Month: March 2021

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Lilia Gurova: Feigned narratives do not always satisfy needs: the case of factitious disorders

The next meeting of the seminar is planned for March, 26th, at 12:00 (CET). Our guest will be Lilia Gurova (Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology, New Bulgarian University). We will discuss a draft paper: Feigned narratives do not always satisfy needs: the case of factitious disorders.

The paper abstract: When Bradley Lewis announced in 2014 that psychiatry needed to make a “narrative turn”, he backed up his appeal as follows: (1) the different explanatory models of mental disorders that are currently competing in psychiatry tell us different stories about mental health; (2) none of these stories has the privilege of being the only true one, and its alternatives the wrong ones; (3) the choice of a model in each case should be made in a dialogue with the patient in order to ensure that the model will be chosen that best meets the patient’s goals and desires and, accordingly, would best support the process of recovery. The latter suggestion however is not easy to follow when the patients’ subjective goals and desires and the goal of returning the patients to a normal way of life diverge, as is the case with the so-called factitious disorders. The problem is worsen by the theory-ladenness of the interpretations of patients’ first-person narratives. This paper argues against a common assumption that biases our understanding of abnormal behavior, in particular the behavior of those who feign stories about illness. This is the assumption that such a behavior satisfies certain, possibly unknown, psychological needs.

The seminar is focused on discussing the papers, in a reading group style. The speaker first introduces the main theses of the paper (for around ten minutes), and then the floor is open for comments. In the online version of the seminar, the questions must be first signaled briefly on the chat to manage the flow of the discussion.

Mail Przemysław Nowakowski (p.nowakowski@ifispan.edu.pl) for the Google Meet link.

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Source: Cognitive Science in Search of Unity

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Tactile information counteracts the attenuation of rubber hand illusion attributable to increased visuo-proprioceptive divergence

Type Journal Article
Author Piotr Litwin
Author Beata Zybura
Author Paweł Motyka
Editor Inmaculada Riquelme
URL https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244594
Volume 15
Issue 12
Pages e0244594
Publication PLOS ONE
ISSN 1932-6203
Date 2020-12-30
Journal Abbr PLoS ONE
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0244594
Accessed 2021-03-14 10:46:42
Library Catalog DOI.org (Crossref)
Language en
Abstract Sense of body ownership is an immediate and distinct experience of one’s body as belonging to oneself. While it is well-recognized that ownership feelings emerge from the integration of visual and somatosensory signals, the principles upon which they are integrated are still intensely debated. Here, we used the rubber hand illusion (RHI) to examine how the interplay of visual, tactile, and proprioceptive signals is governed depending on their spatiotemporal properties. For this purpose, the RHI was elicited in different conditions varying with respect to the extent of visuo-proprioceptive divergence (i.e., the distance between the real and fake hands) and differing in terms of the availability and spatiotemporal complexity of tactile stimulation (none, simple, or complex). We expected that the attenuating effect of distance on illusion strength will be more pronounced in the absence of touch (when proprioception gains relatively higher importance) and absent in the presence of complex tactile signals. Additionally, we hypothesized that participants with greater proprioceptive acuity—assessed using an elbow joint position discrimination task—will be less susceptible to the illusion, but only under the conditions of limited tactile stimulation. In line with our prediction, RHI was attenuated at the farthest distance only when tactile information was absent or simplified, but the attenuation was effectively prevented by the use of complex tactile stimulation—in this case, RHI was comparably vivid at both distances. However, passive proprioceptive acuity was not related to RHI strength in either of the conditions. The results indicate that complex-structured tactile signals can override the influence of proprioceptive signals in body attribution processes. These findings extend our understanding of body ownership by showing that it is primarily determined by informative cues from the most relevant sensory domains, rather than mere accumulation of multisensory evidence.

Source: Publications

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Kiverstein & Kirchhoff, Dissolving the Causal-Constitutive Fallacy

The next meeting of the seminar is planned for March, 12th, at 12:00 (CET)  (NOTE THIS COULD CHANGE!). Our guest will be Julian KIverstein (and possibly Michael Kirchhoff). We will discuss a draft paper by J. Kiverstein and M. Kirchhoff, Dissolving the Causal-Constitutive Fallacy: Diachronic Constitution and the Metaphysics of the Extended Mind.

The paper abstract:
This paper questions the causal-constitutive fallacy raised against the thesis of the extended mind. It does so by arguing for  an inherently temporal view of the constitution relation: diachronic constitution. The notion of constitution, in common with other metaphysical dependence relations such as composition, realisation and grounding,  is standardly cast in entirely atemporal terms. We will argue however that temporalising the constitution relation is not as remarkable (nor problematic) as it might initially seem. It is (almost) inevitable, given local interactions between microscale and macroscale states of (coupled) dynamical systems. We primarily focus on the metaphysics of the extended mind in this paper. However, crucially we also show how our account of diachronic constitution has important implications for the metaphysics of dependence relations more generally as well as an emerging literature on inter-level explanations in the mechanistic framework.

The seminar is focused on discussing the papers, in a reading group style. The speaker first introduces the main theses of the paper (for around ten minutes), and then the floor is open for comments. In the online version of the seminar, the questions must be first signaled briefly on the chat to manage the flow of the discussion.

Mail Przemysław Nowakowski (p.nowakowski@ifispan.edu.pl) for the Google Meet link.

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Source: Cognitive Science in Search of Unity