The association between paranormal beliefs and mental health has been extensively investigated. Nonetheless, there has been limited opportunity to examine this association in contexts characterized ...by high stress and social vulnerability. This study investigates the relationship between paranormal beliefs and mental health issues, particularly anxiety, depression, and stress, amidst the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, we evaluated the impact of dealing with the pandemic on rationality and assessed the subjective perception of beliefs as coping mechanisms. One hundred sixty-three participants took part in our online self-reported study. A correlational and hierarchical regression analysis shows that paranormal beliefs positively correlate with mental illness and could be predictive of them, that does not imply a causal relation. Rather, this means that in the context of the pandemic, higher levels of paranormal beliefs were associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, and stress symptoms. Rationality was negatively correlated with paranormal beliefs, and on the contrary, those with stronger beliefs perceived their faith as a helpful tool to cope with mental health issues. Contrary to what people consciously reported, this study showed that paranormal beliefs harmed mental health during the pandemic. We acknowledge that other variables may contribute to paranormal beliefs and mental health outcomes. Although the pandemic is now, luckily enough, something from the past, and given the transient nature of the crisis, these results could be cautiously understood under the light of other stressful scenarios such as high social challenges, like extreme poverty or severe illness.
We confess that the first part of our title is somewhat of a misnomer. Bayesian reasoning is a normative approach to probabilistic belief revision and, as such, it is in need of no improvement. ...Rather, it is the typical individual whose reasoning and judgments often fall short of the Bayesian ideal who is the focus of improvement. What have we learnt from over a half-century of research and theory on this topic that could explain why people are often non-Bayesian? Can Bayesian reasoning be facilitated, and if so why? These are the questions that motivate this Frontiers in Psychology Research Topic. Bayes' theorem, named after English statistician, philosopher, and Presbyterian minister, Thomas Bayes, offers a method for updating one’s prior probability of an hypothesis H on the basis of new data D such that P(H|D) = P(D|H)P(H)/P(D). The first wave of psychological research, pioneered by Ward Edwards, revealed that people were overly conservative in updating their posterior probabilities (i.e., P(D|H)). A second wave, spearheaded by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, showed that people often ignored prior probabilities or base rates, where the priors had a frequentist interpretation, and hence were not Bayesians at all. In the 1990s, a third wave of research spurred by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby and by Gerd Gigerenzer and Ulrich Hoffrage showed that people can reason more like a Bayesian if only the information provided takes the form of (non-relativized) natural frequencies. Although Kahneman and Tversky had already noted the advantages of frequency representations, it was the third wave scholars who pushed the prescriptive agenda, arguing that there are feasible and effective methods for improving belief revision. Most scholars now agree that natural frequency representations do facilitate Bayesian reasoning. However, they do not agree on why this is so. The original third wave scholars favor an evolutionary account that posits human brain adaptation to natural frequency processing. But almost as soon as this view was proposed, other scholars challenged it, arguing that such evolutionary assumptions were not needed. The dominant opposing view has been that the benefit of natural frequencies is mainly due to the fact that such representations make the nested set relations perfectly transparent. Thus, people can more easily see what information they need to focus on and how to simply combine it. This Research Topic aims to take stock of where we are at present. Are we in a proto-fourth wave? If so, does it offer a synthesis of recent theoretical disagreements? The second part of the title orients the reader to the two main subtopics: what works and why? In terms of the first subtopic, we seek contributions that advance understanding of how to improve people’s abilities to revise their beliefs and to integrate probabilistic information effectively. The second subtopic centers on explaining why methods that improve non-Bayesian reasoning work as well as they do. In addressing that issue, we welcome both critical analyses of existing theories as well as fresh perspectives. For both subtopics, we welcome the full range of manuscript types.
Are humans intuitive Bayesians? It depends. People seem to be Bayesians when updating probabilities from experience but not when acquiring probabilities from descriptions (i.e., Bayesian textbook ...problems). Decades of research on textbook problems have focused on how the format of the statistical information (e.g., the natural frequency effect) affects such reasoning. However, it pays much less attention to the wording of these problems. Mathematical problem-solving literature indicates that wording is critical for performance. Wording effects (the wording varied across the problems and manipulations) can also have far-reaching consequences. These may have confounded between-format comparisons and moderated within-format variability in prior research. Therefore, across seven experiments (N = 4909), we investigated the impact of the wording of medical screening problems and statistical formats on Bayesian reasoning in a general adult population. Participants generated more Bayesian answers with natural frequencies than with single-event probabilities, but only with the improved wording. The improved wording of the natural frequencies consistently led to more Bayesian answers than the natural frequencies with standard wording. The improved wording effect occurred mainly due to a more efficient description of the statistical information—cueing required mathematical operations, an unambiguous association of numbers with their reference class and verbal simplification. The wording effect extends the current theoretical explanations of Bayesian reasoning and bears methodological and practical implications. Ultimately, even intuitive Bayesians must be good readers when solving Bayesian textbook problems.
This fMRI work studies brain activity of healthy volunteers who manipulated a virtual object in the context of a digital game by applying two different control methods: using their right hand or ...using their gaze. The results show extended activations in sensorimotor areas, not only when participants played in the traditional way (using their hand) but also when they used their gaze to control the virtual object. Furthermore, with the exception of the primary motor cortex, regional motor activity was similar regardless of what the effector was: the arm or the eye. These results have a potential application in the field of the neurorehabilitation as a new approach to generate activation of the sensorimotor system to support the recovery of the motor functions.
Despite the centrality of rationality to our identity as a species (let alone the scientific endeavour), and the fact that it has been studied for several millennia, the present state of our ...knowledge of the mechanisms underlying logical reasoning remains highly fragmented. For example, a recent review concluded that none of the extant (12!) theories provide an adequate account (Khemlani & Johnson- Laird, 2011), while other authors argue that we are on the brink of a paradigm change, where the old binary logic framework will be washed away and replaced by more modern (and correct) probabilistic and Bayesian approaches (see for example Elqayam & Over, 2012; Oaksford & Chater, 2009; Over, 2009). Over the past 15 years neuroscience brain imaging techniques and patient studies have been used to map out the functional neuroanatomy of reasoning processes. The aim of this research topic is to discuss whether this line of research has facilitated, hindered, or has been largely irrelevant for understanding of reasoning processes. The answer is neither obvious nor uncontroversial. We would like to engage both the cognitive and the neuroscience community in this discussion. Some of the questions of interest are: How have the data generated by the patient and neuroimaging studies: • influenced our thinking about modularity of deductive reasoning • impacted the debate between mental logic theory, mental model theory and the dual mechanism accounts • affected our thinking about dual mechanism theories • informed discussion of the relationship between induction and deduction • illuminated the relationship between language, visual spatial processing and reasoning • affected our thinking about the unity of deductive reasoning processes Have any of the cognitive theories of reasoning helped us explain deficits in certain patient populations? Do certain theories do a better job of this than others? Is there any value to localizing cognitive processes and identifying dissociations (for reasoning and other cognitive processes)? What challenges have neuroimaging data raised for cognitive theories of reasoning? How can cognitive theory inform interpretation of patient data or neuroimaging data? How can patient data or neuroimaging data best inform cognitive theory? This list of questions is not exhaustive. Manuscripts addressing other related questions are welcome. We are interested in hearing from skeptics, agnostics and believers, and welcome original research contributions as well as reviews, methods, hypothesis & theory papers that contribute to the discussion of the current state of our knowledge of how neuroscience is (or is not) helping us to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms underlying logical reasoning processes.
Preference for architectural interiors can be explained using three psychological dimensions: Coherence (ease for organizing and comprehending a scene), Fascination (a scene's informational richness ...and generated interest), and Hominess (how much a space feels personal). We tested the hypothesis that their contributions to preference might vary based on individual differences by analyzing data from design students, participants with autism spectrum disorder, and neurotypical controls who rated images of interiors on liking and approach-avoidance decisions. For design students, only Coherence drove choices, whereas in participants with autism spectrum disorder and neurotypical controls Hominess and Fascination also contributed, respectively. Coherence is paramount for design students because it references the structural organization of spaces, and is informed by formal training. For autism spectrum disorder, Hominess matters because preference for familiarity, physical proximity, and difficulty in mental simulation are relevant to that population, whereas interest in visual exploration can explain Fascination's role in neurotypical controls.
•Preference for interior architectural spaces varies among different populations.•Coherence influenced preferences among all groups that were studied.•For participants with autism spectrum disorder, Hominess was also relevant.•For neurotypical controls, Fascination was also relevant.•For quasi-experts in design, Coherence was the only relevant factor.
Although decisions based on uncertain events are critical in everyday life, people perform remarkably badly when reasoning with probabilistic information. A well-documented example is performance on ...Bayesian reasoning problems, where people fail to take into account the base-rate. However, framing these problems as frequencies improves performance spectacularly. Popular evolutionary theories have explained this facilitation by positing a specialised module that automatically operates on natural frequencies. Here we test the key prediction from these accounts, namely that the performance of the module functions independently from general-purpose reasoning mechanisms. In three experiments we examined the relationship between cognitive capacity and performance on Bayesian reasoning tasks in various question formats, and experimentally manipulated cognitive resources in a dual task paradigm. Results consistently indicated that performance on classical Bayesian reasoning tasks depends on participants' available general cognitive capacity. Findings challenge the postulation of an automatically operating frequency module.
Hedonic evaluation of sensory objects varies from person to person. While this variability has been linked to differences in experience, little is known about why stimuli lead to different ...evaluations in different people. We used linear mixed‐effects models to determine the extent to which the openness, contour, and ceiling height of interior spaces influenced the beauty and pleasantness ratings of 18 participants. Then, by analyzing structural brain images acquired for the same group of participants, we asked if any regional gray matter volume (rGMV) covaried with these differences in the extent to which the three features influence beauty and pleasantness ratings. Voxel‐based morphometry analysis revealed that the influence of openness on pleasantness ratings correlated with rGMV in the anterior prefrontal cortex (Brodmann area (BA)‐10), and the influence of openness on beauty ratings correlated with rGMV in the temporal pole (BA38) and cluster, including the posterior cingulate cortex (BA31) and paracentral lobule (BA5/6). There were no significant correlations involving contour or ceiling height. Our results suggest that regional variance in gray matter volume may play a role in the computation of hedonic valuation and account for differences in the way people weigh certain attributes of interior architectural spaces.
We calculated the extent to which contour, ceiling height, and openness influenced beauty and pleasantness evaluations of interior architectural spaces. Our exploratory results demonstrated that the extent to which openness influenced pleasantness evaluations was correlated with regional gray matter volume (rGMV) in the anterior prerontal complex and that the extent to which openness influenced beauty evaluations was correlated with rGMV in the temporal lobe, posterior cingulate complex, and paracentral lobule. Based on our findings, future interventionist approaches employing TMS and/or tDCS could probe the precise computational roles that the regions identified here play in the aesthetic evaluation of architectural interiors.
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