John Barresi

Intentional relations and social understanding

Organisms engage in various activities that are directed at objects, whether real or imagined. Such activities may be termed “intentional relations.” We present a four-level framework of social understanding that organizes the ways in which social organisms represent the intentional relations of themselves and other agents. We presuppose that the information available to an organism about its own intentional relations (or first person information) is qualitatively different from the information available to that organism about other agents’ intentional relations (or third person information). However, through the integration of these two sources of information, it is possible to generate representations of intentional relations that are uniformly applicable to the activities of both self and other. The four levels of the framework differ in the extent to which such integration occurs and in the degree to which imagination is involved in generating these representations. Most animals exist at the lowest level, at which integration of first and third person sources of information does not occur. Of nonhuman species, only great apes exhibit social understanding at intermediate levels, at which integration of these sources of information provides uniform representations of intentional relations. Only humans attain the highest level, at which it is possible to represent intentional relations with mental objects. We propose that with the development of the imagination, children progress through three stages, equivalent to the later three levels of the framework. The abnormalities in social understanding of autistic individuals are hypothesized to result from a failure to develop integrated representations of intentional relations.

The development of future-oriented prudence and altruism in preschoolers☆

This research tested the hypothesis that prudence and altruism, in situations involving future desires, follow a similar developmental course between the ages of 3 and 5 years. Using a modified delay of gratification paradigm, 3- to 5-year-olds were tested on their ability to forgo a current opportunity to obtain some stickers in order to gratify their own future desires—or the current or future desires of a research assistant. Results showed that in choices involving current desires, altruistic behavior was unrelated to age. However, prudence and altruism involving future situations were correlated with one another and with age. Children under 4 years of age demonstrated significantly less future-oriented prudence than the older children (F(1,49) = 15.75; p < .001) and significantly less altruism involving future situations (F(1,49) = 33.24; p < .001). The data for the 3-year-olds, but not for the older children, also showed age-partialled correlations between the two future-oriented choice situations. These results suggest that between 3 and 4 years, children acquire the ability to deal with future-oriented situations through the development of some common mechanism which affects both future-oriented prudence and altruism.

The Cognitive Basis of Future-oriented Prosocial Behavior

Two experiments examined the development of future-oriented prosocial behavior in relation to developing theory of mind and executive functioning. Children from 3;0 to 4;6 were given a series of trials in which they had to make a choice between immediate and delayed sticker rewards, where these rewards accrued either to self, to a play partner, or were shared. They also were presented with standard theory of mind tasks (in Experiment 1) assessing the understanding of belief and desire and an executive function task (in Experiment 2) in which the children had to inhibit pointing to a baited box in order to win the cookie within. Results showed that for 4-year-olds, the tendency to opt for delayed rewards in order to share with the partner was correlated with theory of mind. For younger 3-year-olds, the childrens ability to inhibit pointing to the baited box was significantly correlated with the tendency to choose delayed over immediate sticker rewards. These results indicate that childrens ability to show future-oriented prosocial or sharing behavior is linked developmentally both to the ability to imagine conflicting noncurrent mental states and the ability to inhibit responding to perceptually salient events.

On becoming a person

How does an entity become a person? Forty years ago Carl Rogers answered this question by suggesting that human beings become persons through a process of personal growth and self-discovery. In the present paper I provide six different answers to this question, which form a hierarchy of empirical projects and associated criteria that can be used to understand human personhood. They are: (1) persons are constructed out of natural but organic materials; (2) persons emerge as a form of adaptation through the process of evolution; (3) persons develop ontogenetically; (4) persons are created through the unifying activity of self-narrative ; (5) persons are constituted through socio-historical and cultural processes; and (6) the concept of person is a normative ideal . I suggest that it is important to consider all of these projects and related criteria in order to appreciate fully how an entity becomes a human person.

Memory for concrete and abstract words in bilingual speakers.

The dual-code hypothesis of Paivio was taken to imply that bilingual speakers should show poorer memory for the language in which concrete words appeared than the language in which abstract words appeared. The results of two experiments with German-English bilinguals, one using a recognition memory procedure and the other using the free recall task, found the opposite state of affairs. Semantic recognition, free recall, and memory for language of occurrence were all found to be superior for concrete words. Two hypotheses were advanced. One, called the ”cultural imagery hypothesis,” assumes that images may be culture specific, while the other hypothesis interprets the outcome in terms of the relations between stored attributes. An analysis of the experiment as an attribute-memory procedure is presented.

Experiencing science and religion alone and in conflict

In a study that used Hermanss (1987, 1988) valuation procedure, 40 participants each provided a highly valued experience of four types: science, religion, interpersonal and intrapersonal conflict between science and religion. They then rated these valuations on 30 affect terms, some of rich were later organized into categories: Positive, Negative, Self, and Other. Participants also filled out questionnaires, that were used to categorize them as low or high in scientific and religious orientation. Typical valuations of participants in these four science and religion categories are presented as qualitative idiographic information. In addition, quantitative analyses of affect ratings are presented as nomothetic information. Generally, affect ratings of scienfific experiences were more Self-directed while religious experience valuations involved equally high levels of Self and Other affect. Both scientific and religious experiences were evaluated as having Positive but not Negative affect. Interpersonal and intropersonal conflict were experienced as more Self-directed than Other-oriented. While interpersonal conflicts displayed more Negative affect than Positive, intrapersonal conflict was evaluated equally on these two measures.

Perceptual salience of form versus material as a function of variations in spacing and number of elements

When do the elements composing a pattern shift in their functional role from integral parts of its overall form to the material out of which its global form is constructed? In a parametric extension of Goldmeier’s (1936/1972) initial work on this problem, subjects judged the similarity between, and serially categorized, pairs of lines that were constructed from element dots such that one line was twice the length of the other, and either maintained the same number of elements or the same spacing between elements. For large stimuli composed of few elements, number of elements rather than spacing determined similarity and categorization time. However, as the number of elements was increased, the two tasks dissociated. Similarity judgments became dependent on spacing between elements rather than on number, whereas categorization time became independent of this factor. This suggests that when they are numerous and closely spaced, the elements shift from integral parts of the figure to independently coded material.

Using Illusory Line Motion to Differentiate Misrepresentation (Stalinesque) and Misremembering (Orwellian) Accounts of Consciousness

It has been suggested that the difference between misremembering (Orwellian) and misrepresentation (Stalinesque) models of consciousness cannot be differentiated (Dennett, 1991). According to an Orwellian account a briefly presented stimulus is seen and then forgotten, whereas by a Stalinesque account it is never seen. At the same time, Dennett suggested a method for assessing whether an individual is conscious of something. An experiment was conducted which used the suggested method for assessing consciousness to look at Stalinesque and Orwellian distinctions. A visual illusion, illusory line motion, was presented and participants were requested to make judgments that reflected what they were aware of. The participants were able to make responses indicating that they were aware of the actual stimulus in some conditions, but only of the illusion in others. This finding supports a claim that the difference between the Orwellian and Stalinesque accounts may be empirically observable and that both types of events may occur depending on task and stimulus parameters.

Self-concern from Priestley to Hazlitt

Toward the beginning of the nineteenth century, William Hazlitt, in An Essay on the Principles of Human Action , proposed a theory of personal identity and self-concern that is remarkably similar to Derek Parfit’s recent revisionist account. 1 Hazlitt even asked in regard to possible resurrection fission scenarios, how he could decide which of the multiple copies of himself or of his continued consciousness that were created by God were really himself or a proper object of his egoistic self-concern. Hazlitt concluded that belief in personal identity must be an acquired imaginary conception and that since in reality each of us is no more related to his or her future self than to the future self of any other person none of us is ‘ naturally ’ self-interested. 2

Commentary on: Reintroducing group selection to the human behavioral sciences. Authors' reply

In both biology and the human sciences, social groups are sometimes treated as adaptive units whose organization cannot be reduced to individual interactions. This group-level view is opposed by a more individualistic one that treats social organization as a byproduct of self-interest. According to biologists, group-level adaptations can evolve only by a process of natural selection at the group level. Most biologists rejected group selection as an important evolutionary force during the 1960s and 1970s but a positive literature began to grow during the 1970s and is rapidly expanding today. We review this recent literature and its implications for human evolutionary biology. We show that the rejection of group selection was based on a misplaced emphasis on genes as replicators which is in fact irrelevant to the question of whether groups can be like individuals in their functional organization. The fundamental question is whether social groups and other higher-level entities can be vehicles of selection. When this elementary fact is recognized, group selection emerges as an important force in nature and what seem to be competing theories, such as kin selection and reciprocity, reappear as special cases of group selection. The result is a unified theory of natural selection that operates on a nested hierarchy of units. The vehicle-based theory makes it clear that group selection is an important force to consider in human evolution. Humans can facultatively span the full range from self-interested individuals to organs of group-level organisms. Human behavior not only reflects the balance between levels of selection but it can also alter the balance through the construction of social structures that have the effect of reducing fitness differences within groups, concentrating natural selection (and functional organization) at the group level. These social structures and the cognitive abilities that produce them allow group selection to be important even among large groups of unrelated individuals.