Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on Feb. 25, 2010). The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Dissertation advisor: Dr. Andrew Melnyk. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This study set out to collect reference data on, and uncover the developmental changes in, advanced Theory-of-Mind (ToM) ability of Hong Kong typically-developing (TD) children and children with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) / High-functioning Autism (HFA) aged 5-0 to 8-11 using a Chinese version of the Happé’s Strange Stories. The study also aimed to assess the difference in performance on this advanced test of ToM between Hong Kong TD children and children with AS/HFA. Cross-cultural comparisons of the performance on this advanced test of ToM between Hong Kong TD children and British TD children were also made. The results revealed that Hong Kong TD children showed improvement in ToM ability as they grew, and so did the children with AS/HFA, although the ToM ability of children with AS/HFA developed in a manner different from that of the TD children. Results also confirmed that the children with AS/HFA had impairment of social understanding, as compared to their TD peers. Cross-cultural comparisons revealed that Hong Kong TD children may have enhanced ToM ability when comparing to their British TD counterparts, although further validation is needed to confirm this preliminary finding. Finally, although preliminary results confirmed the discriminating power of the Happé’s Strange Stories task for young TD children and children with AS/HFA aged 5-0 to 6-11, further rigorous validation in children of varying cognitive ability and ages is needed in order to establish the clinical utility of this task as part of a comprehensive clinical assessment of high-functioning children referred for possible ASD. / published_or_final_version / Clinical Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Older adults with and without dementia have repeatedly shown poorer performance on tasks thought to tap theory of mind abilities. However these tasks may rely on other cognitive functions such as memory and as a result it is not clear if task difficulties reflect poorer ability to infer mental states or represent declines in general cognitive function. It is argued that theory of mind occurs as a result of decoding basic social information from others such as the emotion experienced, intentionality cues, the direction of eye gaze and the ability to engage in shared attention. This thesis contains a task assessing each of these precursors with the experimental chapters reporting two studies, the first establishes if differences emerge in healthy aging between young and older adults.The second study uses the same task to determine if those with dementia differ from healthy controls. When decoding facial emotion (chapter four) older adults were poorer than younger recognising negative emotions showing a bias for choosing the label disgust.Those with dementia differed qualitatively from age-matched controls showing a bias to label negative emotions as positive. When decoding intentionality from the body (chapter five) older adults showed most difficulty decoding negative affect. Those with dementia were significantly worse decoding emotions but also showed tendencies to choose positive emotion labels in this modality. The ability to discriminate between different directions of eye gaze (chapter six) revealed older adults were worse at discriminating between direct and averted gaze, dementia impacted further on this ability. When establishing shared attention (chapter seven) older adults used gaze cues significantly less than young however those with dementia performed comparably to their age matched controls.These results are evaluated in the context of relevant theories of aging and the implications for the social function of those with dementia are discusse

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This essay is on ‘Phenomenal Consciousness’. By introducing the ‘hard problem’ of phenomenal consciousness, I will focus on Chalmers’ efforts on developing a theory of consciousness, which he believes is a project toward finding a solution to the hard problem. As a result of focusing on the hard problem, this paper deals with the questions such as “how and why cognitive functioning is accompanied by conscious experience”, “how the physical systems or the physical brain processes give rise to conscious experience”, “why these processes do not take place ‘in the dark’ without any accompanying states of experience”, “what is the relation between the physical, the psychological and the phenomenal” and finally “what is the phenomenal experience or phenomenal feel”. There are two main streams trying to find a solution to (or dissolve) these kinds of questions about consciousness: the reductive doctrines (materialists) and the nonreductive doctrines. Before exploring Chalmers’ answer to these questions, which is by his nonreductive theory of consciousness, I will explore some of the most important reductive (materialist) theories by focusing on Chalmers’ arguments against them and I will indicate his main objection to materialist theories by pointing out what he thinks is missing in these theories. This issue will be followed by the part in which I will argue that what makes Chalmers’ arguments against materialists views applicable, actually applies to his own theory of consciousness as well. I will argue that what is missing in all theories of consciousness, (including Chalmers’) which could play a significant role in a theory of consciousness, is a ‘first person point of view’ and an ‘ability to have a first person point of view’, by which I mean an ability for a being to have a first person (subjective) access to the results of his own physical cognitive information processing system. As a result, I will argue that phenomenal consciousness is actually an epistemic phenomenon which is the result of being in a sort of epistemic relation to one’s own cognitive system. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2007-10-09 00:24:44.795

A new name for an old problem, the “hard problem of consciousness” is perhaps the most controversial issue in the contemporary philosophy of mind. The problem, posed by non-reductivists like Chalmers, is: how do the phenomenal qualities of our conscious experience stand in relation to a physical world that seems logically compatible with their absence? But there is no agreement over what precisely this question is asking about (viz., “phenomenal qualities”), or whether the apparently non-physical explanandum is a real one. At the root of the intractability is the particular way that we have come to think about the question, presupposing i) that the conscious explanandum is an ontological one and thus ii) that the sense in which it exists (as an inner entity) should be straightforward. These assumptions are overturned in the following account in which I argue that the qualitative contents of our experience are in the world, not the ontological mind. I argue that neither the non-reductivist nor the eliminitivist, on analysis, need disagree about this. In Chapter Two, I argue that what the non-reductivist really wants to preserve are the qualities of the world that are invisible to an ontological picture made in terms of scientific unobservables, or trans-experiential physical structures and processes. The eliminitivist, on the other hand, is merely interested in denying the ontologization of these qualities as properties of the ontological mind. On this interpretation, non-reductivists and eliminitivists can be seen to mutually support a solution to the traditional mind-body problem in the form of the non-reductive, non-ontological account of consciousness that I will offer in this thesis: non-reductive, because the properties of our experience are not illegitimately denied (or reduced), and non-ontological because they are not thereby hypostatized (or ontologized). Rather, they are left in the “neutral” public realm where—from a Wittgensteinian perspective—the meanings of the problematic terms of mind-body discourse are fixed. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-29 15:55:54.312

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When humans use the mental states (e.g., beliefs, intentions) and the emotional states of others to predict or explain another person�s behaviour, they have demonstrated their theory of mind understanding. Theory of mind is "one of the quintessential abilities that makes us human" (Baron-Cohen, 2000, p. 3). Emotion understanding has been considered by some to be an aspect of theory of mind understanding. There are several theories proposed to explain the development of theory of mind, from changes in representational abilities (Perner, 1991), to having an innate domain specific module (Fodor, 1992; Leslie, 1994), to social linguistic influences (Nelson et al., 2003). One facet of theory of mind understanding, understanding false belief, has been consistently found to develop at around 3 or 4 years of age (e.g., Wimmer & Perner, 1983). Another cognitive ability that develops at the approximately the same time is that of autobiographical memory. Autobiographical memory has been defined as "memory for information and events pertaining to the self" (Howe & Courage, 1993, p. 306). There are also several theories explaining the onset of autobiographical memory. Two similar theories by Perner (1991) and Welch-Ross (1995) proposed that until a child possesses dual representational abilities (or theory of mind), they cannot form autobiographical memories. Nelson (1993) and Fivush (2001) have both proposed that autobiographical memory is developed through shared narratives with more experienced others (e.g., parents). There are several factors that have been found to contribute to theory of mind, emotion understanding, and autobiographical memory. Language abilities have been related to all three cognitive abilities (e.g., Slade & Ruffman, 2005; Dunn & Cutting, 1999; Harley & Reese, 1999). Factors such as maternal talk, gender of the child, and the number of siblings the child has, have all been related to at least two of these abilities. In the current study, I addressed the relation between theory of mind understanding, emotion understanding, and autobiographical memory in three studies. The first study investigated the relations between language, theory of mind, emotion understanding, and mother-child talk about past events in 61 children at three 6- month intervals from 42- to 54- months of age. The second study also investigated these factors and the children�s pretense in 59 children at 48- months of age. In the second study, the mother�s theory of mind and emotion understanding were also measured. In the third study, I investigated the relations between theory of mind, emotion understanding and early memory recall in 73 adults, with an average age of 20 years. One key finding was that, despite theoretical predictions, there was no clear relation between theory of mind understanding and autobiographical memory in either children or adults. Results showed that theory of mind and emotion understanding are related but distinct abilities. The number of siblings, or the gender of the participants were not strongly related to theory of mind, autobiographical memory, or emotion understanding. Language abilities and maternal talk were the strongest factors related to the development of theory of mind, autobiographical memory and emotion understanding.

The problem of reconciling the subjectively known mind with the objectively known brain has puzzled philosophers and scientists for centuries. When attempting to solve this problem in recent times, the focus has been on explaining how the mind is born from the brain, how the two are related, and how we can best understand them. This problem is of particular relevance to clinical psychology because it attempts to both understand and explain pathological presentations by appealing to both subjective personal experience and objective knowledge of the physicality of the brain. In this respect, clinical psychology straddles the gap between mind and brain. This thesis investigates the implications of the mind/brain problem for theory and practice in clinical psychology. Chapter one identifies the tension between knowing the world subjectively and knowing the world objectively and discusses the importance of understanding this tension when investigating the mind/brain problem. Chapter two sets out the foundational concepts of cognitive behavioural approaches in clinical psychology, looking in particular at how cognitive behavioural approaches conceptualise mental events like thoughts and beliefs. It is concluded that while cognitive behavioural approaches to clinical psychology regularly incorporate both mentalistic and physical concepts in its theory and practice, it does not address the inherent problems in their combined use, as revealed by the mind brain/problem. In order to improve the use of mentalistic concepts within the theory and practice of cognitive behaviourally based clinical psychology, chapter three explores the major conceptualisations of mind from the discipline of philosophy of mind. To achieve this improvement, chapter four, suggests that refining of mentalistic concepts in clinical psychology, through the application of philosophical concepts of mind, can be made possible through the use of a framework that captures the different explanatory levels at which the mind/brain operates. The levels-of-explanation framework is put forward for this purpose. Of particular relevance to clinical psychology is the ability to retain the importance of autonomous, subjectively experienced, and causally efficacious mental events, while at the same time, being able to give a realistic account of how these mental events are linked to the physical brain. The levels-of-explanation framework is judged to be a suitable approach with which to achieve this. In chapters five and six, the implications of clinical psychology's use of mentalistic concepts are explored in relation to evidence-based practice and case formulation. It is shown that through a greater understanding of both the nature of mind and the relationship between the mind and the brain, improvements can be made to both the theory and practice of cognitive behaviourally base clinical practice. This is achieved through the application of philosophical concepts of mind, via a levels-of-explanation framework, while both researching and undertaking clinical practice in clinical psychology.

Zugl.: Darmstadt, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2003