Capacity For Introspection Research Articles

Unspeeded response time as an implicit measure of food appraisal

Affective responses are often adopted as proxy measures of potential food choices. To reliably assess affective responses there is a need for implicit measures that are less prone to cognitive biases, context, lack of introspective capacity, social desirability, and intercultural differences than the explicit self-report measures that are commonly used. In this study, we investigated the relation between unspeeded response time (URT) and the affective appraisal (in terms of valence and arousal) for food images. We find that URT is negatively correlated with both absolute valence and arousal: URT is larger for food images that are rated near-neutral (ambiguous) on valence and low on arousal than for images eliciting more extreme positive and negative affective ratings. Participants need more time for the affective evaluation of food images with lower emotional clarity than those with clear-cut emotional quality. Hence, the URT may serve as a continuous and easily observable implicit evaluation measure that complements self-report measures.

Metacognitive Psychophysics in Humans, Animals, and AI: A Research Agenda for Mapping Introspective Systems

Kammerer and Frankish (this issue) propose an exciting new research programme on the computational form of introspective systems. Pursuing this goal requires measures that can isolate introspective capacity from response biases and first-order processes. I suggest that metacognitive psychophysics is well placed to meet this challenge, allowing the mapping of introspective architectures in humans, animals, and artificial systems.

Who feels good in solitude? A qualitative analysis of the personality and mindset factors relating to well‐being when alone

AbstractWhat leads to peaceful and enjoyable solitude? Little is known about which personality and mindset qualities benefit individuals during time spent alone. The current study was designed to build a foundation for future quantitative and qualitative research making a priori predictions about well‐being (e.g., relaxation) or ill‐being (e.g., loneliness) when individuals are in solitude. Semi‐structured interviews of n = 60 participants, aged 19–80, were analyzed into themes. Exposure to the benefits of solitude early in life and personality characteristics that cross life's domains (capacity for introspection and self‐reflection and optimism) were associated with enjoying solitude. Mindsets recognizing that solitude benefits self‐connection, as well as in situ factors of creativity and curiosity, appeared to play important roles. In a final theme, self‐compassion, a present focus and perspective taking helped to alleviate discomfort during difficult moments of solitude. These findings deepen our understanding of which qualities individuals bring forward to enhance their moments of solitude.

Psychotherapy with Psilocybin for Depression: Systematic Review

Depression is a common mental health issue that affects 280 million people in the world with a high mortality rate, as well as being a leading cause of disability. Psychopharmacological therapies with psychedelics, particularly those with psilocybin, are showing promising potential for the treatment of depression, among other conditions. Some of their benefits include a rapid and exponential improvement in depressive symptoms and an increased sense of well-being that can last for months after the treatment, as well as a greater development of introspective capacity. The aim of this project was to provide experimental evidence about therapeutic procedures along with psilocybin for the treatment of major depressive disorder. The project highlights eight studies that examined this condition. Some of them dealt with treatment-resistant depression while others dealt with depression due to a life-threatening disease such as cancer. These publications affirm the efficiency of the psilocybin therapy for depression, with only one or two doses in conjunction with psychological support during the process.

Renia's Diary [Dziennik, 1939–1942

<i>Renia's Diary</i> [Dziennik, 1939–1942

Borderline Personality Disorder: Clinical Guidelines for Treatment.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is fundamentally a syndrome composed of symptoms (primarily of emotional dysregulation) and a number of true personality traits (such as inordinate anger, impulsivity, and a tendency to stress-related paranoid ideation). Whereas schizotypal personality disorder, with its cognitive peculiarities (ideas of reference, odd beliefs, eccentric speech), is closely linked as a genetic condition-"borderline" to the major condition schizophrenia-BPD is less closely linked to bipolar disorder. Some cases of BPD are linked genetically to and are in the "border" of bipolar disorder. But the condition can also arise from adverse post-natal factors: parental cruelty or neglect, or incest. In some BPD patients, both are present: risk genes for bipolar disorder and adverse conditions within the family. The genetic risk is often overlooked. To avoid this, initial evaluations should always include a careful and extensive family history for mood disorders, and should extend out to grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Where the history suggests a genetic link to bipolar disorder, a mood stabilizer such as lithium or lamotrigine, even in modest doses, may be particularly beneficial, more so than conventional antidepressants. In some patients, ADHD was present in childhood, BPD was diagnosed during or after puberty, and a form of bipolar disorder becomes apparent during their 20s. As for the psychotherapeutic component, the patient's cognitive style and capacity for introspection will help determine whether a primarily expressive (psychoanalytically oriented) technique is preferable or a primarily cognitive-behavioral technique. Flexibility is necessary, since during emotional crises, supportive and limit-setting interventions will be needed, along with psychotropic medications, and where necessary, programs to help combat substance abuse (which is common among patients with BPD).

Students’ Morality Development in Primary Public Schools of Sindh Province: An Application of Moral Foundation Theory

The paper investigated the effectiveness of the implemented curriculum in emphasizing the moral values of students in primary public sector schools in Sindh. Also it analyzes the role played by the school principals/head teachers in promoting moral values among students. The paper also explored how teachers at primary schools contribute to developing the moral values of students. The study has collected 177 responses from the teachers of primary public level schools of five districts of Sindh province using purposive sampling technique while PLS-SEM has been employed for data analysis using SmartPLS v3.2.9. The results have shown that effectiveness of curriculum, teachers’ implicit beliefs, and role of principals have positive effect on students’ moral development while teachers’ implicit beliefs and role of principals have positive effect on role of teachers; whereas, teachers’ implicit beliefs and role of principals have positive effect on effectiveness of curriculum. The mediation analysis showed that effectiveness of curriculum has positive mediation between teachers’ implicit beliefs and role of principals towards students’ moral development. However, socioeconomic support has no significant moderating effect on the role of curriculum effectiveness, teachers’ and principals’ role towards students’ moral development. In this regards, it has been recommended that schools can best promote students' moral growth by assisting instructors in coping with the difficulties of their jobs and developing teachers' capacity for introspection and empathy. Students undoubtedly benefit from community service, being reminded of essential qualities, and developing good habits.

Empathy: Expanding the Capacity for Humanness and Freedom.

This paper elaborates on the implications of Heinz Kohut's radical revision of the concepts of introspection and empathy for psychoanalytic practice and therapeutics. I focus on three of Kohut's papers: "Introspection, Empathy, and Psychoanalysis," published in 1959, and its follow-up, "On Empathy", and "Introspection, Empathy, and the Semi-Circle of Mental Health," both published in 1981. Specifically, I address the importance of the analysand's introspective capacity as an active element in the therapeutic process augmented by the empathy of the analyst in the form of understanding and interpretation. Analysands enter psychoanalysis because they are aware that they cannot solve the problems with which they suffer or access the selfobject milieu that would help them. Through analysis patients' capacity for introspection and action is broadened and deepened, allowing them to understand and deal creatively with their problems, particularly their inability to fulfill the potential of their self.

De l’identité numérique vers la personnalité connectée, du diagnosticien augmenté vers le soignant virtuel : quels enjeux pour la psychologie et la psychiatrie du futur ?

De l’identité numérique vers la personnalité connectée, du diagnosticien augmenté vers le soignant virtuel : quels enjeux pour la psychologie et la psychiatrie du futur ?

Impact of a Healing Garden on Self-Consciousness in Patients with Advanced Alzheimer’s Disease: An Exploratory Study1

The environment of patients with Alzheimer's disease and related disorders (ADRD) intensifies the consequences of cognitive impairment and exacerbates behavioral problems if inappropriate or, conversely, mitigate these problems if its design is tailored to the needs of these persons. We evaluate the impacts of hospitalization and of a specific healing garden on self-consciousness which represent a central impairment in ADRD. The self-consciousness questionnaire (SCQ), validated for its assessment at mild to moderate phases of the disease, explores the dimensions of personal identity, awareness of cognitive deficiencies, self-assessment of affective state, awareness of body representation, prospective memory, capacity for introspection, and moral judgments. After having verified, by means of a preliminary study, its feasibility to the more advanced stages of the disease, this questionnaire allowed assessment of the impact of the environment by comparing, in routine care, patients hospitalized in a cognitive-behavioral unit who solely remain indoors with others who use the Art, Memory and Life healing garden. A significant decrease in SCQ due to an increase in anosognosia during hospitalization was observed in the group that remained indoors. For the group using the garden, a positive effect on overall SCQ score was observed, as a result of a significant improvement in body representation as the driving parameter. Factors that are grounded in the hypotheses that spearheaded its conception, such as sensory enrichment, familiarity, contact with nature, scaffolding role for cognitive functions, supportive effect for social interactions, and the "Nancy hypotheses of beauty", thus contribute to their validation.

PROBLEM OF STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL COMPONENT OF HEALTH PROTECTION COMPETENCE OF FUTURE TEACHERS: SYSTEM APPROACH

The article is devoted to psychological and pedagogical training of future teachers to professional activity. The main purpose of the article is the selection of a systematic approach to the study of psychological component of health protection competence of future teachers on the basis of summarizing the relevant theoretical sources. Presents a brief theoretical overview of current research on the formation health protection competence of future teachers. Analyzes different approaches to the interpretation of the concept of «health protection competence» in the works of leading Ukrainian and foreign scientists, characterized its components. Filed our own interpretation of the concept of health protection competence as an integral characteristic, including: a deep knowledge of the person about the nature and indicators of the concept of «mental health»; strong motivation and unconditional acceptance of the idea that mental health is extremely important to take care; practical and skills allowing daily care of your mental health; the capacity for introspection and critical to the level of such skills at; the understanding of how these knowledge and skills passed on to younger generations. The article highlights the self a systematic approach to the study of psychological component of health protection competence of future teachers on the basis of criteria - cognitive, motivational and evaluative, activity and reflexive. Defined and characterized the performance of each of these criteria, and also lists the recommended diagnostic tools to study them. The characteristics of the level of development of psychological component of health protection competence of future teachers (high, medium and low), based on the extent to which indicators for each of the selected criteria for the study of psychological component of health protection competence of students. Prospects for development of further empirical research of the psychological component of health protection competence of students of pedagogical specialties. In the future, this information is planned to be used in improving the content of curricula of anthropological disciplines in the first year of pedagogical specialties.

Les accidents vasculaires cérébraux et la prise en charge psychologique à domicile des personnes qui en sont victimes

Stroke is a major public health issue with a high priority. Prevention plays an important role in reducing the impact of the disease. Although quick health intervention reduces death, it results in an increased number of disabled people. The handicap is not always visible, and requires appropriate strategies for the patient. Such approaches aim to allow patients to stay at home, reducing their time spent in the hospital. However, transitioning from the hospital is always a tricky time, as efforts are necessary to adapt and reorganize around the new everyday life of the affected people. In this context, neuropsychology offers interesting perspectives. In-home care not only allows the patient and their family to better deal with a new perception of the body, but also enables personalized support by bringing care within the intimate environment where they live. Post-stroke cognitive impairment decreases the autonomy and introspective capacities of patients. In Limousin, a trained team of itinerant healthcare professionals (HEMIPASS) was founded in 2010 to support patients and their relatives at home. Psychologists Michèle Chazot-Balcon, Elise Henry and the neurologist Jean-Yves Salle from the University Hospital in Limoges, discuss the semiology of stroke, its possible psychological effects, and how to deal with them from the patient's home.

Inventing the enemy.

The following article elaborates on the need for the Other in order to delineate the self and one's identity, and the eternal psychological process of turning the Other into an enemy. A parallel process, which can be observed nowadays, leads to a disregard for the otherness of the Other that results in the blurring of identity and an internal loss of the differentiation of intrapsychic structures. Both psychological processes share a dehumanizing approach which leads to neurosis and alienation. In order to withstand these tendencies, a revision of analytical psychology's view of the psyche and of the practice of Jungian analysis is warranted: an alternative to the 'Fear of the Feminine' described by Erich Neumann in 1959. It is suggested that consciousness and unconsciousness intertwine but from a position of equality and reciprocity. Such an attitude does not inspire fear. Rather, it recognizes the need of one for the Other and the inevitability of this situation. Moreover, this need and interdependence on equal grounds nourish the wish to know the Other, to be aware of the differences, and yet, at the same time, to acknowledge how close the Other really is. Analytical psychological therapy based on this model stresses the power of the ego while also strengthening its capacity for introspection.

In Defense of Discomfort: The Role of Challenging Emotions in the Growth Toward Self-Authorship on a Weekend Retreat

This article explores the experiences of undergraduate students participating in a retreat providing guidance toward self-authorship. In post-retreat interviews, participants discussed their experiences of discomfort during the retreat and its importance to their personal growth. Sources of discomfort included inhabiting unfamiliar environments and roles, participating in small group processes, and experiencing unpleasant emotions. Following the retreat, participants linked these experiences with greater capacity for introspection and greater ability to assert themselves. Implications for fostering students’ self-authorship are discussed, including the need for greater engagement with students’ emotions and for college educators to reconsider their own relationship with discomfort.

Incremental Learning Introspective Movement Primitives From Multimodal Unstructured Demonstrations

Learning movement primitive from unstructured demonstrations has become a popular topic in recent years, which provides a natural way to endow human-inspired skills to robots. The main idea of movement primitives is that should suffice to reconstruct a large set of complex manipulation tasks. However, conventional learning methods mostly focus on the kinesthetic variables and ignore those critical introspective capacities in manipulation such as movement generalization and assessment of the sensory signals. In this paper, we investigate the association of generalization, fault detection, fault diagnoses, and task exploration during manipulation task, and call such movement primitives augmented with introspective capacities Introspective Movement Primitives (IMP). With our previous work, this paper mainly addresses how IMPs can be acquired by assessing the quality of multimodal sensory data of unstructured demonstrations and how they can incrementally create manipulation task by reverse execution and human interaction. Experimental evaluation on a human-robot collaborative packaging task with a Rethink Baxter robot, results indicate that our proposed method can effectively increase robustness towards external perturbations and adaptive exploration during robot manipulation task.

Exploring Racism and Health: An Intensive Interactive Session for Medical Students.

Growing recognition of the deleterious effects of racism on health has led to calls for increased education on racism for health care professionals. As part of a larger curriculum on health equity and social justice, we developed a new educational session on racism for first-year medical students consisting of a lecture followed by a case-based small-group discussion. Over the academic years of 2016-2017, 2017-2018, and 2018-2019, a total of 536 first-year medical students participated in this mandatory session. The course materials were developed as a collaboration between faculty and students. The lecture was delivered in a large-group format; the small-group case-based discussion consisted of 10-12 students with one upper-level student facilitator. The majority of respondents for the course evaluation felt that the course had met its stated objectives, and many commented that they had an increased awareness of the role of racism in shaping health. Students felt that the small-group activity was especially powerful for learning about racism. Active student involvement in curriculum development and small-group facilitation was critical for successful buy-in from students. Additional content on bias, stereotyping, and health care disparities will be the focus of faculty development programs and will also be integrated into the clerkships to build on these important topics as students are immersed in clinical care.

Mirror Synesthesia and the Limits of Misidentification

Mirror Synesthesia and the Limits of Misidentification Michael Young (bio) In Possibilities of Misidentification, Ashwell (2018) contends that the immunity principle (IP) developed and defended in my Pathologies of Thought and First Person Authority "doesn't show us anything about introspection or the first person—which should make us wonder whether it really captures that's at stake in discussions of IEM" (p. 162). Ashwell's argument hinges on two claims: (1) IP turns on features that are not unique to introspection, to the first person, or to "subject matter that is thought to have IEM" (p. 162), and(2) IP does not yet capture "the standard claim of IEM for introspective self-attribution" (p. 162). Ashwell thereupon contends that the immunity furnished by IP "might be merely contingent" (p. 162). Although the structure of the argument in Pathologies may be used to defend other versions of IEM principles (and whether it does is not obviously consequential for the positions advanced on its basis), Ashwell's example of BIP as a version of an IEM principle that does not involve first-personal introspective judgments is plainly defeasible in a way that IP is not. To illustrate the shortcomings of BIP, suppose a first-time visitor is traveling through Lewiston (Maine) and hears loud music and a cacophony of voices cheering and shouting. These sounds seem to the agent to be emanating from a Bates College building, and so the agent thinks that, 'Bates College is a place where people are rowdy right now.' Unbeknownst to this agent, the perceived hubbub is originating from a football field behind Bates College belonging to a local high school hosting a sporting competition. The agent is correct that there is some place where people are rowdy right now, but the agent is wrong about whether Bates College is the place where people are rowdy right now. In this case, the information making it sensible for the agent to think that the property of rowdiness is instantiated does not concomitantly individuate the entity instantiating that property. This point is highlighted if one considers that the agent was blindfolded during this first-time stroll through Lewiston; the information rendering it sensible to think that rowdiness is instantiated somewhere would not concomitantly individuate what in particular instantiates this property. This case and others like it are thus unlike thoughts* arrived at through the first-person perspective that take as their subject the essential indexical 'I'—those characterized by IP. Ashwell might counter that in the foregoing cases the evidence is not evidence about Bates College; however, Ashwell does not advance a plausible account of evidence that could support this contention. Evidence in this context, as it seems to operate in many contexts, suggests but does not indefeasibly demonstrate a state of affairs that was previously ambiguous or unknown. The [End Page 169] epistemic gap between suggestion and indefeasible demonstration with respect to evidence opens up the possibility for an agent to justifiably take as x as evidence for p situation z, even if it is the case that ~p in z. Regardless of the approach one takes to evidence, IP, unlike BIP, hinges on grounding perspectives that may function through mental activity that is not evidence-like in nature in the first place. In first-personal cases, the information making it sensible for one to think that there is some property being instantiated concomitantly individuates the thing that instantiates the property. Arriving at thoughts about oneself is in this way unlike thoughts typically arrived at about other people or other things. Ashwell curiously asserts that "it is only contingent that other subject matters lack such an exclusive 'way' to obtain grounds for judgments about them; we can surely imagine having a faculty whose exclusive use is for coming to judgments about Bates College" (p. 162), yet concedes that "such a possibility is definitely a strange one" (p. 162). Even if robustly conceivable, it would not follow from such possibilities that IP is not grounded in something peculiar to privileged access or the first-personal. Indeed, such possibilities might hinge on aberrant amplifications of typical introspective capacities, expansions of the perceived boundaries of selfhood, or...

Possessions Including Poltergeist: "Are You There, Madness?"

Beliefs involving the devil and possession figured in the nosography of mental illness that alienists gradually established during the 19th century. The description of this form of cenesthetic hallucination resulted in "the possessed" being viewed as patients, which protected them from the trials and punishments they so frequently faced in earlier centuries. According to psychologists, this illusion of mental duality is linked to impairment of introspective capacities. Current brain imaging suggests inappropriate activity of the default mode network, which interferes with attentional systems during the hallucinatory episode.

Children’s metacognition and mindful awareness of breathing and thinking

Children ages 4, 6, and 8-years old were tested for their introspective capacity to mindfully attend to the natural flow of their breath and thought as well as their objective knowledge of breathing and thinking as continuous, necessary bio-psychological processes. Results showed consistent developmental progression in breath awareness as well as process knowledge about both breathing and thinking. Distinctly, there was no improvement in thought awareness with age, which remained consistently poor. However, children who received the breath awareness task first performed better on the thought awareness task, suggesting that breath awareness may facilitate thought awareness. Process knowledge about breathing and thinking was significantly inter-correlated, but such knowledge was not significantly related to awareness abilities when controlling for age. The study points to the need for more systematic applied research examining development of mindfulness practices and metacognitive knowledge.

Introspective classification for robot perception

In robotics, the use of a classification framework which produces scores with inappropriate confidences will ultimately lead to the robot making dangerous decisions. In order to select a framework which will make the best decisions, we should pay careful attention to the ways in which it generates scores. Precision and recall have been widely adopted as canonical metrics to quantify the performance of learning algorithms, but for robotics applications involving mission-critical decision making, good performance in relation to these metrics is insufficient. We introduce and motivate the importance of a classifier’s introspective capacity: the ability to associate an appropriate assessment of confidence with any test case. We propose that a key ingredient for introspection is a framework’s potential to increase its uncertainty with the distance between a test datum its training data. We compare the introspective capacities of a number of commonly used classification frameworks in both classification and detection tasks, and show that better introspection leads to improved decision making in the context of tasks such as autonomous driving or semantic map generation.