Communication strategies for nursing research with older adults diagnosed with schizophrenia using life course theory.

PURPOSE: To explore effective communication strategies that may be used to promote efficacious research with older adults diagnosed with schizophrenia. DESIGN: A theoretical framework of Life Course Theory was used to examine the problems of communicating in research settings with older adults diagnosed with schizophrenia and present potential effective solutions to these problems. METHODS: Using Life Course Theory as an underpinning, a literature review was conducted regarding communication strategies/methods commonly used in psychiatric nursing. This paper deductively presents how these strategies/methods could theoretically improve nursing research with older adults diagnosed with schizophrenia. RESULTS: Four main potential effective strategies for communication with older adults diagnosed with schizophrenia in nursing research were identified which were (1) giving space; (2) shortened intervals; (3) the use of simple, meaningful phrases; and (4) showing engagement. CONCLUSIONS: Older adults diagnosed with schizophrenia may be given more opportunities to share their input regarding their perceptions and valuable input regarding health care systems if these effective strategies of communication are used when conducting nursing research. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: There is a need to gain more information regarding the perceptions of older adults diagnosed with schizophrenia as they are living longer and are entering into a health care system that is often at a quandary as to how to best care for them. The strategies delineated in this paper are part of an ongoing project to co-develop a model with older adults diagnosed with schizophrenia specifically tailored to improve their health outcomes and quality of life.

Extended difficulties with counterfactuals persist in reasoning with false beliefs: Evidence for teleology-in-perspective.

Increasing evidence suggests that counterfactual reasoning is involved in false belief reasoning. Because existing work is correlational, we developed a manipulation that revealed a signature of counterfactual reasoning in participants' answers to false belief questions. In two experiments, we tested 3- to 14-year-olds and found high positive correlations (r = .56 and r = .73) between counterfactual and false belief questions. Children were very likely to respond to both questions with the same answer, also committing the same type of error. We discuss different theories and their ability to account for each aspect of our findings and conclude that reasoning about others' beliefs and actions requires similar cognitive processes as using counterfactual suppositions. Our findings question the explanatory power of the traditional frameworks, theory theory and simulation theory, in favor of views that explicitly provide for a relationship between false belief reasoning and counterfactual reasoning.

The Impact of a Construction Play on 5- to 6-Year-Old Children's Reasoning About Stability.

THEORY: Young children have an understanding of basic science concepts such as stability, yet their theoretical assumptions are often not concerned with stability. The literature on theory theory and theory-evidence coordination suggests that children construct intuitive theories about their environment which can be adjusted in the face of counterevidence that cannot be assimilated into the prior theory. With increasing age, children acquire a Center theory when balancing objects and try to balance every object at their middle, succeeding with symmetrical objects. Later, they acquire the basic science concept of stability through learning that the weight distribution of an object is of importance. Thus, they acquire a Mass theory and succeed in balancing asymmetrical objects as well. Fluid and crystallized intelligence might contribute to children's acquisition of Mass theory. Moreover, their Mass theory might be supported by implementing a playful intervention including (a) material scaffolds and (b) verbal scaffolds. AIMS: We investigated which theories children have about stability and whether these theories can be adjusted to Mass theory by implementing a playful intervention. METHOD: A total of 183 5- to 6-year-old children took part in the study with a pre-post-follow-up intervention design. Children's Mass theory was assessed with an interview in which children explained constructions' stabilities. The children received a playful intervention with two differing degrees of scaffolding (material scaffolds or material + verbal scaffolds) or no scaffolding. RESULTS: At first few children used a Mass theory to explain their reasoning. However, after being confronted with counterevidence for the asymmetrical constructions, children changed their explanation and applied a Mass theory. More children in the play group with the highest degree of scaffolding, i.e., material + verbal scaffolds, acquired a Mass theory compared to the other groups. Fluid as well as crystallized intelligence contributed to children's acquisition of a Mass theory. DISCUSSION: Counterevidence can support children in their acquisition of a Mass theory. A playful intervention with scaffolding supports children even more.

Conceptual issues in neuroscientific research on empathy.

This paper gives an analysis of some conceptual issues in the neuroscientific study of empathy. The focus will almost exclusively be on a seminal paper by Decety and Jackson (2004) on the functional architecture of empathy. The authors withstand reductionistic tendencies in the exposition of what their findings might mean for the psychology of social cognition. They are aware of the thorny conceptual issues that arise when attempting to bridge intuitive folk psychological conceptions of empathy with explanations offered by social psychology, developmental science, and, most of all, neuroscience. They defend a conception which puts emphasis on the developmental, interactional and human aspects of empathy. In the second part of the paper we will see that this overt contention is at some points at odds with the conceptual framework that underlies the presentation of scientific findings. It will appear that the method of decomposition, i.e., breaking empathy down into (mutually interacting) 'pieces', is difficult to reconcile with the idea that empathy should primarily be defined as an interactional phenomenon. The method of decomposition puts empathy back within the brain, whereas recent philosophical work argues that empathy needs a definition which includes both processes in the empathizing subject and in the person with whom the subject empathizes. In the final part of the paper it is asked whether, how and to what extent it does matter that professionals know about the social neuroscience of empathy and, especially, its underlying conceptual framework. It is argued that conceptual innovations that currently are emerging in social neuroscience do matter for clinical and legal practices. In spite of the limitations mentioned earlier, Decety & Jackson's developmental and interactional approach helps to overcome reductionistic and mentalistic interpretations of human empathy.

The practical other: teleology and its development.

We argue for teleology as a description of the way in which we ordinarily understand others' intentional actions. Teleology starts from the close resemblance between the reasoning involved in understanding others' actions and one's own practical reasoning involved in deciding what to do. We carve out teleology's distinctive features more sharply by comparing it to its three main competitors: theory theory, simulation theory, and rationality theory. The plausibility of teleology as our way of understanding others is underlined by developmental data in its favour.

A Bayesian Framework for False Belief Reasoning in Children: A Rational Integration of Theory-Theory and Simulation Theory.

Two apparently contrasting theories have been proposed to account for the development of children's theory of mind (ToM): theory-theory and simulation theory. We present a Bayesian framework that rationally integrates both theories for false belief reasoning. This framework exploits two internal models for predicting the belief states of others: one of self and one of others. These internal models are responsible for simulation-based and theory-based reasoning, respectively. The framework further takes into account empirical studies of a developmental ToM scale (e.g., Wellman and Liu, 2004): developmental progressions of various mental state understandings leading up to false belief understanding. By representing the internal models and their interactions as a causal Bayesian network, we formalize the model of children's false belief reasoning as probabilistic computations on the Bayesian network. This model probabilistically weighs and combines the two internal models and predicts children's false belief ability as a multiplicative effect of their early-developed abilities to understand the mental concepts of diverse beliefs and knowledge access. Specifically, the model predicts that children's proportion of correct responses on a false belief task can be closely approximated as the product of their proportions correct on the diverse belief and knowledge access tasks. To validate this prediction, we illustrate that our model provides good fits to a variety of ToM scale data for preschool children. We discuss the implications and extensions of our model for a deeper understanding of developmental progressions of children's ToM abilities.

Continuing debates on direct social perception: Some notes on Gallagher's analysis of "the new hybrids".

This commentary argues that Gallagher's account of direct social perception has remained underdeveloped in several respects. Gallagher has not provided convincing evidence to support his claim that mindreading is rare in social situations. He and other direct perception theorists have not offered a substantive critique of standard theories of mindreading because they have attacked a much stronger claim about the putative unobservability of mental states than most theories of mindreading imply. To provide a genuine alternative to standard theories of mindreading, the direct perception theorist needs to provide more detailed answers to the following questions: What are the criteria for distinguishing perceptual processes from non-perceptual processes? How exactly does direct social perception function on the subpersonal level? What is the content of direct social perception? How does direct perception theory relate to more recent developments in the mindreading literature?

How and where: theory-of-mind in the brain.

Theory of mind (ToM) is a core topic in both social neuroscience and developmental psychology, yet theory and data from each field have only minimally constrained thinking in the other. The two fields might be fruitfully integrated, however, if social neuroscientists sought evidence directly relevant to current accounts of ToM development: modularity, simulation, executive, and theory theory accounts. Here we extend the distinct predictions made by each theory to the neural level, describe neuroimaging evidence that in principle would be relevant to testing each account, and discuss such evidence where it exists. We propose that it would be mutually beneficial for both fields if ToM neuroimaging studies focused more on integrating developmental accounts of ToM acquisition with neuroimaging approaches, and suggest ways this might be achieved.

Mirror neurons and their function in cognitively understood empathy.

The current renewal of interest in empathy is closely connected to the recent neurobiological discovery of mirror neurons. Although the concept of empathy has been widely deployed, we shall focus upon one main psychological function it serves: enabling us to understand other peoples' intentions. In this essay we will draw on neuroscientific, psychological, and philosophical literature in order to investigate the relationships between mirror neurons and empathy as to intention understanding. Firstly, it will be explored whether mirror neurons are the neural basis of our empathic capacities: a vast array of empirical results appears to confirm this hypothesis. Secondly, the higher level capacity of reenactive empathy will be examined and the question will be addressed whether philosophical analysis alone is able to provide a foundation for this more abstract level of empathy. The conclusion will be drawn that both empirical evidence and philosophical analysis can jointly contribute to the clarification of the concept of empathy.

Illuminating the dark matter of social neuroscience: Considering the problem of social interaction from philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific perspectives.

Successful human social interaction depends on our capacity to understand other people's mental states and to anticipate how they will react to our actions. Despite its importance to the human condition, the exact mechanisms underlying our ability to understand another's actions, feelings, and thoughts are still a matter of conjecture. Here, we consider this problem from philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific perspectives. In a critical review, we demonstrate that attempts to draw parallels across these complementary disciplines is premature: The second-person perspective does not map directly to Interaction or Simulation theories, online social cognition, or shared neural network accounts underlying action observation or empathy. Nor does the third-person perspective map onto Theory-Theory (TT), offline social cognition, or the neural networks that support Theory of Mind (ToM). Moreover, we argue that important qualities of social interaction emerge through the reciprocal interplay of two independent agents whose unpredictable behavior requires that models of their partner's internal state be continually updated. This analysis draws attention to the need for paradigms in social neuroscience that allow two individuals to interact in a spontaneous and natural manner and to adapt their behavior and cognitions in a response contingent fashion due to the inherent unpredictability in another person's behavior. Even if such paradigms were implemented, it is possible that the specific neural correlates supporting such reciprocal interaction would not reflect computation unique to social interaction but rather the use of basic cognitive and emotional processes combined in a unique manner. Finally, we argue that given the crucial role of social interaction in human evolution, ontogeny, and every-day social life, a more theoretically and methodologically nuanced approach to the study of real social interaction will nevertheless help the field of social cognition to evolve.

Teoría de la mente: una revisión acerca del desarrollo del concepto / Theory of the mind: a review about the development of the concept

El término "Teoría de la Mente" se refiere a una habilidad cognitiva compleja, que permite que un individuo atribuya estados mentales a sí mismo y a otros. Es un sistema de conocimientos que permite inferir creencias, deseos, sentimientos, y de esta manera conseguir interpretar, explicar o comprender los comportamientos propios y de otros, así como predecirlos y controlarlos. Para cumplir con el objetivo propuesto de exponer el desarrollo del término, se abordarán teóricos que precedieron el concepto y otros posteriores a su desarrollo.. Todos ellos han colaborado de manera directa o indirecta a la consolidación y desarrollo de esta propuesta teórica. La Teoría de la Mente ha sido objeto de un considerable esfuerzo de investigación y se ha convertido en un importante constructo teórico que ha dado lugar a una serie de posturas que la caracterizan, dentro de las cuales se encuentran: teoría-teoría; teorías de módulos innatos, teorías de simulación, la construcción social de la mente y teorías neurobiológicas.

The term "Theory of Mind" refers to a complex cognitive skill that allows an individual to attribute mental states to himself and others, is a system of knowledge that we infer beliefs, desires, feelings and thus achieve interpret, explain or understand, as if to predict and control the behavior of themselves and others. According to the goal of exposing the development of the term, addressing theoretical concept that proceeded and later to him, they have collaborated in a direct or indirect consolidation and development of this theoretical proposal. The theory of the mind has been the subject of considerable research effort and has become an important theoretical construct that led to a series of positions among which are: theory-theory, theory of innate modules, theories simulation, the social construction of the mind, neurobilogical theories.*