Tag: psychology

Brands

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch

 

CBT versus counselling. Mental models versus mental rules. Bayesianism versus everything. There are lots of brand wars in psychology which stifle the development of theory and lead to tedious arguments. This does get recognised in print now and again. Here are some examples.

The first comes from a discussion of the ACT-R theory (Anderson, 2007, p. 19):

“… this book is not about ACT-R; rather I am using ACT-R as a tool to describe the mind. […] We may be proud of our ACT-R models and think they are better than others […] but we try not to lose track of the fact that they are just a way of describing what is really of interest.”

Later (p. 239) Anderson cites Herbert Simon, who complained that

“… ‘brand names’ tend to make difficult the analysis and comparison of […] mechanisms or the exchange of knowledge between research groups. […] Physicists did not divide quantum mechanics into the Heisenberg Brand, the Schrodinger Brand, and the Dirac brand.”

Another example, from sociology: a book on social class (Wright, 1997, p. 34):

“Readers who are highly skeptical of the Marxist tradition for whatever reasons might feel that there is no point in struggling through the numbers and graphs in the rest of this book. If the conceptual justifications for the categories are unredeemably flawed, it might be thought, the empirical results generated with those categories will be worthless. This would be, I think, a mistake. The empirical categories themselves can be interpreted in a Weberian or hybrid manner. […] As is usually the case in sociology, the empirical categories are underdetermined by the theoretical frameworks within which they are generated or interpreted.”

References

Anderson, J. R. (2007). How can the human mind occur in the physical universe? Oxford University Press

Wright, E. O. (1997). Class counts: student edition. Cambridge University Press.

Bentall on the “Kraepelinian paradigm”

Bentall, R. Madness explained: why we must reject the Kraepelinian paradigm and replace it with a `complaint-orientated’ approach to understanding mental illness. Medical Hypotheses, 2006, 66, 220-233:

“Instead of attempting to explain mythical diagnostic entities, we should try and explain the actual complaints that patients bring to the clinic, such as hallucinations, delusions, disordered communication and mania. This strategy assumes that, once these complaints have each been explained in turn, there will be no ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘bipolar disorder’ leftover to account for.”

…

“a simple list of a patient’s complaints contains much more useful information than a Kraepelinian diagnosis, and takes less effort (because complaints have to be assessed in order to generate a diagnosis). In fact, cognitive-behaviour therapists have long argued that lists of this kind – the ‘problem list’ in the jargon of the approach – is the best starting point for clinical intervention… A complaint-orientated approach implies that treatments should be delivered according to patients’ needs.”

Prover9 and Mace4

Just found two fantastic programs and a GUI for exploring first-order classical models and also automated proof, Prover9 and Mace4.  There are many other theorem provers and model checkers out there.  This one is special as it comes as a self-contained and easy to use package for Windows and Macs.

There are many impressive examples built in which you can play with.  To start easy, I gave it a syllogism:

all B are A
no B are C

with existential presupposition, which is expressed:

exists x a(x).
exists x b(x).
exists x c(x).
all x (b(x) -> a(x)).
all x (b(x) -> -c(x)).

and asked it to find a model. Out popped a model with two individuals, named 0 and 1:

a(0).
- a(1).

b(0).
- b(1).

- c(0).
c(1).

So individual 0 is an A, a B, but not a C. Individual 1 is not an A, nor a B, but is a C.

Then I requested a counterexample to the conclusion no C are A:

a(0).
a(1).

b(0).
- b(1).

- c(0).
c(1).

The premises are true in this model, but the conclusion is false.

Finally, does the conclusion some A are not C follow from the premises?

2 (exists x b(x)) [assumption].
4 (all x (b(x) -> a(x))) [assumption].
5 (all x (b(x) -> -c(x))) [assumption].
6 (exists x (a(x) & -c(x))) [goal].
7 -a(x) | c(x). [deny(6)].
9 -b(x) | a(x). [clausify(4)].
10 -b(x) | -c(x). [clausify(5)].
11 b(c2). [clausify(2)].
12 c(x) | -b(x). [resolve(7,a,9,b)].
13 -c(c2). [resolve(10,a,11,a)].
16 c(c2). [resolve(12,b,11,a)].
17 $F. [resolve(16,a,13,a)].

Indeed it does. Unfortunately the proofs aren’t very pretty as everything is rewritten in normal forms.  One thing I want to play with is how non-classical logics may be embedded in this system.

Individual differences (continued)

“I am surprised that the author has used this data set. In my lab, when we collect data with such large individual differences, we refer to the data as ‘junk’. We then redesign our stimuli and/or experimental procedures, and run a new experiment. The junk data never appear in publications”

—An anonymous reviewer in 2005, commenting on research that sought to model individual differences in cognition.

From the intro to Navarro, D. J.; Griffiths, T. L.; Steyvers, M. & Lee, M. D. Modeling individual differences using Dirichlet processes. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 2006, 50, 101-122

Death and furniture

Found this paper by Edwards, Ashmore, and Potter (1995) amusing as recently I tapped a table to make a point about different levels of analysis. From the intro:

“When relativists talk about the social construction of reality, truth, cognition, scientific knowledge, technical capacity, social structure, and so on, their realist opponents sooner or later start hitting the furniture, invoking the Holocaust, talking about rocks, guns, killings, human misery, tables and chairs. The force of these objections is to introduce a bottom line, a bedrock of reality that places limits on what may be treated as epistemologically constructed or deconstructible. There are two related kinds of moves: Furniture (tables, rocks, stones, etc. — the reality that cannot be denied), and Death (misery, genocide, poverty, power — the reality that should not be denied). Our aim is to show how these “but surely not this” gestures and arguments work, how they trade off each other, and how unconvincing they are, on examination, as refutations of relativism.”

And the point about levels is made:

“It is surprisingly easy and even reasonable to question the table’s given reality. It does not take long, in looking closer, at wood grain and molecule, before you are no longer looking at a “table”. Indeed, physicists might wish to point out that, at a certain level of analysis, there is nothing at all “solid” there, down at the (most basic?) levels of particles, strings and the contested organization of sub-atomic space. Its solidity is then, ineluctably, a perceptual category, a matter of what tables seem to be like to us, in the scale of human perception and bodily action. Reality takes on an intrinsically human dimension, and the most that can be claimed for it is an ‘experiential realism'”

Reference

Edwards, D., Ashmore, M., & Potter, J. (1995). Death and furniture: The rhetoric, politics and theology of bottom line arguments against relativism, History of the Human Sciences, 8, 25-49.

Psychological assessment at NSA

The Memory Hole managed to obtain all non-classified forms used at the NSA (claims NSA). Two nice finds:

If you got here via Google because you’re applying to work for NSA, probably best not to email me about the assessment, eh? (Yes, some people have.)

Competence vs. performance

It’s all Chomsky’s fault (Chomsky 1965, p. 4):

“We thus make a fundamental distinction between competence (the speaker-hearer’s knowledge of his language) and performance (the actual use of language in concrete situations). […] A record of natural speech will show numerous false starts, deviations from rules, changes of plan in mid-course, and so on. The problem for the linguist, as well as for the child learning the language, is to determine from the data of performance the underlying system of rules that have been mastered by the speaker-hearer and that he puts to use in actual performance.”

So the idea is that people are trying to do C but only manage to do P, because of various constraints. We (children, adults, theorists) see (imperfect) P, and want to infer C. We go to school and go through various rigmaroles to better approximate C. The same distinction is applied in reasoning. Various options: people are irrational (with respect to C); maybe C = P, if we look hard enough to see it. Or bright people have P = C. Or bright people want P = C.

What fascinates me in reasoning is the role played by small groups of experts who produce particular systems of reasoning – logical calculi, probabilistic machinery – along with proofs that they have properties which they argue are reasonable properties to have. Then others come along to use the systems. Hey, this looks like a good logic to know; maybe it’ll help make my arguments better if I use it. Maybe this probability calculus will make it easier to diagnose illness in my patients. And so on. Then somebody else comes along and decides whether or not we’re consistent with a competence theory’s judgements, or whether we’re interpreting things a different way; whether another competence theory (application thereof) might be more appropriate for a given situation or a different psychological model of the situation.

Easy to get tied up in knots.

References

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press.

What is cognition?

People often talk about “cognition” as if it means “conscious thinking”. But that’s not how the term is used in cognitive science – at least not always! Here’s a little collection of quotations by folk attempting to define the concept:

1. Williamson (2006) – analytic philosophy:

“Cognition is usually defined as something like the process of acquiring, retaining and applying knowledge. To a first approximation, therefore, cognitive science is the science of knowing. Knowing is a relation between the knower and the known. Typically, although not always, what is known involves the environment external to the knower. Thus knowing typically involves a relation between the agent and the external environment. It is not internal to the agent, for the internal may be the same whether or not it is related to the external in a way that constitutes knowing.”

2. LeDoux (1995) – psychology:

“If cognition is defined broadly to include sensory information processing, such as that occurring in the sensory thalamus and/or sensory cortex, as well as the processing that occurs in complex association areas of cortex in the frontal lobes or hippocampus, then emotional processing by the amygdala is highly dependent on cognitive processing. If cognitive processing is defined narrowly to include only the higher mental functions most likely mediated by complex association cortex, then emotion is not necessarily dependent on prior cognitive processing.”

3. Clark and Grush (1999) – philosophy:

“Is not the notion of a truly cognitive agent, at root, the notion of something like a reflective agent? What is needed, we believe, is just a principled way to make this idea (of a reflective agent) precise and to purge it of its original (but probably superficial) associations with episodes of conscious reflection. […] Cognizers, on our account, must display the capacity for environmentally decoupled thought and the contemplation of options. The cognizer is thus the being who can think or reason about its world without directly engaging those aspects of the world that its thoughts concern.”

4. Neisser (1967) – cognitive psychology:

“… the term “cognition” refers to all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used. It is concerned with these processes even when they operate in the absence of relevant stimulation, as in images and hallucinations… Given such a sweeping definition, it is apparent that cognition is involved in everything a human being might possibly do; that every psychological phenomenon is a cognitive phenomenon. But although cognitive psychology is concerned with all human activity rather than some fraction of it, the concern is from a particular point of view. Other viewpoints are equally legitimate and necessary.”

References

Clark, A., & Grush, R. (1999). Towards a cognitive robotics. Adaptive Behavior, 7 (1), 5-16.

LeDoux, J. E. (1995). Emotion: Clues from the brain. Annual Reviews of Psychology, 46, 209-235.

Neisser, U. (1967). Cognitive psychology. Meredith Publishing Company.

Williamson, T. (2006). Can cognition be factorized into internal and external components? In R. J. Stainton (Ed.), Contemporary debates in cognitive science. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Psycho-neuron-babblist…

This is brilliant (thanks to the BPS Research Digest).

Lord Falconer hit the nail on the head:

“Why are we talking about the precise detail of Gordon’s personality traits… why aren’t we talking about the substance of the issues?”

“Forget all this… sort of psycho-babble from… the Penguin guide to… And LET’S LOOK AT THE REAL ISSUES!”

“You’re a most irresponsible programme for doing all of this.”

“You don’t need a man who’s a psycho-neuron-babblist to come and say is he connecting… for goodness sake.”