Levels of self-awareness; some advances

Interesting new article published by Consciousness and Cognition recently, reporting the results of an experiment designed to distinguish levels of explicit self-awareness.

A little bit of background, first. Rochat (2003) argued that we possess five different levels of self-awareness;

• Differentiation
• Situation
• Identification
• Permanence
• Self-consciousness or "meta" self-awareness

He also proposed a "zeroth" level of self-awareness, confusion (or no self-awareness), but made the claim that even newborns have a sense of differentiation - immediately after birth, children have a sense of their own body as a distinct entity. A further claim is that the first two stages are merely indicative of implicit self-awareness, and that it is only in the final three stages that a developing child gains of sense of "Me".

Children in the first and second stage of self-awareness might not be able to recognise that their reflection in a mirror is them, per se, but they are apparently aware that it is different from other images - children in these states, for instance, typically choose to observe an image of novel face as opposed to an image of their own, and will pay less attention to their own reflection than to an experimenter "shadowing" their every move.

In the new paper, Legrain, Cleeremans and Destrebecqz (2010) propose methods of measuring Rochat's three explicit levels of self-awareness. The first was the classic mirror task. The second involved taking a picture of the child several days before the experiment proper, presenting the child with their own photo amongst three pictures of other children, and then asking them to "Show [the experimenter] where [they were.]" The third method was a more complicated variant of the second; both the child subject and three peers were instructed to wear animal masks several days prior to the true experiment, and a photo of each child was taken whilst he or she was wearing the mask. They were then presented with the photos, and asked to point themselves out.

Legrain et al. found that the percentage of children successfully completing each task decreased as the complexity of the experiment increased; 93% of their participants passed the mirror task, and 84% passed the basic picture self-recognition test, but only 62% passed the mask test. These results were taken as supporting evidence for Rochat's developmental theory, but the authors did acknowledge that alternative interpretations were possible; it may, perhaps, be the case that the differing level of success was not due to development of self-awareness, but rather due to differences in broader cognitive abilities (most notably attention and memory).

Legrain et al.'s study is certainly good evidence towards the theory that self-awareness is not a singular property, and that it is instead composed of multiple levels (or at the very least can progress towards ever-increasing complexity).

As a side-note, Scientific American reported today on some similar research by Tanya Broesch, which investigated cultural distinctions between success in the mirror self-recognition task. Such research suggests that we should not only take into account differing developmental levels of self-awareness, but also variations in behaviour within each level.


References:

Broesch, T., Callaghan, T. C., Henrich, J., Murphy, C., & Rochat, P. (in press). Cultural variations in children's mirror self-recognition. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Legrain, L., Cleeremans, A., & Destrebecqz, A. (2010), Distinguishing three levels in explicit self-awareness, Consciousness and Cognition, doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.10.010

Rochat, P. (2003), Five levels of self-awareness as they unfold early in life, Consciousness and Cognition, 12, 717-731

CFP Machine Consciousness 2011: Self, Integration and Explanation

Just saw this on Mind Network, redistributing it;

Abstract submission deadline: December 31st, 2010

Submissions are invited for presentation at MC2011, a two-day symposium to be held in conjunction with Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour 2011 (AISB 2011), April 4-7 2011, University of York, UK. It is anticipated that the symposium will be held April 6th-7th (TBC).

Machine Consciousness (MC) concerns itself with the creation of artefacts which have, or model, mental characteristics typically associated with consciousness such as (self-) awareness, emotion, affect, phenomenal states, imagination, etc.

We encourage submissions falling under one of more of these topics:

• MC and Self modelling
• MC and Information integration
• The explanatory power of MC models
• MC and Neuroscience
• MC and Functional versus phenomenal consciousness
• MC Ethics

Machine Consciousness 2011 will favour submissions that are based on implemented models, either in the sense that they detail actual or potential artefacts or that they seriously engage with previous published work or models, either by critiquing or extending that work. We favour new work – even if preliminary – over work which has received multiple publication elsewhere.
For more information on the themes and background of MC2011, please consult the website at http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cogs/mc2011.

Symposium Dates
The symposium will be held over two days as part of the AISB 2011 Convention, 4-7 April 2011.

• 31/12/10: Deadline for submission of abstracts
• 14/01/11: Notification of accepted papers
• 14/02/11: Camera ready papers due (for inclusion in AISB proceedings)
• TBA: Early registration deadline (NB symposium attendees must register for the full convention)
• 4-7 April 2011: AISB 2011 convention
• 6-7 April 2011: MC2011 symposium (TBC)

Publication
All accepted papers will be published in an AISB proceedings produced for the Convention.
The Chairs also intend to publish selected papers in a book or journal special issue based on the symposium.

Student submissions
In previous years there have been awards for the best student paper, and limited student bursaries. Details TBA.

Submissions

Extended abstracts of not more than 500 words (plus references) should be submitted via the EasyChair system.
The EasyChair AISB-11 Web page is http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aisb11.
If you have no EasyChair account you should create an account, by clicking on the “I have no EasyChair account” link on the page.
Each abstract will receive at least two reviews.
Final papers should be no longer than eight pages.
Templates for full papers from a previous convention can be found at http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb10/styleFiles/

Websites
MC 2011 Symposium : http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cogs/mc2011
AISB 2011 Convention: http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb11/

Looking at the Beliefs of Philosophers

David Chalmers and David Bourget have just released additional results from the PhilPapers Surveys, and the findings are pretty interesting.

Not to say that all of the results were interesting, some of them were deeply unsurprising - is anyone, for instance, shocked that metaphysical naturalism correlates strongly with physicalism of mind, that believing one would survive a teletransporter correlates strongly with holding a psychological view of personal identity, or that Chalmers thinks zombies are metaphysically possible? Nonetheless, there's plenty of novelty found within the numbers.

Philosophers affiliated with universities in the UK deviated from the average in intriguing ways. They're more likely to believe that one would survive the teletransporter (46.7% agree, compared to 39.7% from outside the UK), more likely to class themselves as analytic philosophers (95.1% vs 86.3%), less likely to hold the philosophy of cognitive science as their area of specialisation (2.6% vs 6.8%) but more likely to state that the philosophy of mind is their AoS (25.8% vs 19.1%), and were apparently younger than average (58.9% had a birthdate greater than or equal to the median, vs 48%; 62.1% UK philosophers also received their PhD in a year later than the average, vs 47.7%).

UK philosophers being younger than average might account for some of the deviation, given the correlations with year of birth; younger philosophers (i.e., those born later than the median) were significantly more likely to believe in survival through the teletransporter (45.5% vs 36.8%), externalism of mental content (59.5% vs 50.7%) and physicalism of mind (60% vs 54.8%). They were also more likely to classify themselves as analytic philosophers (93.3% vs 84.7%).

Given that the gender disparity in philosophy has gone under scrutiny previously, the gender correlations from this survey might well wind up being analysed in detail. The only significant findings that jumped out at me are that female philosophers were more likely to support virtue ethics (26.6% vs 16.8%) and the psychological view of personal identity (40.8% vs 35%), and less likely to support the metaphysical possibility of p-zombies (18% vs 28.4%). Female philosophers were also less likely than average to call metaphysics their AoS (16.5% vs 27.6%), but more likely to claim applied ethics (8% vs 3.6%). Interestingly, they were also slightly more likely to classify themselves as continental philosophers (4.7% vs 3.3%).

The one finding here that's going to generate the most discussion, I imagine, is that female philosophers were far more frequently not from the UK or USA than average (Canada, 12.2% vs 7.3%; Europe, 9.9% vs 5.8%; "other", 19.8% vs 3.8) and less likely to be based in America or the UK (America, 40.5% vs 53.9%; UK, 10.3% vs 18.3%). Apparently there's something about UK and US philosophy departments that turns women off the subject at some point.

Adhering to the physicalism of mind was, curiously, linked to consequentialist ethics (33.2% vs 12.2%); I'm not sure why that should be the case. Perhaps non-physicalists are more likely to be theists of some sort, which makes them more likely to hold non-consequentialist views? Another surprise was that physicalists were more likely to hold psychological theories of personal identity (41.1% vs 34.1%), but equally they were also more likely to support biological theories (22.2% vs 10.2%); I suspect it's safe to assume that physicalists are significantly less likely to claim a further fact theory of personal identity, artificially inflating the percentage holding psychological or biological theories to be the case. And it turns out this is probably the case, with non-physicalists being nearly five times more likely to support further-fact theories (27.3% vs 6.3%).

A minor thing I found amusing; those with decision theory as an AoS were more likely to support consequentialism. Is that due to Harsanyi, or because philosophers who spend much of their time thinking about the consequences of their decisions are, well, more accustomed to thinking about the consequences of their decisions?

Philosophers of mind and cognitive science were significantly more likely to support the physicalism of mind (mind, 61.5% vs 56.1%; cogsci, 76.7% vs 56%). Interestingly, there was a weak correlation between philosophy of mind as an AoS and belief in externalism of mental content (56.8% vs 55.1%), and no reported correlation between philosophy of cogsci and externalist views. Those with philosophy of cognitive science as an AoS were also slightly more likely to pick one box in Newcomb's problem (35% vs 29.5).

Interesting findings all round. I'm looking forward to the discussions of them which will no doubt start appearing over the next few weeks.

Creativity in the News

A few articles about creativity and innovation popped up recently.

The BPS' Research Digest blog reports about a study into group creativity, which found that narcissistic traits in individuals could be beneficial for the group as a whole in certain circumstances. Jack Goncalo - the lead author of the study in question - investigated the effect that narcissistic behaviour might have on creativity, and found evidence for the following;

• Narcissists are generally not more creative than average, although they will judge themselves as being highly creative
  
• Other individuals will also judge a narcissist's work as more creative than average
• Groups with approximately two narcissistic members outperformed others in a test of group creativity

On a related note, the BBC has this article about Steven Johnson's argument, detailed further in his latest book, that innovation almost always comes from networks, rather than individuals.

In general it seems like there's been a significant increase in the amount of psychological and neuroscientific research into creativity over the past decade. Probably to be expected given the swelling of all cognitive scientific research during that same timespan, but still interesting nonetheless. At some point (after a bit of research) I'll post something about the most significant studies in the area, but for the moment these two studies from this year caught my eye - The (B)link Between Creativity and Dopamine and The Neuroanatomy of Creativity.

More later, with discussion, hopefully.

Neuroimaging DID

There's a frustrating lack of theory and firm empirical research behind dissociative identity disorder. Quite apart from whether the condition actually exists (and I feel relatively comfortable claiming that it does, with the caveat that it may be overdiagnosed), there seems to be a certain... vagueness about why people might have DID. "As a response to childhood trauma" (the traumagenic view) or "as a form of false memory" (the iatrogenic view) seem to be the main options, but there's mostly silence on anything more substantial.

Simone Reinders' work is, in this context, one of the most promising research programs in the area. Reinders' lab works on producing neuroimages of patients with DID, with the hope of eventually figuring out what exactly is going on in the brain of a DID-diagnosed patient. Reinders' current working theory is, I believe, that DID is related to deviant amygdalar and hippocampal volumes - of note, perhaps, is that the hippocampus is more frequently found to be implicated in DID than the amygdala. Respectably, she has also commented that given the rarity of rigorous empirical research into DID we should remain cautious about adhering to any particular view - open minds are the order of the day.

I'll be watching the work of the Neuroimaging DID project closely - it's a research project that's been sorely needed, and it should be fascinating to watch its progress.

References;
Reinders, A.A.T.S. (2008) Cross-examining dissociative identity disorder: Neuroimaging and etiology on trial, Neurocase, 14(1), 44-53

Reinders et al., (2006), Psychobiological Characteristics of Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Symptom Provocation Study, Biological Psychiatry, 60, 730-740

Vermetten et al. (2006), Hippocampal and Amygdalar Volumes in Dissociative Identity Disorder, American Journal of Psychiatry, 163, 630-636

On Risk and Uncertainty

A new issue of the journal Judgement and Decision Making was published recently, and one of its articles was this interesting paper by Tim Rakow about the economist Frank Knight. Knight was an economist who is generally credited as being the first to delineate a distinction between "risk" and "uncertainty", with a risky decision being one that involves known probabilities, and an uncertain decision being one that involves unknowable probabilities. Risky decisions seem to me to be more fashionable for psychologists and behavioural economists to research, but I think it's fairly non-controversial to say that uncertain decisions are the ones we face more often in real life.

Rakow makes the point that many of Knight's claims foreshadowed those of more recent cognitive scientists; his description of decision making echoed Herb Simon's later theory of bounded rationality, and his views on risky choice supposedly shared much in common with Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory. And that's fair enough; Knight was clearly a man ahead of his time.

The argument that Rakow makes at the end of his article, however, is that psychologists should have referred to historical figures such as Knight in pursuit of ideas to stimulate their research. He notes Adam Smith as another thinker who may, similarly, be a fruitful source of hypotheses. Rakow states;

The point is: we should be open to the possibility that the best sources for “fresh” ideas may lay outside the confines of our own discipline, or may be found in literature much older than we typically examine. Decision psychologists have been keen to emphasise that their theories and insights have important implications for economic theory. A reading of Knight’s Risk Uncertainty and Profit emphasises that important psychological insights may manifest themselves in the writing of those who do not describe themselves as psychologists.

Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Baron both provide commentary on this claim, with Kahneman being the harsher of the two; his response is titled this is not how science is done. There are two ways to read such a title; the first is "scientists do not behave in such a manner!" Which, I believe, is false; as an example that springs to mind, how many contemporary embodied cognition researchers have used Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty for inspiration? The second way of reading Kahneman's response is; "scientists should not behave in such a manner!" A view that may well have some merit, although I'm somewhat hesitant to delve too far into the philosophy of science at the moment. Kahneman's overall comment implies that he intends the first reading, but both Baron and Rakow provide reasons for disagreement.

For what it's worth, I suspect Kahneman, Baron, and Rakow are all correct to a degree - science is, and should be, a conversation, with researchers taking their primary inspiration from facets of that conversation. But secondary inspiration from historical figures isn't necessarily a bad thing, and can provide a source of novel ideas.

Equally, of course, looking for inspiration from history can lead to a dead end. Such is life.

Reference:
Rakow, T. (2010), Risk, uncertainty and prophet: The psychological insights of Frank H. Knight, Judgment and Decision Making, 5(6), pp. 458–466