PCOG - Artigos em revistas internacionais
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- 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.
- The relation between factual and counterfactual conditionalsPublication . Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Rasga, Célia Maria Batalha Silva; Johnson-Laird, Philip N.What is the relation between factual conditionals: If A happened then B happened, and counterfactual conditionals: If A had happened then B would have happened? Some theorists propose quite different semantics for the two. In contrast, the theory of mental models and its computer implementation interrelates them. It postulates that both can have a priori truth values, and that the semantic bases of both are possibilities: states that are possible for factual conditionals, and that were once possible but that did not happen for counterfactual conditionals. Two experiments supported these relations. Experiment 1 showed that, like factual conditionals, certain counterfactuals are true a priori, and others are false a priori. Experiment 2 replicated this result and showed that participants selected appropriate paraphrases, referring, respectively, to real and to counterfactual possibilities, for the two sorts of conditional. These results are contrary to alternative accounts of conditionals.
- 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.
- The memory of what we do not recall: Dissociations and theoretical debates in the study of implicit memoryPublication . Ramos, Tânia; Marques, João Amaral; Garcia-Marques, LeonelImplicit memory reflects itself on situations in which previously acquired information is expressed, without awareness or intention. The study of implicit memory has had a profound impact on how researchers have investigated the human memory. In this paper, we review the main studies which have revealed dissociations between direct and indirect tests of memory, and address the two main theoretical approaches used to explain these dissociations: the processing view and the multiple systems view. We then describe recent neuroscience studies and discuss its contributions to help clarify the debate about the mechanisms involved in explicit and implicit memory. Finally, we critically analyze some questions and controversies surrounding this literature, such as (a) the transparency assumption and the contamination issue; and (b) the theoretical utility of the dissociations. We emphasize that the biggest challenge for future research is to develop comprehensive theories that integrate behavioral and neuroscience findings.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- The control-freak mind : Stereotypical biases are eliminated following conflict-activated cognitive controlPublication . Kleiman, Tali; Hassin, Ran R.; Trope, YaacovNumerous daily situations require control for successful goal attainment. An important question is whether control can adjust across situations, to create control readiness from one situation to the next. Using trial to trial control adjustment paradigms, previous research generally suggested that control adjustments are domain specific. However, this research typically used neutral stimuli (e.g., single letters) devoid of personally and socially relevant goals. We propose that personal relevance may be an important modulator of control adjustment and, hence, that personally relevant control tasks can benefit from control readiness, even if it is produced by a different task. In 2 experiments we test whether control over the expression of stereotypes, a highly meaningful and desirable goal for many, can benefit from control readiness evoked by a neutral unrelated Flanker task. Results suggest that stereotype-driven behavior is modulated by independently activated control and that personal relevance may facilitate control adjustments across domains.
- 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.
- 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.