Places for reasoning.

In this article, we explore behaviour settings that enable reasoning and the diversity of constraints that not only limit but also make these behaviour settings possible. We focus specifically on reasoning and surveying how behaviour settings allow for the generation of norms of action that are nevertheless differentiated by geographies and sociocultural systems. These geographies and sociocultural systems involve diverse trajectories for reasoning even within similar behaviour settings. We will touch on places for reasoning like Twitter, social movements, traditional knowledge and laboratories set up for experimentation on our reasoning abilities. We will show how these places and the behaviour settings that emerge in them can be studied in terms of the complexity of the interactions between their participants and in terms of enabling constraints. This article is part of the theme issue 'People, places, things, and communities: expanding behaviour settings theory in the twenty-first century'.

Causal learning, counterfactual reasoning and pretend play: a cross-cultural comparison of Peruvian, mixed- and low-socioeconomic status U.S. children.

Pretend play universally emerges during early childhood and may support the development of causal inference and counterfactual reasoning. However, the amount of time spent pretending, the value that adults place on pretence and the scaffolding adults provide vary by both culture and socioeconomic status (SES). In middle class U.S. preschoolers, accuracy on a pretence-based causal reasoning task predicted performance on a similar causal counterfactual task. We explore the relationship between cultural environment, pretence and counterfactual reasoning in low-income Peruvian (N = 62) and low-income U.S. (N = 57) 3- to 4-year olds, and contrast findings against previous findings in an age-matched, mixed-SES U.S. sample (N = 60). Children learned a novel causal relationship, then answered comparable counterfactual and pretence-based questions about the relationship. Children's responses for counterfactual and pretence measures differed across populations, with Peruvian and lower-income U.S. children providing fewer causally consistent responses when compared with middle class U.S. children. Nevertheless, correlations between the two measures emerged in all populations. Across cohorts, children also provided more causally consistent answers during pretence than counterfactually. Our findings strengthen the hypothesis that causal pretend play is related to causal counterfactual reasoning across cultural contexts, while also suggesting a role for systematic environmental differences. This article is part of the theme issue 'Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny'.

O que acontece dentro da minha cabeça quando penso? Uma análise das representações infantis através do desenho / What happens inside my head when I think? An analysis of children's representations through drawing

As imagens sobre o cérebro têm ganhado relevo no século XXI. Neste trabalho buscamos reconhecer as representações de crianças sobre o funcionamento do pensamento, envolvendo ideias de mente e de cérebro. Este estudo replica uma pesquisa de tradição piagetiana que foi conduzida com a seguinte pergunta norteadora: "O que acontece dentro da minha cabeça quando estou pensando?". Os dados foram coletados por meio de entrevistas e, principalmente, a partir dos desenhos realizados pelas crianças. Participaram da pesquisa 51 crianças, entre quatro e doze anos, de escolas pública e privada sul-rio-grandenses. Os dados coletados foram discutidos em relação ao estudo original e visaram a compreender o pensamento infantil em suas próprias representações sobre o funcionamento da mente e do cérebro.

The images about the brain have been gained prominence in the 21st century. In this work we seek to recognize the representations of children about the functioning of thought, involving ideas of mind and brain. This study replicates a Piagetian tradition research that was conducted with the following guiding question: "What happens inside my head when I am thinking?". The data were collected through interviews and, mainly, from the drawings made by the children. A total of 51 children with the age of four to twelve, from public and private schools from the state of Rio Grande do Sul took part in the study. The collected data were discussed in relation to the original study and aimed to understand children's thinking in their own representations about the functioning of the mind and brain.

Microstates in complex and dynamical environments: Unraveling situational awareness in critical helicopter landing maneuvers.

Understanding decision-making in complex and dynamic environments is relevant for designing strategies targeting safety improvements and error rate reductions. However, studies evaluating brain dynamics in realistic situations are scarce in the literature. Given the evidence that specific microstates may be associated with perception and attention, in this work we explored for the first time the application of the microstate model in an ecological, dynamic and complex scenario. More specifically, we evaluated elite helicopter pilots during engine-failure missions in the vicinity of the so called "dead man's curve," which establishes the operational limits for a safe landing after the execution of a recovery maneuver (autorotation). Pilots from the Brazilian Air Force flew a AS-350 helicopter in a certified aerodrome and physiological sensor data were synchronized with the aircraft's flight test instrumentation. We assessed these neural correlates during maneuver execution, by comparing their modulations and source reconstructed activity with baseline epochs before and after flights. We show that the topographies of our microstate templates with 4, 5, and 6 classes resemble the literature, and that a distinct modulation characterizes decision-making intervals. Moreover, the source reconstruction result points to a differential activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, which is associated to emotional regulation circuits in the brain. Our results suggest that microstates are promising neural correlates to evaluate realistic situations, even in a challenging and intrinsically noisy environment. Furthermore, it strengthens their usage and expands their application for studying cognition under more realistic conditions.

Effects of mindfulness on psychological and psychophysiological responses during self-paced walking.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of an audio-guided mindfulness (MF) single session on psychological and psychophysiological responses during an outdoor walking task. Twenty-four participants (12 females and 12 males; Mage  = 23.6, SD = 3.9 years) were required to walk 200 m at a pace of their choosing. Two experimental conditions (mindfulness meditation and mindlessness [ML] meditation) and a control condition (CO) were administered. Electrical activity in the brain was measured by the use of a portable electroencephalography (EEG) system during walking. Fast Fourier Transform was used to decompose the EEG samples into theta (5-7 Hz), alpha (8-14 Hz), and beta (15-29 Hz) frequencies. Brain connectivity analysis between frontal and temporo-parietal electrode sites was conducted to explore functional interactions through the use of spectral coherence. Affective and perceptual responses were measured by the use of single-item scales and questionnaires. The present findings indicate that MF was sufficiently potent to reallocate attention toward task-related thoughts, downregulate perceived activation, and enhance affective responses to a greater degree than the other two conditions. Conversely, ML was sufficient to increase the use of dissociative thoughts, make participants less aware of their physical sensations and emotions, induce a more negative affective state, and upregulate perceived activation to a greater extent than MF and CO. The brain mechanisms that underlie the effects of MF on exercise appear to be associated with the enhanced inter-hemispheric connectivity of high-frequency waves between right frontal and left temporo-parietal areas of the cortex.

Differential involvement of left and right frontoparietal areas in visuospatial planning: An rTMS study.

The planning process consists of pre-determining an ordered series of actions to accomplish a goal. Previous research showed that the left prefrontal cortex (PFC) is likely to create the strategy for a plan, while the right PFC could be relevant for its update. These roles for the two PFCs need to be ascertained for visuospatial planning, whether communalities or differences exist with other planning tasks. Moreover, the contribution of the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) to planning still lacks evidence. Online repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (1 Hz) was used, and 32 participants were involved in the visuospatial planning task in a within-subject design to inhibit either the frontal or the parietal cortex of either the left or the right hemisphere. The goal consisted of evaluating the contribution of these cortical regions, also controlling for gender, in a computerized version of the travelling salesman problem (TSP), the "Maps" task. The results showed that all the stimulated sites produced significant differences in their involvement, reflected in several parameters (such as initial planning and execution times, strategies and heuristics used), with respect to the control group. The roles for the two PFCs were generally confirmed in all measures except path length, while the contribution of the PPC emerged throughout the measures related to the ongoing execution. We concluded that the results obtained with the TSP paradigm were consistent with results obtained using other tasks used to study the planning process (such as the Tower of London) for the evaluation of PFC contribution. In addition, we showed that the contribution of the PPC to the planning process has probably been underestimated.

Causal Learning Across Culture and Socioeconomic Status.

Extensive research has explored the ability of young children to learn about the causal structure of the world from patterns of evidence. These studies, however, have been conducted with middle-class samples from North America and Europe. In the present study, low-income Peruvian 4- and 5-year-olds and adults, low-income U.S. 4- and 5-year-olds in Head Start programs, and middle-class children from the United States participated in a causal learning task (N = 435). Consistent with previous studies, children learned both specific causal relations and more abstract causal principles across culture and socioeconomic status (SES). The Peruvian children and adults generally performed like middle-class U.S. children and adults, but the low-SES U.S. children showed some differences.

From Inner Speech to Mind-Wandering: Developing a Comprehensive Model of Inner Mental Activity Trajectories.

The objective of this work was to develop a comprehensive model of inner mental activity's trajectories. For this purpose, a review of updated research was conducted on the wandering mind topic - a phenomenon that has been recently conceptualized and that has become a focus of interest in cognitive sciences - alongside early psychological postulates on the inner speech phenomenon that were brought back to the surface of scientific literature. In summary, this article presents a reformulation of the spontaneous thought model by Andrews-Hanna et al. (2017), broadening its scope to approach inner mental activity in all its forms and transitions. It is concluded that modern cognitive research has overlooked the full complexity of different types and forms of consciousness' expressions, understanding them as isolated phenomena and sub-dimensioning their trajectories during the flow of experience. This, mainly, due to a scarce incorporation of temporality and morphology to current theoretical models. It is proposed that cognitive acts described in modern research (spontaneous, controlled, involuntary, etc.) are, in synthesis, different symbolic and expressive natures of inner mental activity or thought phenomenon, which current literature has failed to understand as a whole. This article constitutes a contribution to future theoretical and experimental research that seeks out to explore the nature of thought and its development during a cognitive act.

Mapping the Psychotic Mind: a Review on the Subjective Structure of Thought Insertion.

Delusions of thought insertion involve subjects claiming that external agents of different nature had placed thoughts into their minds/heads. However, despite being regarded as one of the most severe and complex symptoms of psychotic disorders, a number of disagreements surround the description of its most fundamental phenomenology. This work has reviewed classic and current research on thought insertion in order to examine and clarify its main experiential features as reported by patients from a first-person perspective. The review shows that such features can be grouped into two categories: (i) experiential changes characterizing the period preceding the adoption of the delusion and, (ii) subjective features of full-blown delusional cases. While the discussion of the latter set of experiential features has received some attention within literature, the examination of the former set has been largely neglected. After this, the review offers a discussion of the most important conceptual disagreements surrounding the phenomenological descriptions of the symptom. Overcoming disagreements regarding the experiential structure of thought insertion is fundamental to elaborate phenomenologically and empirically coherent explanatory theories of the symptom and advance its clinical treatment.

Morningness-eveningness is not associated with academic performance in the afternoon school shift: Preliminary findings.

BACKGROUND: The effect of morningness-eveningness, sleep habits, and intelligence on academic performance has been studied in a fixed morning school shift. However, no studies have analysed these variables in an afternoon school shift and tested whether morningness-eveningness is related to academic performance beyond sleep habits and intelligence effects. AIMS: The psychometric properties of the Morningness-Eveningness Scale for Children (MESC) were analysed. Additionally, academic performance, sex, intelligence, sleep habits, and morningness-eveningness relationship in a morning and afternoon school shift were compared. SAMPLE: The sample consisted of 400 students at a secondary public school in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, in north-eastern Mexico (195 boys and 205 girls; mean ± SD: 13.85 ± 0.70 years old) attending a double-shift school system: 200 from the morning shift (99 boys and 101 girls) and 200 from the afternoon shift (96 boys and 104 girls). METHODS: The students completed the MESC as a measure of morningness-eveningness, a sleep habits survey, a test of academic performance, and the inductive reasoning subtest (R) of the Primary Mental Abilities battery. RESULTS: Adolescents in the two school shifts did not differ in academic performance and intelligence. In the afternoon shift, adolescents slept longer, reported less sleep deficit and social jet lag, and were more oriented to eveningness than adolescents in the morning shift. Sex (girls), sleep length, inductive reasoning, and morningness were associated with academic performance in the morning shift but only sex and intelligence in the afternoon shift. CONCLUSIONS: The role of morningness-eveningness in academic performance in the afternoon shift is examined.

Learning Process During Risk Detection in Adolescents With ADHD.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate and describe the performance during the learning process of risk-detection versus risk-benefit processing in adolescents diagnosed with ADHD. METHOD: Thirty-five adolescents with ADHD and 26 paired controls participated. The tests applied are Iowa-type children version paradigm and Stroop test. RESULTS: Adolescents with ADHD exhibited lower risk-benefit processing capacity and lower ability to detect risk selections; main findings also indicate that adolescents with ADHD were slower to learn to avoid risk choices. In addition, they also presented a deficient inhibitory control. CONCLUSION: Results confirm the presence of a deficit in advantageous choice in adolescents with ADHD. By providing a measure of risk choice-and not only a net score-we show that adolescents with ADHD also fail to avoid risk choices. This deficit is mainly because they are slower in learning how to avoid risk choices, and not simply deficient. Literature is scarce concerning studies with Iowa-type paradigms in samples intregated exclusively by adolescents. More research is needed to clarify the nature of these deficiencies.

Reliability and Validity of Nonsymbolic and Symbolic Comparison Tasks in School-Aged Children.

Basic numerical processing has been regularly assessed using numerical nonsymbolic and symbolic comparison tasks. It has been assumed that these tasks index similar underlying processes. However, the evidence concerning the reliability and convergent validity across different versions of these tasks is inconclusive. We explored the reliability and convergent validity between two numerical comparison tasks (nonsymbolic vs. symbolic) in school-aged children. The relations between performance in both tasks and mental arithmetic were described and a developmental trajectories' analysis was also conducted. The influence of verbal and visuospatial working memory processes and age was controlled for in the analyses. Results show significant reliability (p < .001) between Block 1 and 2 for nonsymbolic task (global adjusted RT (adjRT): r = .78, global efficiency measures (EMs): r = .74) and, for symbolic task (adjRT: r = .86, EMs: r = .86). Also, significant convergent validity between tasks (p < .001) for both adjRT (r = .71) and EMs (r = .70) were found after controlling for working memory and age. Finally, it was found the relationship between nonsymbolic and symbolic efficiencies varies across the sample's age range. Overall, these findings suggest both tasks index the same underlying cognitive architecture and are appropriate to explore the Approximate Number System (ANS) characteristics. The evidence supports the central role of ANS in arithmetic efficiency and suggests there are differences across the age range assessed, concerning the extent to which efficiency in nonsymbolic and symbolic tasks reflects ANS acuity.

Effects of Cognitive Training on Cognitive Performance of Healthy Older Adults.

The purpose of this study was to determine the immediate effects of cognitive training on healthy older adults and verify the transfer effects of targeted and non-targeted abilities. The design consisted of a semi-randomized clinical controlled trial. The final sample was composed of 80 volunteers recruited from a Brazilian community (mean age = 69.69; SD = 7.44), which were separated into an intervention group (N = 47; mean age = 69.66, SD = 7.51) and a control group (N = 33; mean age = 69.73, SD = 7.45). Intervention was characterized by adaptive cognitive training with 12 individual training sessions of 60 to 90 minutes (once a week). Eight instruments were used to assess effects of cognitive training. Five were used to assess trained abilities (near effects), including: Memorization Tests (List and History), Picture Completion, Digit Span, Digit Symbol-Coding, and Symbol Search (the last four from WAIS-III). Two instruments assessed untrained abilities (far effects): Arithmetic and Matrix Reasoning (WAIS-III). The non-parametric repeated measures ANOVA test revealed a significant interaction between group by time interaction for Picture Completion [F(74) = 14.88, p = .0002, d = 0.90, CLES = 73.69%], Digit Symbol-Coding [F(74) = 5.66, p = .019, d = 0.55, CLES = 65.21%] and Digit Span [F(74) = 5.38, p = .02, d = 0.54, CLES = 64.85%], suggesting an interventional impact on these performance tasks. The results supported near transfer effects, but did not demonstrate a far transfer effects.

Neural Foundations of Creativity: A Systematic Review.

When considering the importance of the human cognitive function of creativity, we often overlook the fact that it is due to human creativity and to the constant search for new sensory stimuli that our world has, throughout the years, been one of innovation in every aspect of our existence -in the sciences, the humanities, and the arts. Almost everything that surrounds us is the result of human creativity, therefore it is not difficult to understand that although neuroscientific research has led to valuable perceptions into the probable underpinnings of this multifaceted ability, the precise neurological substrates that underlie creativity are yet to be determined. Despite the establishment of a strong link between creativity and divergent thinking, other brain networks have been implicated in this mental process. The following review underlines recent studies on the neural foundations of creativity. A comprehensive analysis of the upmost important facts will be presented, with emphasis on concepts, tests, and methods that have been used to study creativity, and how they have outlined a pathway to the key understanding of this unique human ability.

Exploring the experience of episodic past, future, and counterfactual thinking in younger and older adults: A study of a Colombian sample.

Although extant evidence suggests that many neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying episodic past, future, and counterfactual thinking overlap, recent results have uncovered differences among these three processes. However, the extent to which there may be age-related differences in the phenomenological characteristics associated with episodic past, future and counterfactual thinking remains unclear. This study used adapted versions of the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire and the Autobiographical Interview in younger and older adults to investigate the subjective experience of episodic past, future and counterfactual thinking. The results suggest that, across all conditions, younger adults generated more internal details than older adults. However, older adults generated more external details for episodic future and counterfactual thinking than younger adults. Additionally, younger and older adults generated more internal details, and gave higher sensory and contextual ratings, for memories rather than future and counterfactual thoughts. Methodological and theoretical consequences for extant theories of mental simulation are discussed.

Anger Rumination Scale: Validation in Mexico.

The aim of the study was to assess the validity of the Anger Rumination Scale (ARS; Sukhodolsky, Golub, & Cromwell, 2001) in a Mexican sample (n = 700, M age = 38.6, SD = 12.42). Through confirmatory factor analysis and using modification indices, the four-factor structure of the original scale was replicated: angry afterthoughts, thoughts of revenge, angry memories, and understanding of causes. In addition, the four-factor model had better goodness of fit indices than rival models with three and two factors. Alpha reliabilities were acceptable (.72 -.89). ARS results correlated with measures of state anger, trait anger, anger expression, and anger control (negatively); correlations were significant (ps < .001) ARS outcomes also correlated (ps < .001) with physical and verbal aggression, hostility, anger, and emotion suppression, suggesting convergent validity. Men reported more thoughts of revenge than women (p < .001; Eta squared = .026), but there was no evidence of gender differences on the other anger rumination scales, or in total scores.

Financial capacity in dementia: a systematic review.

OBJECTIVES: Financial capacity (FC) refers to a set of cognitively mediated abilities related to one's competency to manage propriety and income. Identifying intact from impaired FC in older persons with dementia is a growing concern in geriatric practice, but the best methods to assess this function still need to be determined. This study aims to review data on FC in dementia and on instruments used to assess this domain of capacity. METHODS: Database search was performed in Medline, ISI Web of Knowledge, LILACS and PsycINFO. Studies that objectively assessed FC in dementia of any etiology were included. RESULTS: Of a total of 125 articles, 10 were included. Mild Alzheimer's Disease (AD) was associated with impaired complex FC abilities, namely checkbook management, bank statement management and financial judgment, but simple FC skills were preserved. Moderate AD was associated with impairment in all domains of FC. The Financial Capacity Instrument (FCI) was applied in most of the selected studies and correlated with neuropsychological and neuroimaging variables. CONCLUSIONS: Early dementia is associated with partially preserved FC. More validation studies using objective and evidence-based FC assessment tools, such as the FCI, are still needed.

Orienting attention to visual or verbal/auditory imagery differentially impairs the processing of visual stimuli.

When attention is oriented toward inner thoughts, as spontaneously occurs during mind wandering, the processing of external information is attenuated. However, the potential effects of thought's content regarding sensory attenuation are still unknown. The present study aims to assess if the representational format of thoughts, such as visual imagery or inner speech, might differentially affect the sensory processing of external stimuli. We recorded the brain activity of 20 participants (12 women) while they were exposed to a probe visual stimulus in three different conditions: executing a task on the visual probe (externally oriented attention), and two conditions involving inward-turned attention i.e. generating inner speech and performing visual imagery. Event-related potentials results showed that the P1 amplitude, related with sensory response, was significantly attenuated during both task involving inward attention compared with external task. When both representational formats were compared, the visual imagery condition showed stronger attenuation in sensory processing than inner speech condition. Alpha power in visual areas was measured as an index of cortical inhibition. Larger alpha amplitude was found when participants engaged in an internal thought contrasted with the external task, with visual imagery showing even more alpha power than inner speech condition. Our results show, for the first time to our knowledge, that visual attentional processing to external stimuli during self-generated thoughts is differentially affected by the representational format of the ongoing train of thoughts.

Reasoning About Cultural and Genetic Transmission: Developmental and Cross-Cultural Evidence From Peru, Fiji, and the United States on How People Make Inferences About Trait Transmission.

Using samples from three diverse populations, we test evolutionary hypotheses regarding how people reason about the inheritance of various traits. First, we provide a framework for differentiat-ing the outputs of mechanisms that evolved for reasoning about variation within and between (a) biological taxa and (b) culturally evolved ethnic categories from (c) a broader set of beliefs and categories that are the outputs of structured learning mechanisms. Second, we describe the results of a modified "switched-at-birth" vignette study that we administered among children and adults in Puno (Peru), Yasawa (Fiji), and adults in the United States. This protocol permits us to study perceptions of prenatal and social transmission pathways for various traits and to differentiate the latter into vertical (i.e., parental) versus horizontal (i.e., peer) cultural influence. These lines of evidence suggest that people use all three mechanisms to reason about the distribution of traits in the population. Participants at all three sites develop expectations that morphological traits are under prenatal influence, and that belief traits are more culturally influenced. On the other hand, each population holds culturally specific beliefs about the degree of social influence on non-morphological traits and about the degree of vertical transmission-with only participants in the United States expecting parents to have much social influence over their children. We reinterpret people's differentiation of trait transmission pathways in light of humans' evolutionary history as a cultural species.

Fast Distributed Dynamics of Semantic Networks via Social Media.

We investigate the dynamics of semantic organization using social media, a collective expression of human thought. We propose a novel, time-dependent semantic similarity measure (TSS), based on the social network Twitter. We show that TSS is consistent with static measures of similarity but provides high temporal resolution for the identification of real-world events and induced changes in the distributed structure of semantic relationships across the entire lexicon. Using TSS, we measured the evolution of a concept and its movement along the semantic neighborhood, driven by specific news/events. Finally, we showed that particular events may trigger a temporary reorganization of elements in the semantic network.