Understanding Of Mind Research Articles

God's mind on morality.

Most research on cognition behind religious belief assumes that understanding of other minds is culturally uniform and follows the Western model of mind, which posits that (a) others' thoughts can be known and (b) action is best explained by mental state inference. This is potentially problematic if, as a growing body of evidence suggests, other populations view minds differently. We recruit Indigenous iTaukei Fijians who hold (a) a model of mind that discourages mental state inference and (b) co-existing Christian (Western) and traditional supernatural agent beliefs. Study 1 (N = 108), uses free-listing to examine how Western and local models of mind relate to beliefs. The Christian God cares about internal states and traits (aligning with the Western model of mind). Study 2 tests whether evoking God triggers intent focus in moral reasoning. Instead, God appears to enforce cultural models of mind in iTaukei (N = 151) and North Americans (N = 561). Expected divine judgement mirrors human judgement; iTaukei (N = 90) expect God to emphasise outcome, while Indo-Fijians (N = 219) and North Americans (N = 412) expect God to emphasise intent. When reminded to think about thoughts, iTaukei (N = 72) expect God to judge outcomes less harshly. Results suggest cultural/cognitive co-evolution: introduced cultural forms can spread new cognitive approaches, while Indigenous beliefs can persist as a reflection of local institutions.

Autism and Panpsychism: Putting Process in Mind

Panpsychism is a metaphysical framework around which science can understand the nature of subjective experience. It affords a scientific view of mind and body as a coherent mindâ–“body unity, with agentive purpose. Fundamental to minds is motor control, a core aspect that combines sensory experience, its evaluation in choice of agent action, and extension into the public expression of intentional movement. This primary mindâ–“body process appears disturbed in autistic individuals. Empirical analysis of the spatio-temporal properties of intentional movement in autism shows a disruption to the efficient prospective integration and control of movement, a core aspect of mind. This paper examines the capacity of a panpsychist metaphysic to explain mind as fundamentally constituted by units of mindâ–“body sensorimotor agency, which can be understood as the basic building blocks of embodied experience. The implications of a post-Cartesian metaphysic in scientific understanding of minds allows for deeper consideration of the role of movement in subjective experience, and its disturbance in autism as a disturbance to the organization of conscious sensorimotor experience and agency. It's impact on modes of cognition and neural substrates is discussed.

왕양명과 퇴옹의 심성론·수행론 비교 연구

왕양명과 퇴옹의 심성론·수행론 비교 연구

“Where’s your bum brain?” Humor, social understanding, and sibling relationship quality in early childhood

AbstractWe investigated humor production in relation to social understanding and relationship quality in early childhood, by coding N = 72 5‐year‐olds’ (M = 5.78, SD = .41) spontaneous humor production during play with an older (n = 34; M age = 7.84 years, SD = .84) or younger sibling (M age = 3.72 years, SD = .54). Children who demonstrated better understanding of minds also produced more humor (preposterous statements and humorous anecdotes, and sound play). Types of humor were differentially associated with siblings’ ratings of positive rapport; associations were moderated by sibling constellation factors. Our findings highlight children's humor production as an important marker of their understanding of minds and of their warm, positive relationships.

Managing Small Businesses During Recession

A recession is narrowing of an economic cycle and it is referred as slowdown of economic action. The macro economic factorsvaries during recessions. There will be a fall in production, employment, GDP, investment, capacity utilization, spending,household income, inflation and business fall. The rate of unemployment and bankruptcies rise during recession. Due to adversesupply shock there will be a drop in consumption and there will be a bursting of economic buddle. Even though owing businessorganizations is not without struggles, the rewards they earn often worth it. Every entrepreneur enjoy great freedom andflexibility in comparison with a regular employee. With a right kind of state of mind and proper understanding of hardship with areto be faced, a proper plan is required to tackle the ups and down in the journey of Entrepreneurship with respect of Small Scalesector. One of the biggest challenges faced by small firms is its difficulty to reach break even. It often takes 2 to 3 years for smallbusinesses to accomplish their goals. Especially during recession, small business organizations often hit the hardest. Reducedspending power, inadequate preparedness for recession, budget constraints etc., are making it impossible for small business toendure. The present article offers various suggestions for small businesses to manage during recession.

In what sense should we talk about the perception of other minds?

By means of spontaneous and unconscious imitation, an observer may be able to directly experience the inner states of another person because the observer and the observed share similar neural pathways. This discovery of a common neural basis reveals the correlative mechanisms through which the intentions of others are perceived. While analysing the implications of this discovery, this paper notes that the correlation does not provide a complete explanation of our understanding of other minds. Instead, the correlation comes into play only to a minimal degree. The paper also explores the epistemological characteristic of the knowledge harboured by other minds. That is, as a kind of private knowledge, the experience of other minds can help us arrive at a relatively consistent understanding of others and engage in communication with them through public expression and the description of mental states. However, it is impossible to truly understand other minds because conscious experience in the strict sense resides only in its owner, and the unique qualia emerging inside the subject cannot be directly observed from a third-person perspective. In this sense, the so-called perception of other minds is not suited to seeking a causal explanation of the ways in which others act, but for reading the meanings expressed by them in a given situation.

Literary meaning as character conceptualization: Re-orienting the cognitive stylistic analysis of character discourse and Free Indirect Thought

Abstract This article establishes the theoretical bases for a more direct and detailed exploration of fictional minds in cognitive stylistics. This discipline usually analyzes narrative discourse in terms of how readers process language and conceptualize narrative meaning, treating literary language more or less explicitly as a window into readers’ mental experiences. However, it is also possible to treat literary language as a window into characters’ minds, which, in spite of their obvious fictionality, could enhance the potential for cognitive linguistic analysis to inform our understanding of the human mind and consciousness more generally. This article explores the nature of linguistic meaning in different speech and thought presentation techniques primarily through the lens of Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar, ultimately prioritizing the representational semantics of Free Indirect Thought. It proposes a more precise understanding of the concept of ‘conceptualizer’ which would validate a type of mind style analysis that is more narrowly focused on illuminating the underlying mental activity of fictional characters instead of readers. It demonstrates this type of focus with a brief analysis of a passage from Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend.

Perception of learning in programming lectures based on mental models

The understanding of the human mind and its ability to learn are objects of research in Cognitive Science. The way a person learns is unique, the result of her previous experiences and the development of her mental model. The understanding of how the students produce their mental models can favor the learning of several disciplines, as evidenced in several papers. In this context, this work investigates the combination of mental models used by students within the lecture of Programming in technical education classes. The analysis was based on a test that identifies strengths and weaknesses in the structuring of mental models.

A Reciprocal and Dynamic Development Model for the Effects of Siblings on Children's Theory of Mind.

In the field of social influences on Theory of Mind (ToM), more research has focused on the role of parents, but less research has examined the impact of siblings on children’s social understanding. We review existing research related to what factors might affect sibling–ToM association and how these potential factors affect ToM. Based on the literature review, we propose an integrative model that unites three categories of factors (i.e., sibling structural variables, sibling individual variables, parental intervening variables) that might have effects on the sibling–ToM association and highlights mental-state talks during sibling interactions at the intersection of sibling-related variables and ToM. Furthermore, we propose some issues arising from this review that need to be clarified in future studies. Specifically, we hope to clarify the specific effects of older and younger siblings on children’s understanding of human minds, the similarities and differences of sibling–ToM association under different cultural backgrounds, and the impact of family social disadvantage (e.g., lower SES) on the sibling–ToM association. All these works would benefit from the verification, revision, and expansion of our reciprocal influence model for the sibling–ToM association.

Demeaning: Dehumanizing others by minimizing the importance of their psychological needs.

We document a tendency to demean others' needs: believing that psychological needs-those requiring mental capacity, and hence more uniquely human (e.g., need for meaning and autonomy)-are relatively less important to others compared with physical needs-those shared with other biological agents, and hence more animalistic (e.g., need for food and sleep). Because valuing psychological needs requires a sophisticated humanlike mind, agents presumed to have relatively weaker mental capacities should also be presumed to value psychological needs less compared with biological needs. Supporting this, our studies found that people demeaned the needs of nonhuman animals (e.g., chimpanzees) and historically dehumanized groups (e.g., drug addicts) more than the needs of close friends or oneself (Studies 1 and 3). Because mental capacities are more readily recognized through introspection than by external observation, people also demean peers' needs more than their own, inferring that one's own behavior is guided more strongly by psychological needs than identical behavior in others (Study 4). Two additional experiments suggest that demeaning could be a systematic error (Studies 5 and 6), as charity donors and students underestimated the importance of homeless people's psychological (vs. physical) needs compared with self-reports and choices from homeless people. Underestimating the importance of others' psychological needs could impair the ability to help others. These experiments indicate that demeaning is a unique facet of dehumanization reflecting a reliable, consequential, and potentially mistaken understanding of others' minds. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Shaky scaffolding: Age differences in cerebellar activation revealed through activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis.

Cognitive neuroscience research has provided foundational insights into aging, but has focused primarily on the cerebral cortex. However, the cerebellum is subject to the effects of aging. Given the importance of this structure in the performance of motor and cognitive tasks, cerebellar differences stand to provide critical insights into age differences in behavior. However, our understanding of cerebellar functional activation in aging is limited. Thus, we completed a meta‐analysis of neuroimaging studies across task domains. Unlike in the cortex where an increase in bilateral activation is seen during cognitive task performance with advanced age, there is less overlap in cerebellar activation across tasks in older adults (OAs) relative to young. Conversely, we see an increase in activation overlap in OAs during motor tasks. We propose that this is due to inputs for comparator processing in the context of control theory (cortical and spinal) that may be differentially impacted in aging. These findings advance our understanding of the aging mind and brain.

HUMOR AS AN ATTRIBUTE OF THE MIND OR A TRIGGER OF HYPE

The philosophical study on laughter deepens our understanding of the human mind. Due to laughter, a person touches the limits of rationality, while not destroying them, only expanding. Distinguishing between non-humorous laughter and humorous one (i. e. generated by humor) helps, on the one hand, to distinguish its merely human form, and, on the other hand, to consider laughter as a universal feature, common both to the human and animal worlds. The concept of humorous amusement allows us to understand the mechanism of transformation of laughter into humorous laughter, and due to that, a conceptual shift occurs. Nevertheless, there is also a possibility for humor to transform into hype. Then, instead of stimulating conceptual changes that expand the horizon of understanding, narrowing or manipulative directing of those changes take place.

Nature of human nature

This article will argue from a Scriptural viewpoint that human nature is not reducible to a set of individual physical characteristics but is embodied and all the qualities of being human are mutually dependent. The substance for this statement is rooted in the biblical confession about the characteristics of the resurrected Body of Christ. This premise could assist the sciences in their quest to define human nature, specifically relating to the mind/brain problem. In addition, it could contribute to the need for consilience and lead scientific research into a more comprehensive understanding of the human mind and brain and its embedded nature.

Children’s Developing Understanding of the Cognitive Abilities of Supernatural and Natural Minds

Despite a wealth of research exploring developmental patterns of children’s understanding of the thoughts and desires of another (or, their theory of mind), relatively little research has explored children’s developing understanding of supernatural minds. Of the work that exists, very few studies have explored whether patterns are similar in other cultural contexts, or religious traditions outside of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. To address this deficit, the present study recruited 2-to-5-year-old children from three countries (United Kingdom, Albania, and Israel) with different religious traditions (Christian, Muslim, and Jewish). Children completed two perception (audio and visual) tasks and one memory task assessing their understanding of natural and supernatural minds’ cognitive abilities. Analyses revealed different patterns for responses about human minds. However, there were similar results across samples for responses about God, suggesting a shared developmental pattern. We conclude that children from religious traditions with a High God (God, Allah, Ha-Shem) share a similar developing concept of God.

Transcranial electric stimulation as a neural interface to gain insight on human brain functions: current knowledge and future perspective.

The use of brain stimulation approaches in social and affective science has greatly increased over the last two decades. The interest in social factors has grown along with technological advances in brain research. Transcranial electric stimulation (tES) is a research tool that allows scientists to establish contributory causality between brain functioning and social behaviour, therefore deepening our understanding of the social mind. Preliminary evidence is also starting to demonstrate that tES, either alone or in combination with pharmacological or behavioural interventions, can alleviate the symptomatology of individuals with affective or social cognition disorders. This review offers an overview of the application of tES in the field of social and affective neuroscience. We discuss the issues and challenges related to this application and suggest an avenue for future basic and translational research.

The archaeology of the social brain revisited: rethinking mind and material culture from a material engagement perspective

The social brain hypothesis (SBH) has played a prominent role in interpreting the relationship between human social, cognitive and technological evolution in archaeology and beyond. This article examines how the SBH has been applied to the Palaeolithic material record, and puts forward a critique of the approach. Informed by Material Engagement Theory (MET) and its understanding of material agency, it is argued that the SBH has an inherently cognitivist understanding of mind and matter at its core. This Cartesian basis has not been fully resolved by archaeological attempts to integrate the SBH with relational models of cognition. At the heart of the issue has been a lack of meaningful consideration of the cognitive agency of things and the evolutionary efficacy of material engagement. This article proposes MET as a useful starting point for rethinking future approaches to human social cognitive becoming in a way that appreciates the co-constitution of brains, bodies and worlds. It also suggests how MET may bridge archaeological and 4E approaches to reconsider concepts such as the ‘mental template’ and Theory of Mind.

The relationship of counterfactual reasoning and false belief understanding: the role of prediction and explanation tasks

AbstractThe relation between the prediction and explanation of the false belief task (FBT) with counterfactual reasoning (CFR) was explored. Fifty eight 3-5 year-olds received a prediction or an explanation FBT, a belief attribution task and some counterfactual questions of increasing difficulty. Linguistic comprehension was also controlled. CFR highly predicted FBT in the explanation version but not in the prediction one. Additionally, results in the explanation version indicate that CFR underlies achievements prior to the understanding of the representational mind and stimulates the explicitness of the mental domain. This study identifies the conditions under which CFR becomes a fundamental cognitive tool for social cognition. The results obtained contribute to the dialog between the two major theoretical approaches: theory-theory and simulation theory.

The Bots of War

“ONLY the dead have seen the end of war,” the philosopher George Santayana once bleakly observed. Humanity's martial instincts are deep-rooted. Over millennia, we have fought wars according to the same strategic principles based in our understanding of each other's minds. But as strategy researcher Kenneth Payne writes in this classic feature extract, reproduced in our new Essential Guide: Artificial Intelligence, the advent of AI introduces another sort of military mind – with consequences we are only just beginning to understand.

ENGLISH-A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF VARIANCES IN THE NATURE OF HUMAN DISPOSITION IN GHAZALIAN THEORY OF SOUL AND FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS

The present study aims at providing the venue to the mystical insights of Ghazalian theory of soul to be integrated into the study of Freudian psychoanalysis, with its principal emphasis on the variances between them. Moreover, the foundational belief of this research proceeds from the assumption that although Freudian psychoanalytic theory has enriched the world with its insightful psychological interpretations, correspondingly appropriate appraisals result from analyzing Ghazalian theory of soul. This study adopts the descriptive and analytic methodology to investigate the variances in both the models and has been developed according to the guidelines provided by Zepetnek’s (1998) theory of comparative literature. The findings of the study reveal that despite certain profound similarities in Ghazlain theory of soul and Freudian psychoanalysis, there exist some variances arising out of specific settings and distinct frames of reference in which these theories are produced. This analytical approach may lead to an alternative critical agenda for the better understanding of human mind.

On Some Anthropological Foundations of Spirituality

Taking into account today’s progression towards a more complete notion of spirituality, the development of its universal, anthropological foundations are of vital importance. These roots can be found in the classical metaphysical understanding of the human mind. From a practical point of view, spirituality expresses itself in the ways in which people think and behave. To better understand the anthropological underpinnings of spirituality, we first examine two distinct ways of discovering reality: intuition of being and intuition of good. Looking at these intuitions will then give us a better understanding of the issues pertaining to spirituality characterized by a self-transcending dynamism.