Iconicity bias and duration

Descriptions of durational relations can be ambiguous, for example, the description "one meeting happened during another" could mean that one meeting started before the other ended, or it could mean that the meetings started and ended simultaneously. A recent theory posits that people mentally simulate descriptions of durational events by representing their starts and ends along a spatial axis, that is, an iconic representation of time. To draw conclusions from this iconic mental model, reasoners consciously scan it in the direction of earlier to later timepoints. The account predicts an iconicity bias: People should prefer descriptions that are congruent with an iconic scanning procedure-descriptions that mention the starts of events before the ends of events-over logically equivalent but incongruent descriptions. Six experiments corroborated the prediction; they show that iconicity biases in temporal reasoning manifest in cases when reasoners consciously evaluate the durations of events. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Temporal explanations

People can explain phenomena by appealing to temporal relations, for example, you might explain a colleague's absence at a meeting by inferring that their prior meeting ended late. Previous explanatory reasoning research shows that people construct causal explanations to resolve causal conflicts. Accordingly, temporal explanations may help reasoners resolve temporal conflicts, and we describe four experimental tests of the hypothesis (N = 240). Experiment 1 provided participants with conflicting or consistent temporal information and elicited natural responses about what followed. Participants spontaneously provided temporal explanations to resolve inconsistencies, and only a minority of them provided more conservative, direct refutations. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that participants preferred temporal explanations over simpler refutations to resolve conflicts, and Experiment 4 showed that participants judged temporal explanations more probable than refutations, and thereby yielded a novel class of conjunction fallacies. The research is the first to examine patterns in temporal explanatory reasoning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Building a transdisciplinary expert consensus on the cognitive drivers of performance under pressure: An international multi-panel Delphi study

Introduction

The ability to perform optimally under pressure is critical across many occupations, including the military, first responders, and competitive sport. Despite recognition that such performance depends on a range of cognitive factors, how common these factors are across performance domains remains unclear. The current study sought to integrate existing knowledge in the performance field in the form of a transdisciplinary expert consensus on the cognitive mechanisms that underlie performance under pressure.

Methods

International experts were recruited from four performance domains [(i) Defense; (ii) Competitive Sport; (iii) Civilian High-stakes; and (iv) Performance Neuroscience]. Experts rated constructs from the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework (and several expert-suggested constructs) across successive rounds, until all constructs reached consensus for inclusion or were eliminated. Finally, included constructs were ranked for their relative importance.

Results

Sixty-eight experts completed the first Delphi round, with 94% of experts retained by the end of the Delphi process. The following 10 constructs reached consensus across all four panels (in order of overall ranking): (1) Attention; (2) Cognitive Control-Performance Monitoring; (3) Arousal and Regulatory Systems-Arousal; (4) Cognitive Control-Goal Selection, Updating, Representation, and Maintenance; (5) Cognitive Control-Response Selection and Inhibition/Suppression; (6) Working memory-Flexible Updating; (7) Working memory-Active Maintenance; (8) Perception and Understanding of Self-Self-knowledge; (9) Working memory-Interference Control, and (10) Expert-suggested-Shifting.

Discussion

Our results identify a set of transdisciplinary neuroscience-informed constructs, validated through expert consensus. This expert consensus is critical to standardizing cognitive assessment and informing mechanism-targeted interventions in the broader field of human performance optimization.

Reasoning About Want

No present theory explains the inferences people draw about the real world when reasoning about "bouletic" relations, that is, predicates that express desires, such as want in "Lee wants to be in love". Linguistic accounts of want define it in terms of a relation to a desirer's beliefs, and how its complement is deemed desirable. In contrast, we describe a new model-based theory that posits that by default, desire predicates such as want contrast desires against facts. In particular, A wants P implies by default that P is not the case, because you cannot want what is already true. On further deliberation, reasoners may infer that A believes, but does not know for certain, that P is not the case. The theory makes several empirical predictions about how people interpret, assess the consistency of, and draw conclusions from desire predicates like want. Seven experiments tested and validated the theory's central predictions. We assess the theory in light of recent proposals of desire predicates.

Understanding Is a Process

How do we gauge understanding? Tests of understanding, such as Turing's imitation game, are numerous; yet, attempts to achieve a state of understanding are not satisfactory assessments. Intelligent agents designed to pass one test of understanding often fall short of others. Rather than approaching understanding as a system state, in this paper, we argue that understanding is a process that changes over time and experience. The only window into the process is through the lens of natural language. Usefully, failures of understanding reveal breakdowns in the process. We propose a set of natural language-based probes that can be used to map the degree of understanding a human or intelligent system has achieved through combinations of successes and failures.

Reasoning about properties: A computational theory

We present a theory of how people reason about properties. Such inferences have been studied since Aristotle's invention of Western logic. But, no previous psychological theory gives an adequate account of them, and most theories do not go beyond syllogistic inferences, such as: All the bankers are architects; Some of the chefs are bankers; What follows? The present theory postulates that such assertions establish relations between properties, which mental models represent in corresponding relations between sets of entities. The theory combines the construction of models with innovative heuristics that scan them to draw conclusions. It explains the processes that can generate a conclusion from premises, decide if a given conclusion is necessary or possible, assess its probability, and evaluate the consistency of a set of assertions. A computer program implementing the theory embodies an intuitive system 1 and a deliberative system 2, and it copes with quantifiers such as more than half the architects. It fit data from over 200 different sorts of inference, including those about the properties of individuals, the properties of a set of individuals, and the properties of several such sets in syllogisms. Another innovation is that the program accounts for differences in reasoning from one individual to another, and from one group of individuals to another: Some tend to reason intuitively but some go beyond intuitions to search for alternative models. The theory extends to inferences about disjunctions of properties, about relations rather than properties, and about the properties of properties. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Much Ado About Nothing: The Mental Representation of Omissive Relations

When the absence of an event causes some outcome, it is an instance of omissive causation. For instance, not eating lunch may cause you to be hungry. Recent psychological proposals concur that the mind represents causal relations, including omissive causal relations, through mental simulation, but they disagree on the form of that simulation. One theory states that people represent omissive causes as force vectors; another states that omissions are representations of contrasting counterfactual simulations; a third argues that people think about omissions by representing sets of iconic possibilities – mental models – in a piecemeal fashion. In this paper, we tease apart the empirical predictions of the three theories and describe experiments that run counter to two of them. Experiments 1 and 2 show that reasoners can infer temporal relations from omissive causes – a pattern that contravenes the force theory. Experiment 3 asked participants to list the possibilities consistent with an omissive cause – it found that they tended to list particular privileged possibilities first, most often, and faster than alternative possibilities. The pattern is consistent with the model theory, but inconsistent with the contrast hypothesis. We marshal the evidence and explain why it helps to solve a long-standing debate about how the mind represents omissions.

Norms Affect Prospective Causal Judgments

People more frequently select norm-violating factors, relative to norm-conforming ones, as the cause of some outcome. Until recently, this abnormal-selection effect has been studied using retrospective vignette-based paradigms. We use a novel set of video stimuli to investigate this effect for prospective causal judgments-that is, judgments about the cause of some future outcome. Four experiments show that people more frequently select norm-violating factors, relative to norm-conforming ones, as the cause of some future outcome. We show that the abnormal-selection effects are not primarily explained by the perception of agency (Experiment 4). We discuss these results in relation to recent efforts to model causal judgment.

Causal conflicts produce domino effects

Inconsistent beliefs call for revision-but which of them should individuals revise? A long-standing view is that they should make minimal changes that restore consistency. An alternative view is that their primary task is to explain how the inconsistency arose. Hence, they are likely to violate minimalism in two ways: they should infer more information than is strictly necessary to establish consistency and they should reject more information than is strictly necessary to establish consistency. Previous studies corroborated the first effect: reasoners use causal simulations to build explanations that resolve inconsistencies. Here, we show that the second effect is true too: they use causal simulations to reject more information than is strictly necessary to establish consistency. When they abandon a cause, the effects of the cause topple like dominos: Reasoners tend to deny the occurrence of each subsequent event in the chain. Four studies corroborated this prediction.

Explanatory completeness

All explanations are incomplete, but reasoners think some explanations are more complete than others. To explain this behavior, we propose a novel theory of how people assess explanatory incompleteness. The account assumes that reasoners represent explanations as causal mental models - iconic representations of possible arrangements of causes and effects. A complete explanation refers to a single integrated model, whereas an incomplete explanation refers to multiple models. The theory predicts that if there exists an unspecified causal relation - a gap - anywhere within an explanation, reasoners must maintain multiple models to handle the gap. They should treat such explanations as less complete than those without a gap. Four experiments provided participants with causal descriptions, some of which yield one explanatory model, e.g., A causes B and B causes C, and some of which demand multiple models, e.g., A causes X and B causes C. Participants across the studies preferred one-model descriptions to multiple-model ones on tasks that implicitly and explicitly required them to assess explanatory completeness. The studies corroborate the theory. They are the first to reveal the mental processes that underlie the assessment of explanatory completeness. We conclude by reviewing the theory in light of extant accounts of causal reasoning.

Reasoning about Durations

A set of assertions is consistent provided they can all be true at the same time. Naive individuals could prove consistency using the formal rules of a logical calculus, but it calls for them to fail to prove the negation of one assertion from the remainder in the set. An alternative procedure is for them to use an intuitive system (System 1) to construct a mental model of all the assertions. The task should be easy in this case. However, some sets of consistent assertions have no intuitive models and call for a deliberative system (System 2) to construct an alternative model. Formal rules and mental models therefore make different predictions. We report three experiments that tested their respective merits. The participants assessed the consistency of temporal descriptions based on statements using "during" and "before." They were more accurate for consistent problems with intuitive models than for those that called for deliberative models. There was no robust difference in accuracy between consistent and inconsistent problems. The results therefore corroborated the model theory.

Teleological generics

Certain "generic" generalizations concern functions and purposes, e.g., cars are for driving. Some functional properties yield unacceptable teleological generics: for instance, cars are for parking seems false even though people park cars as often as they drive them. No theory of teleology in philosophy or psychology can explain what makes teleological generics acceptable. However, a recent theory (Prasada, 2017; Prasada & Dillingham, 2006; Prasada, Khemlani, Leslie, & Glucksberg, 2013) argues that a certain type of mental representation - a "principled" connection between a kind and a property - licenses generic generalizations. The account predicts that people should accept teleological generics that describe kinds and properties linked by a principled connection. Under the analysis, car bears a principled connection to driving (a car's primary purpose) and a non-principled connection to parking (an incidental consequence of driving). We report four experiments that tested and corroborated the theory's predictions, and we describe a regression analysis that rules out alternative accounts. We conclude by showing how the theory we developed can serve as the foundation for a general theory of teleological thinking.

Immediate inferences from quantified assertions

We propose a theory of immediate inferences from assertions containing a single quantifier, such as: All of the artists are bakers; therefore, some of the bakers are artists. The theory is based on mental models and is implemented in a computer program, mReasoner. It predicts three main levels of increasing difficulty: (a) immediate inferences in which the premise and conclusion have identical meanings; (b) those in which the initial mental model of the premise yields the correct conclusion; and (c) those in which only an alternative to the initial model establishes the correct conclusion. These levels of difficulty were corroborated for inferences to necessary conclusions (in a reanalysis of data from Newstead, S. E., & Griggs, R. A. (1983). Drawing inferences from quantified statements: A study of the square of opposition. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22, 535–546), for inferences to modal conclusions, such as, it is possible that all of the bakers are artists (Experiment 1), for inferences with unorthodox quantifiers, such as, most of the artists (Experiment 2), and for inferences about the consistency of pairs of quantified assertions (Experiment 3). The theory also includes three parameters in a stochastic system that predicted quantitative differences in accuracy within the three main sorts of inference.

The negations of conjunctions, conditionals, and disjunctions

How do reasoners understand and formulate denials of compound assertions, such as conjunctions and disjunctions? A theory based on mental models postulates that individuals enumerate models of the various possibilities consistent with the assertions. It therefore predicts a novel interaction: in affirmations, conjunctions, A and B, which refer to one possibility, should be easier to understand than disjunctions, A or B, which refer to more than one possibility; in denials, conjunctions, not(A and B), which refer to more than one possibility, should be harder to understand than disjunctions, not(A or B), which do not. Conditionals are ambiguous and they should be of intermediate difficulty. Experiment 1 corroborated this trend with a task in which the participants selected which possibilities were consistent with assertions, such as: Bob denied that he wore a yellow shirt and he wore blue pants on Tuesday. Experiment 2 likewise showed that participants' own formulations of verbal denials yielded the same trend in which denials of conjunctions were harder than denials of conditionals, which in turn were harder than denials of disjunctions.

Theories of the syllogism: A meta-analysis

Syllogisms are arguments about the properties of entities. They consist of 2 premises and a conclusion, which can each be in 1 of 4 "moods": All A are B, Some A are B, No A are B, and Some A are not B. Their logical analysis began with Aristotle, and their psychological investigation began over 100 years ago. This article outlines the logic of inferences about syllogisms, which includes the evaluation of the consistency of sets of assertions. It also describes the main phenomena of reasoning about properties. There are 12 extant theories of such inferences, and the article outlines each of them and describes their strengths and weaknesses. The theories are of 3 main sorts: heuristic theories that capture principles that could underlie intuitive responses, theories of deliberative reasoning based on formal rules of inference akin to those of logic, and theories of deliberative reasoning based on set-theoretic diagrams or models. The article presents a meta-analysis of these extant theories of syllogisms using data from 6 studies. None of the 12 theories provides an adequate account, and so the article concludes with a guide-based on its qualitative and quantitative analyses-of how best to make progress toward a satisfactory theory.