PCOG - Artigos em revistas internacionais
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- Adaptive memory: The mnemonic value of contaminationPublication . Fernandes, Natália Lisandra; Pandeirada, Josefa N. S.; Soares, Sandra Cristina de Oliveira; Nairne, James S.Humans likely evolved an adaptive disease avoidance system, the Behavioral Immune System, to mitigate the fitness costs posed by pathogens. This system is specially attuned to cues connoting infection risk:When perceived, these cues drive affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses, which work in an articulated way to enhance the organism's chances of survival. The current work investigated the cognitive aspect of this system, specifically if human memory preferentially retains potentially contaminated items. Participants were shown pictures of objects that were touched by sick or healthy people. Each object was linked to verbal descriptions (Experiment 1a and 1b) or visual cues (faces; Experiment 2 and 3) about the person initiating the contact. During encoding participants were required to decide whether each object had been touched by a sick or a healthy person. Then, after a short distractor task, a surprise free recall task for the objects was given. In all experiments, objects touched by sick people were remembered better than those touched by healthy people. This mnemonic advantage was obtained using the same procedure in two different countries suggesting its robustness. Finally, it seems not to rely on the visual cues accompanying the objects, but rather onwhether the context presented establishes a real opportunity for contamination. These results suggest that memory might play a key role in the Behavioral Immune System.
- Advice conditionals about tips and warnings: Interpretations and inferencesPublication . Couto, Marta Barley de La Cueva; Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Byrne, Ruth M. J.Two experiments examine how people interpret and reason about advice conditionals, such as tips, for example, “if you study more your grades will improve”, and warnings, for example, “if you stop exercising you will gain weight”. Experiment 1 showed that when participants reason about whether a tip or warning could be true in different situations, their judgments correspond to a biconditional or conditional interpretation on about half of all trials, but to an enabling or tautology interpretation on many others. Experiment 2 showed that participants make few modus ponens and tollens inferences from tips and warnings, and more modus ponens inferences from tips than warnings. The implications for alternative theories are discussed.
- Cognition and native-language grammar: The organizational role of adjective–noun word order in information representationPublication . Percy, Elise J.; Sherman, Steven J.; Garcia-Marques, Leonel; Mata, André; Garcia-Marques, TeresaIn the present research, we investigated the influence of native-language adjective–noun word order on category accessibility for nouns and adjectives by comparing Portuguese speakers (in whose language nouns precede adjectives) with English speakers (in whose language adjectives precede nouns). In two studies, we presented participants with different numbers of verbal or pictorial stimuli, and subsequently they answered questions about noun- and adjective-conditioned frequencies. The results demonstrated a primacy effect of nativelanguage word order. Specifically, although both populations showed a speed advantage for noun-conditioned questions, this tendency was significantly stronger for Portuguese than for American participants. We discuss the important role of native-language syntax rules for the categorization and representation of information.
- Counterfactual thinking and functional differences in depressionPublication . Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Power, Michael J.; Juhos, Csongor; Senos, JorgeThe purpose of the studies reported in this paper was to evaluate the function of counterfactual thinking (CT) in depression. In Experiment 1, depressed and non-depressed participants were asked to imagine themselves as the protagonist of a hypothetical situation, and to think counterfactually about three different scenarios. The results showed that there was a similar CT style (in terms of direction, structure and focus of mutation) for the depressed and the nondepressed groups. It was also found that the perceived preparation for a future similar situation increased after CT and, contrary to our hypotheses, this effect was observed in both groups. In Experiment 2, a real-life situation was used (a course examination) in which participants experienced a negative outcome (a poor score on the test). Again, it was observed that depressed and non-depressed participants showed the same CT style, but non-depressed participants were more likely to use CT spontaneously. In addition, the second study showed further differences between the two groups: depressed participants not only showed a lack of cognitive benefi ts from thinking counterfactually (i.e., after CT they do not feel more prepared for future similar events, nor able to avoid a similar bad outcome, in contrast to the non-depressed participants), but also show a lack of behavioural changes (both intentions to change and actual changes over the subsequent week). In conclusion, these results provide evidence about the function of CT both in depressed and in non-depressed thinking, and highlight both the similarities and differences for these two groups.
- Entre los caminos A y B elijo el incierto C: El bien, el mal y los dilemas éticosPublication . Cláudio, VictorEn este artículo partimos de las definiciones de Bien y de Mal que nos ofrece la filosofía para la interpretación de los dilemas éticos en la práctica de la Psicología. Subrayamos que, como referencia en el proceso de decisión subyacente a la resolución de los dilemas éticos, los psicólogos tienen además del Código Deontológico nacional, el Meta-Código de Ética europeo, sus principios morales, éticos y sus emociones. Se discuten algunos dilemas éticos que tienen lugar en la práctica de la Psicología, adelantando tres respuestas posibles, siendo la identificada como camino C aquella que consideramos que causa menos daño.
- How children with autism reason about other's intentions: False-belief and counterfactual inferencesPublication . Rasga, Célia Maria Batalha Silva; Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Byrne, Ruth M. J.We examine false belief and counterfactual reasoning in children with autism with a new change-of-intentions task. Children listened to stories, for example, Anne is picking up toys and John hears her say she wants to find her ball. John goes away and the reason for Anne's action changes-Anne's mother tells her to tidy her bedroom. We asked, 'What will John believe is the reason that Anne is picking up toys?' which requires a false-belief inference, and 'If Anne's mother hadn't asked Anne to tidy her room, what would have been the reason she was picking up toys?' which requires a counterfactual inference. We tested children aged 6, 8 and 10 years. Children with autism made fewer correct inferences than typically developing children at 8 years, but by 10 years there was no difference. Children with autism made fewer correct false-belief than counterfactual inferences, just like typically developing children.
- A Priori true and false conditionalsPublication . Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Rasga, Célia Maria Batalha Silva; Johnson-Laird, Philip N.The theory of mental models postulates that meaning and knowledge can modulate the interpretation of conditionals. The theory's computer implementation implied that certain conditionals should be true or false without the need for evidence. Three experiments corroborated this prediction. In Experiment 1, nearly 500 participants evaluated 24 conditionals as true or false, and they justified their judgments by completing sentences of the form, It is impossible that A and ___ appropriately. In Experiment 2, participants evaluated 16 conditionals and provided their own justifications, which tended to be explanations rather than logical justifications. In Experiment 3, the participants also evaluated as possible or impossible each of the four cases in the partitions of 16 conditionals: A and C, A and not-C, not-A and C, not-A and not-C. These evaluations corroborated the model theory. We consider the implications of these results for theories of reasoning based on logic, probabilistic logic, and suppositions.
- A priori true and false conditionalsPublication . Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Rasga, Célia Maria Batalha Silva; Johnson-Laird, Philip N.The theory of mental models postulates that meaning and knowledge can modulate the interpretation of conditionals. The theory's computer implementation implied that certain conditionals should be true or false without the need for evidence. Three experiments corroborated this prediction. In Experiment 1, nearly 500 participants evaluated 24 conditionals as true or false, and they justified their judgments by completing sentences of the form, It is impossible that A and ___ appropriately. In Experiment 2, participants evaluated 16 conditionals and provided their own justifications, which tended to be explanations rather than logical justifications. In Experiment 3, the participants also evaluated as possible or impossible each of the four cases in the partitions of 16 conditionals: A and C, A and not-C, not-A and C, not-A and not-C. These evaluations corroborated the model theory. We consider the implications of these results for theories of reasoning based on logic, probabilistic logic, and suppositions.
- Reasoning with deontic and counterfactual conditionalsPublication . Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Byrne, Ruth M. J.We report two new phenomena of deontic reasoning: (1) For conditionals with deontic content such as, “If the nurse cleaned up the blood then she must have worn rubber gloves”, reasoners make more modus tollens inferences (from “she did not wear rubber gloves” to “she did not clean up the blood”) compared to conditionals with epistemic content. (2) For conditionals in the subjunctive mood with deontic content, such as, “If the nurse had cleaned up the blood then she must have had to wear rubber gloves”, reasoners make the same frequency of all inferences as they do for conditionals in the indicative mood with deontic content. In this regard, subjunctive deontics are different from subjunctive epistemic conditionals: reasoners interpret subjunctive epistemic conditionals as counterfactual and they make more negative inferences such as modus tollens from them. The experiments show these two phenomena occur for deontic conditionals that contain the modal auxiliary “must” and ones that do not. We discuss the results in terms of the mental representations of deontic conditionals and of counterfactual conditionals.
- Temporal and spatial relations in sentential reasoningPublication . Juhos, Csongor; Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Johnson-Laird, Philip N.The mental model theory postulates that the meanings of assertions, and knowledge about their context can modulate the logical meaning of sentential connectives, such as ‘‘if’’ and ‘‘or’’. One known effect of modulation is to block the representation of possibilities to which a proposition refers. But, modulation should also add relational information, such as temporal order, to models of possibilities. Three experiments tested this prediction. Experiment 1 showed that individuals spontaneously matched the tense of their conclusions (in Portuguese) to embody implied, but unexpressed, temporal relations in conditional premises. Experiment 2 demonstrated the same phenomenon in inferences from disjunctions. Experiment 3 showed that the number of such implicit relations in inferences from conditionals affects both accuracy and the speed of reasoning. These results support the modulation hypothesis.