To investigate (1) the effect of mental rehearsal (MR) on reaction time (RT), and (2) the roles of cerebral lateralization, memory, verbal and nonverbal processes in MR effects, two experiments were conducted using a total of 300 sports participants matched on age, cerebral lateralization, imagery ability, intelligence, kinaesthesis, motivation, sex, skill level and speed of reaction. It was found that (a) MR can affect significantly RT (p/0.01) because it is a powerful cognitive activity which can directly influence the memory system and make memory comparison and/or response selection processes more efficient, and (b) that there are two separate processing systems - two separate modes of thought - for verbally and nonverbally coded information, that these processing systems might be functionally discriminated along hemispheric lines, that the non-verbal processing system considerably precedes the verbal processing system, probably because it uses a more effective processing strategy, and that MR affects significantly (p/0.01) and differently the operations of the two processing systems, probably because MR is a cognitive activity more associated with the right cerebral hemisphere than with the left. The results are discussed in the light of current cerebral laterality, imagery, memory, MR and RT findings.

In this thesis I propose an account of knowledge of one's own mental states. My goal is set on a unified transparency account of self-knowledge. It is unified, because the proposal will account for the generation of beliefs about mental states of all types, regardless of whether they are propositional, non-propositional, experiential or non-experiential. My account will thereby be applicable to knowledge of any mental state, from beliefs and desires to fears, hopes, and sensations such as pain. Moreover, it will be a transparency account because it holds on to Gareth Evans's (1982) observation that self-ascribing mental states is done by attending outwards instead of inwards. There is a sense in which we attend to the world when we find out whether we believe something, and my proposal aims to capture this intuition. The core idea I am exploring is the following: generally, when one produces a first-order mental state, one also forms a corresponding, dispositional second-order belief about that state. Both attitudes share elements of their production, which ensures reliability while retaining fallibility. For instance, when you form a belief 'there is a red car' by perceiving a red car, you also generate the dispositional belief 'I believe that there is a red car,' if everything goes right. I argue that almost all features that make self-knowledge special can be explained with this basic idea. The assumption that the production of a first-order mental state and a second-order belief about the state go hand in hand has surprising explanatory power. Moreover, there are at least no obvious reasons why the assumption should be ruled out. The upshot will be a view that we should take seriously as a contender for an explanation of self-knowledge. I will not be able to conclusively show that it is the best explanation, but I argue that it is one worth thinking about. The thesis is structured in three parts. The first part (chapters 1-3) focuses on the phenomenon of self-knowledge and the transparency idea. These chapters serve as the setup for my later proposed view. Chapter 1 and 2 discuss what exactly we want to explain when we say that we aim to explain self-knowledge. I thereby provide an overview of the conceptual landscape of self-knowledge and argue that we should understand the peculiarity of self-knowledge in terms of features of belief and belief-formation. Moreover, I commit myself to the view that the peculiarity has something to do with our cognitive access to mental states and relate that to the goal of a unified account of self-knowledge. Chapter 3 discusses how we ought to understand the other qualification of my goal: a transparency account of self-knowledge. I provide an overview of transparency accounts in the literature and lay out the path to avoid common problems of transparency accounts. In the second part (chapters 4 and 5) I propose the single process model of self-knowledge as a unified, transparency account of self-knowledge. I provide the core principles of the view and show how it explains the features of self-knowledge I aim to explain. Chapter 4 focuses on attitudes, both propositional and non-propositional. Chapter 5 expands the view to phenomenal states, such as being in pain. The third part (chapters 6 and 7) connects the epistemological discussion of the single process model to research on cognition. Chapter 6 proposes a cognitive story of predictive processing that is compatible with the single process model. I thereby discuss the plausibility of the predictive processing idea and its empirical support. I provide a predictive processing story of self-knowledge that fits with the single process model of self-knowledge. In chapter 7 I discuss extended mental states. Clark & Chalmers (1998) propose that at least some mental states, such as beliefs, can be extended to external devices. Given that my aim is a unified account, I ought to say something about knowledge of these extended beliefs. I argue that they cannot be known by the same processes as non-extended mental states because beliefs about extended beliefs show different features than beliefs about our non-extended states that we formed by introspection. Hence, even if my view cannot account for them this is not a problem, because they are not formed by genuine introspection. Instead, we come to know extended mental states by a distinct process that we might call extended introspection. Finally, chapter 8 provides a brief conclusion of the thesis for and points out some placed that require further development. The account is promising as an explanation of self-belief and self-knowledge, but whether it is correct also depends on future research outside the scope of philosophy.

It is well known that humans are able to represent the mental states of others. This ability is commonly thought to be unique to humans. However, recent studies on the food caching, gift giving, and cooperative behaviours of Corvids and Parrots provide evidence for this ability in birds. Upon examining the empirical evidence, I argue that the best explanation for these behaviours is that birds are able to represent conspecifics as having particular mental states. I further argue that birds are able to do this by simulating the minds of conspecifics.

It is well known that humans are able to represent the mental states of others. This ability is commonly thought to be unique to humans. However, recent studies on the food caching, gift giving, and cooperative behaviours of Corvids and Parrots provide evidence for this ability in birds. Upon examining the empirical evidence, I argue that the best explanation for these behaviours is that birds are able to represent conspecifics as having particular mental states. I further argue that birds are able to do this by simulating the minds of conspecifics.

Background: The skill to attribute mental states to the self and others, or Theory of Mind (ToM), is a problem seen universally amongst children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and may also affect the ability to make inferences about characters while reading narrative text. Aim: The aim of this study was to teach four male participants with ASD an explicit cognitive strategy to answer inferential questions and provide feedback regarding their answers to improve their reading comprehension and ToM. Method: A single case study ABC design was used to assess the effect of the intervention. The participants read five short narrative passages each session for 20 sessions, and answered one factual and one inferential question following each passage. Specific feedback was used to respond to the answers of each question in the intervention phase. Pre- and post-intervention levels of reading comprehension and ToM were measured. Results: All four participants improved their reading comprehension in a pre and post-intervention test and three of the four participants improved their ToM understanding, although their ability to answer inferential questions involving ToM did not improve greatly. Limitations: Limitations of the study include not asking enough inferential questions involving ToM each session. During post-hoc analysis of the results it became clear that the participants could have benefited from more practice of using the strategy. Individual reading ability should have been assessed before the intervention began to determine the appropriate reading level at the beginning of the intervention. Conclusions: The explicit cognitive strategy had limited effect on participant’s ability to answer inferential questions involving ToM; however the participants improved their scores on pre and post-intervention tests of reading comprehension and ToM. These results suggest that making inferences in text may involve ToM and that the problems seen in the reading comprehension profiles of children with ASD may be attributed to their limited ToM skills.

It was the goal of this study to examine the ecological validity of a number of measures of mental status for geriatric individuals. Subjects were 40 alert, ambulatory male VA patients. Mental status instruments included the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), the Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS) and the Vocabulary subtest of the WAIS-R. Measures of functional behavior included the Woodcock-Johnson Scales of Independent Behavior (SIB) and the Parachek Geriatric Behavior Rating Scale (PGBRS). Significant relationships were found between the MMSE and the SIB, between the WMS and the SIB, and between the WMS and the PGBRS. It was found that estimation of functional behavior can be enhanced significantly through the use of battery of mental status instruments.

What is the meaning of life? This has been one of the major questions of philosophy for centuries / from Socrates to Nietzsche and from Tolstoy to the famous comedy writers&rsquo / group Monty Python. People from diverse intellectual backgrounds asked what the meaning of life is. Although there are doubts that this question is now outdated, meaning of life seems to me still an intriguing subject. In this thesis I argue that life&rsquo / s meaning must be discussed according to two different notions. One of these notions is the content of life where life&rsquo / s meaning can be analyzed according to its coherence with a value system, its achievements or its influence on others. The other is the notion of life&rsquo / s meaning as a mental concept, as an experience. I provide reasons to think life&rsquo / s meaning as a composite mental state and propose its components. My point of view carries subjectivist implications, however by introducing necessary conditions of the formation of the composite mental state that provides a life with meaning I argue that such a mental state attains objectivity.

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Peter Drucker, a well-known influential writer and philosopher in the field of management theory and practice, once claimed that “the most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.” It is not difficult to see that a similar concept also holds in the context of video scene understanding. In almost every non-trivial video scene, most important elements, such as the motives and intentions of the actors, can never be seen or directly observed, yet the identification of these latent attributes is crucial to our full understanding of the scene. That is to say, latent attributes matter. In this work, we explore the task of identifying latent attributes in video scenes, focusing on the mental states of participant actors. We propose a novel approach to the problem based on the use of large text collections as background knowledge and minimal information about the videos, such as activity and actor types, as query context. We formalize the task and a measure of merit that accounts for the semantic relatedness of mental state terms, as well as their distribution weights. We develop and test several largely unsupervised information extraction models that identify the mental state labels of human participants in video scenes given some contextual information about the scenes. We show that these models produce complementary information and their combination significantly outperforms the individual models, and improves performance over several baseline methods on two different datasets. We present an extensive analysis of our models and close with a discussion of our findings, along with a roadmap for future research.

<p>Schizophrenia is a complex and debilitating psychiatric illness characterized by positive symptoms like hallucinations and delusions and negative symptoms like blunting of affect, avolition, and poverty of thought. This constellation of symptoms is hypothesized to result from dopaminergic dysfunction, glutamatergic dysfunction, and dysfunctional stress-reactivity. Prior to the onset of schizophrenia there is a prodromal period when individuals begin to experience sub-clinical symptoms and decreased functioning. This period is important to study not only to help elucidate biologic mechanisms of the illness but also to potentially alter the course of the illness through early treatment. The difficulty of studying this period lies in its recognizing it prospectively. To address this researchers have begun to study the at-risk mental state, a state that is associated with a high but not inevitable risk of conversion to psychosis. The studies described in this dissertation are aimed at a neurofunctional characterization of the at-risk mental state in three primary domains: reward-anticipation, hippocampus-dependent learning, and stress-reactivity. Individuals at-risk for psychosis and age-matched healthy volunteers underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing tasks targeting these domains. In the reward-anticipation task, at-risk individuals showed decreased ventral tegmental area (VTA) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) responses to reward anticipation. In the hippocampus-dependent learning task, at-risk individuals showed deficits in hippocampus-dependent memory, decreased VTA engagement, and increased DLPFC activation during learning of associations between items. In the stress-reactivity task, at-risk individuals showed increased activation in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis/basal forebrain (BNST), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in response to neutral faces. Collectively, these experiments show that neurofunctional deficits in reward-anticipation, hippocampus-dependent learning, and stress-reactivity are present in the putative prodrome, prior to the onset of psychosis. Regions implicated are those that would be expected based on current models of schizophrenia and neurofunctional studies in those with frank psychosis.</p> / Dissertation