistent with the proposal of a gradually recovering encoding resource.
Topics: Humans; Memory, Short-Term; Mental Recall; Reaction Time; Young Adult
PubMed: 34309420
DOI: 10.1177/0956797621996659 -
Psychological Review Oct 2021The dual-basis theory of metamemory suggests that people evaluate their memory performance based on both processing experience during the memory process and their prior...
The dual-basis theory of metamemory suggests that people evaluate their memory performance based on both processing experience during the memory process and their prior beliefs about overall memory ability. However, few studies have proposed a formal computational model to quantitatively characterize how processing experience and prior beliefs are integrated during metamemory monitoring. Here, we introduce a Bayesian inference model for metamemory (BIM) which provides a theoretical and computational framework for the metamemory monitoring process. BIM assumes that when people evaluate their memory performance, they integrate processing experience and prior beliefs via Bayesian inference. We show that BIM can be fitted to recall or recognition tasks with confidence ratings on either a continuous or discrete scale. Results from data simulation indicate that BIM can successfully recover a majority of generative parameter values, and demonstrate a systematic relationship between parameters in BIM and previous computational models of metacognition such as the stochastic detection and retrieval model (SDRM) and the meta-d' model. We also show examples of fitting BIM to empirical data sets from several experiments, which suggest that the predictions of BIM are consistent with previous studies on metamemory. In addition, when compared with SDRM, BIM could more parsimoniously account for the data of judgments of learning (JOLs) and memory performance from recall tasks. Finally, we discuss an extension of BIM which accounts for belief updating, and conclude with a discussion of how BIM may benefit metamemory research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Bayes Theorem; Humans; Judgment; Learning; Memory; Mental Recall; Metacognition
PubMed: 34043396
DOI: 10.1037/rev0000270