Cognition on the Coast: Australasian Society for Cognitive Science 2017

Charles Sturt University

December 7th and 8th 2017

Taxis Web: http://portmacquarietaxis.com.au/Phone: (02) 6581 0081Apps: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bizar.taxi

https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=821480953&mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D6

Buses: 325, 335W go past campus, 328, 335 stop at the hospital which is walking distance to campus Web: https://www.busways.com.au/port-macquarie/travelling-with-us/route-maps

DinnerFriday 8th 6:30 Mekong Thai Lao Restauranthttps://www.mekongrestaurant.com.au/

We are organising à la carte to allow for flexibility and avoid terrible vegetarian (etc.) mealsMenu: https://www.mekongrestaurant.com.au/dine_in.html

THURSDAY 7TH OF DECEMBER9:00-9:45 Registration9:45-10:00 Welcome and Acknowledgement of

Country10-10:30 Murphy, Karen

Is there a link between media multitasking and task-switching skills for gender and expression classification tasks?

10:30-11 Coffee and Morning Tea11-11:30 Winskel, Heather and Perea, Manuel

Do the characteristics of the script influence responses to mirror letters?

11:30-12 Howarth, Stephanie and Handley, Simon

Logic Sense: Exploring the impact of increased instructional cues on belief and logic judgments

12-12:30 Bilton, Natalia

Applying Cognitive Psychology to the Teaching of Anatomy and Physiology

12:30-1:30 Lunch1:30-2 Carls-Diamante, Sidney

The Octopus and the Body Schema2-2:30 Asoulin, Eran

On human thought and animal cognition2:30-3 Morgan, Alexander

Autonoetic Animals3-3:30 Coffee and Afternoon Tea3:30-4 Pain, Ross and Alksnis, Nik

What is wrong with Affordances (and why it matters)

4-4:30 Fresco, Nir and Tzelgov, Joseph

Automaticity4:30-5:30 Posters, Drinks and Food

FRIDAY 8TH OF DECEMBER9:30-10 Taylor, Jemma and Carruthers, Glenn

Attitudes of Australian Online News and the Public Towards Perpetrators of Filicide

10-10:30 Linsdell, Greg

Cognitive bias in Emergencies and Disasters10:30-11 Coffee and Morning Tea11-11:30 Devitt, S. Kate; Pearce, Tamara;

Chowdhury, Alok and Mengersen, Kerrie

Antagonising the echo chamber: Can a social network counteract cognitive bias with Bayesian rationality?

11:30-12 Bowling, Alison; Grant, Leigh and Abdula, Dedar

Over-confidence and the conjunction fallacy in the prediction of NRL games by Australian sports bettors

12-2:00 Lunch/General Meeting2-2:30 Brujic, Marija and Krstic, Vladimir

Sworn Virgins: Acting on a Social Contract vs. Suffering from a Delusion-Like State

2:30-3 Coffee and Afternoon Tea3-3:30 Schlesinger, Ariel

The Grand Tour: A Psychology Lecturer/PhD Candidate's Lived Experience of all Mental Ill-health Symptoms.

3:30-4 Poissant, Helene; El-Khoury, B; Mendrek, B; Nolan, J. and Talbot, N.

Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Adults: Preliminary Data

4-4:10 Coffee4:10-5:10 Coltheart, Max

The nature of cognitive science6:30 Dinner: Mekong Thai Lao

Abstracts

KeynoteMax ColtheartTHE NATURE OF COGNITIVE SCIENCECognitive science is typically described as the interdisciplinary study of the mind. I will discuss what this definition means and what its implications are. What are the constituent disciplines of cognitive science? How do these disciplines relate to each other when projects in cognitive science are being conducted? What counts as cognitive-science research? What role do individual disciplines play in offering explanations of mental phenomena from the perspective of cognitive science?

TalksKaren MurphyIS THERE A LINK BETWEEN MEDIA MULTITASKING AND TASK-SWITCHING SKILLS FOR GENDER AND EXPRESSION CLASSIFICATION TASKS?Media multitasking refers to the simultaneous use of at least two forms of media. Given this past-time involves substantial task-switching, studies have examined the link between media-multitasking use and task-switching skills. The results of these studies are mixed. One study showed that heavy media-multitaskers had poorer task-switching skills than light media-multitaskers, another study showed that heavy media-multitaskers had better tasks-switching skills than light media-multitaskers and a third study found no task-switching difference between these groups. In the current study, 196 participants completed the Media Multitasking Inventory (MMI Ophir et al., 2009) and 3 sub-groups of 30 media users were classified as light, average and heavy media-multitaskers. These participants completed a cued-task-switching task that required gender or expression classification on each trial. Standard switch and mixing costs were observed for the RT and errors. Gender classification trials resulted in smaller switch costs than expression classification trials. Heavy media-multitaskers had shorter overall RTs than light media-multitaskers but there was no group difference in the size of the mixing or switch costs. Therefore, heavy media-multitaskers incur the same size switch and mixing costs as light and average media-multitaskers but they are able to perform the task more rapidly.

Stephanie Howarth and Simon HandleyLOGIC SENSE: EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF INCREASED INSTRUCTIONAL CUES ON BELIEF AND LOGIC JUDGMENTSThe Default Interventionist (DI) account of reasoning suggests that, inhibiting a Type 1 belief response for a logical output requires cognitive effort (Type 2) and our inclination towards frugal processing means we often respond according to beliefs. Recent research, however, has shown that in some instances belief judgments take longer, are more prone to error and are more impacted on by cognitive load. One interpretation is that logical inferences can be available automatically and require intervention in order to successfully respond according to beliefs. This paper investigates the effortful nature of belief judgments and whether

logical inferences are available early by increasing the inhibitory demands of a task. In two experiments, we asked participants to make judgments of conclusion validity, believability and either font colour or font style, to increase the number of competing responses. Both experiments showed that belief-logic conflict impacts more on the believability of the conclusion and when inhibitory demands are increased, logic has more of an impact on belief judgments. Nevertheless, logic judgments take longer to complete which we conjecture can be explained in terms of there being “Two Routes” to a logical output, discussed in the context of a new Parallel Dual Processing model.

Heather Winskel and Manuel PereaDO THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SCRIPT INFLUENCE RESPONSES TO MIRROR LETTERS?Mirror invariance or generalisation is the ability to recognise objects as being the same regardless of their vertical orientation. According to the neural recycling hypothesis (Dehaene, 2005), existing brain systems, which are used for visual recognition of objects and faces, have been recycled or partially reoriented for the relatively recent cultural invention of reading. When learning to read Roman script with its mirror letters (b vs. d or p vs. q), the general mirror recognition ability must be partially inhibited or unlearned but not necessarily so in scripts without mirror letters such as Thai. We conducted two same-different masked priming experiments with 4-letter word pairs with three types of primes (identical, mirror and control-mirror) with English native readers (Experiment 1) and Thai native readers (Experiment 2). The mirror primes were composed of words with mirror-letters, where the two middle letters were rotated on the vertical axis, e.g., leaf for leaf or หน for หวาน. In the Thai readers, the mirror prime had a similar facilitative effect as the identical prime whereas in the English readers the mirror prime did not have such a facilitative effect as the identity prime. Thus, the Thais were more likely to perceive mirror letters similarly to identical letters than the English readers. These results suggest that there is an effect of having mirror letters in the script, whereby readers of scripts with mirror letters are less prone to mirror generalisation effects in comparison to readers of scripts that do not have mirror letters.

Natalia BiltonAPPLYING COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY TO THE TEACHING OF ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGYLearning can be defined as the cognitive change that results from experience (Hay, 2007). The construction of new knowledge begins with our observations of events or objects through the concepts that we already possess. Concept mapping is a technique that is based on the learning psychology of David Ausubel where learning takes place by the assimilation of new concepts and propositions into existing propositional frameworks held by the learner (Ausubel, 1968). We tested whether concept mapping could be used to help students construct new knowledge in anatomy and physiology. In this paper, we present an activity designed to facilitate learning of the organization of the human skeletal system and anatomical directional terms used to help describe it. Learning styles and the effect of body painting was also investigated. Two studies are described and each were analysed separately both quantitatively (pre- and post-test scores) and qualitatively (surveys). Body painting did not affect the number of directional terms included in the concept maps. The most common term used was “superior” and the least was “superficial”. Students applied the greatest number of directional terms to the lower limb, upper limb and vertebral column. Knowledgeable students gained no benefit from the body painting activity and from

completing the concept map test a second time, whereas, the students who were naïve to the content benefited significantly from repeated testing and from body painting. Students need scaffolding, practise and feedback to construct concept maps. Adapting the concept map tests increased student engagement and the objectivity of scoring. Learning style did not have an effect on learning outcomes of the students in this study. Concept mapping as a teaching or assessment technique was found to be useful in the learning experiences of our students and offers an objective evidence-based method of leaning quality in anatomy and physiology.

Sidney Carls-Diamante THE OCTOPUS AND THE BODY SCHEMACan a body schema arise in an organism that lacks a means of consolidating proprioceptive information? As the body schema is a neurological mechanism for monitoring the posture and movement of the body and its parts, proprioception is viewed as necessary for generating it. Can a body schema can arise in the octopus, an organism in which proprioceptive information is extremely sparse and scattered due to its functionally decentralized nervous system and lack of a rigid skeleton? Due to these morphological features, the octopus lacks proprioceptive markers and mechanisms, indispensable contributors to the body schema that permit comprehensive representation of the body. Nevertheless, the octopus is capable of behavioural and cognitive tasks that are generally accepted as unequivocally indicative of a body schema. Furthermore, its anatomical flexibility and hyper-redundant motor capacities are such that they appear to require the use of a detailed monitoring mechanism, i.e., the body schema. The octopus is thus a paradoxical case study for the body schema. Its motor capacities and behavioural repertoire strongly suggest the utilization of a body schema, yet its nervous system lacks the neurological features deemed necessary to generate and support one. The conclusions of this investigation are to be juxtaposed with empirical findings on human subjects exhibiting neurological disorders that affect the body schema (i.e., deafferentation and autotopagnosia). This comparative approach demonstrates that the octopus, like the aforementioned humans, challenges the notion that a comprehensive and consolidated representation of the body is required for coordinated motor control—and ultimately, coherent goal-directed behaviour. Thus, the contribution of this philosophical project to neuroscience lies in its use of the octopus nervous system as a starting point for identifying cognitive motor control routines and mechanisms that are potential alternatives to the representation-heavy and proprioception-dependent body schema.

Eran AsoulinON HUMAN THOUGHT AND ANIMAL COGNITIONIs there a difference in kind, as opposed to a difference in degree, between human thought and animal thought? And if so, what accounts for this difference in kind? I argue that animals have a rich mental life that involves thoughts of many kinds but they lack a specific kind of thought that is only available to humans. That is, while there is no doubt that animals think, there is little evidence that their thoughts display productivity and systematicity. So there is a discontinuity, a partial overlap, between animal thought and human thought that must be accounted for. I argue that what accounts for this discontinuity and allows humans to think these particular types of thoughts are the underlying mechanisms of language that structure these thoughts in a particular way.

Alexander MorganAUTONOETIC ANIMALSCast your mind back to the last really great meal you had. Where were you? Who were you with? The recollective experience you just had is an expression of your episodic memory system. There is now considerable evidence that episodic memory is distinct and dissociable from other memory systems, and that it is involved not just in recalling past personal experiences, but in ‘projecting’ oneself into possible future experiences. Endel Tulving was the first to distinguish episodic memory from other memory systems, and he did so by appealing to its distinctive content: he held that episodic memories are memories of what happened, where, and when. Recognizing that this criterion doesn’t distinguish episodic from other memory systems, Tulving later characterized episodic memory in terms of ‘autonoetic awareness’, the distinctive subjective character of reliving past or possible future experiences. Partly because of the methodological difficulties associated with studying consciousness in non-human animals, and partly because autonoesis was widely thought to depend on sophisticated cognitive capacities like a concept of the self, Tulving and many other psychologists have thought that episodic memory is uniquely human. To avoid becoming entangled in apparently intractable conceptual and methodological debates, comparative psychologists have strategically characterized their research into the mnemonic abilities of animals in terms of ‘episodic-like’, or what-where-when memory. In this talk, I’ll argue that comparative psychologists no longer need to be so coy about the strength of the conclusions they draw from their behavioral research. Combined with contemporary comparative neuroscience, this research provides strong reason to think that many non-human animals (probably most mammals and many birds) have a capacity for genuine autonoetic awareness, of both the past and potentially the future. This has theoretical implications for our understanding of the evolution of ‘higher’ cognition, as well as ethical implications for our treatment of animals.

Ross Pain and Nik AlksnisWHAT IS WRONG WITH AFFORDANCES (AND WHY IT MATTERS)Chemero (2003; 2009: 135-147) has recently argued that, rather than thinking of affordances as properties, we should think of them as relations. One of the less discussed reasons for this move concerns the need to account for asymmetrical behaviours. Symmetrical behaviours are consistent law-like behaviours; for example, the feeding response a shark produces when its electromagnetic field is disrupted. Asymmetrical behaviours, on the other hand, occur when ecologically similar agents (e.g. members of the same species) produce different responses in almost identical situations. Most human intelligence appears to be asymmetrical, so, if affordances are indeed involved in cognition, the theory needs to be able to account for behaviour of this kind. However, we will argue that this move is more problematic than Chemero has recognised. Specifically, the attempt to explain asymmetrical behaviour puts pressure on the claim that affordances are perceived directly. This, in turn, threatens the notion that affordances offer a viable alternative to computational theories of cognition.

Nir Fresco and Joseph TzelgovAUTOMATICITY

Skillful action is intimately connected to what philosophers have called “knowledge how”. Skill acquisition is typically attributed to training and practice. When an individual can automatically perform an action (or rather a series of actions) A as a result of extensive practice in contexts similar to those in which it should be performed -- she is, arguably, skillful in performing (and possibly knows how to perform) A. However, it is less clear what 'automaticity' (as pertaining to a cognitive process that runs automatically) amounts to. Automaticity has been typically defined (negatively) as a list of (the absence of) cognitive features, such as effortless, unintentional, unconscious, and uncontrolled (e.g., Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977, Posner & Snyder, 1975; for a recent review see Moors & De Houwer, 2006). Logan has famously taken a different approach characterising automaticity as a race between memory and some computational procedure (1988). A process is automatic when a stored "instance" of a previous solution to the problem concerned is retrieved from memory rather than computed anew. Whilst Logan's account is very attractive and able to provide strong mathematical predictions, it is not straightforwardly applicable to multi-step tasks, such as driving, piano playing, or even multi-step reasoning. Following Bargh (1992), Tzelgov defined an automatic process as one that runs without conscious monitoring (1997). Whilst this definition may indeed provide a sufficient condition in the case of human skilled action, it excludes animals that lack consciousness altogether. We examine an additional condition, which we deem necessary, for automaticity in Stroop-like tasks. Accordingly, automaticity entails the existence of more than one course of action available to the skilled agent. For example, expert readers can read whole words and even short sentences in a single scan of the text. But importantly when required they can also revert to slower, child-like reading of individual syllables or letters. Such a condition seems necessary to distinguish automatic actions of skilled agents from those of thermostats.

Stephanie Howarth and Simon HandleyLOGIC SENSE: EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF INCREASED INSTRUCTIONAL CUES ON BELIEF AND LOGIC JUDGMENTSThe Default Interventionist (DI) account of reasoning suggests that, inhibiting a Type 1 belief response for a logical output requires cognitive effort (Type 2) and our inclination towards frugal processing means we often respond according to beliefs. Recent research, however, has shown that in some instances belief judgments take longer, are more prone to error and are more impacted on by cognitive load. One interpretation is that logical inferences can be available automatically and require intervention in order to successfully respond according to beliefs. This paper investigates the effortful nature of belief judgments and whether logical inferences are available early by increasing the inhibitory demands of a task. In two experiments, we asked participants to make judgments of conclusion validity, believability and either font colour or font style, to increase the number of competing responses. Both experiments showed that belief-logic conflict impacts more on the believability of the conclusion and when inhibitory demands are increased, logic has more of an impact on belief judgments. Nevertheless, logic judgments take longer to complete which we conjecture can be explained in terms of there being “Two Routes” to a logical output, discussed in the context of a new Parallel Dual Processing model.

Jemma Taylor and Glenn CarruthersATTITUDES OF AUSTRALIAN ONLINE NEWS AND THE PUBLIC TOWARDS PERPETRATORS OF FILICIDE

Attitudes towards perpetrators of filicide have been researched through newspapers, and real and mock juries. The aim of this study was to find out attitudes of Australian online news and public towards perpetrators of filicide. It was hypothesised that online news articles describe negative attributes, creating stereotypes around gender, and that these would closely relate to participants. It was also hypothesised that most participants would perceive father and mother perpetrators as guilty of murder. It was further hypothesised that filicide attitudes would be based on certain kinds of stereotype thinking including sexism and mental illness, and that judgments of responsibility will be influenced by such stereotype thinking. The literature review and word frequency analysis of synonyms for online news articles including cases of filicide from ABC News, The Age and The Australian between 2007 and 2009 inclusive, was used to generate the public survey. Common themes which did not include many attributes were found in the online news. The themes varied between the sources, the gender of the perpetrator, and the age of the perpetrator. [Results from the public survey...]. The online news portrays filicide stereotypes of young mother perpetrators partially to blame along with government services, while father perpetrators are older justice is found through the judicial system. [Australian public interpretation…]. This study adds to media, criminology and sociology research on filicide, and more specifically, Australian. Limitations included time restraint to carry out content analysis and would be beneficial in further study.

Greg LinsdellCOGNITIVE BIAS IN EMERGENCIES AND DISASTERSThe influence of cognitive bias and heuristics on risk assessment and decision making has been explored in a range of contexts. These applications include industrial accidents, the operating theatre and the ascent of Mount Everest. In each case, cognitive bias or heuristics offer a plausible alternative explanation for decisions that otherwise appear irrational. This case-based research examines this cognitive phemona in a new context exploring a selection of emergencies and disasters where sub-optimal decisions have been made. Using the testimony of decision makers at the resulting inquiries the researcher looks for evidence of cognitive bias and heuristics at work.

S. Kate Devitt, Tamara Pearce, Alok Chowdhury, and Kerrie Mengersen ANTAGONISING THE ECHO CHAMBER: CAN A SOCIAL NETWORK COUNTERACT COGNITIVE BIAS WITH BAYESIAN RATIONALITY?Discussion forums (e.g. Reddit) and social media (e.g. Facebook) allow fast dissemination and analysis of ideas. However, because individuals curate content aligned to values and beliefs, such forums can become echo chambers--existing beliefs are confirmed and disconfirming evidence ignored. Research in cognitive biases has shown that increasing the number and diversity of hypotheses considered by individuals can improve decision making. This presentation presents collaborative research between QUT and a global online travel agency (OTA) to generate, present and evaluate hypotheses in a social platform to counteract cognitive bias and improve scientific organisational culture. The platform explicitly links hypotheses ‘posts’ (pertinent to strategic business goals) to evidence ‘comments’ (e.g. news articles or technical updates). Each piece of evidence is weighted objectively and subjectively by users and outside experts to produce a hybrid weighting fed into an algorithm to output a likelihood that a hypothesis is true. The algorithm takes both the quantity and quality of user interactions on the system into consideration. Incorporating

Bayesian rationality, the algorithm weights evidence differently depending on context and purpose to reduce biases amplified within existing social media 'echo-chambers'. This research initially investigates whether using the platform will increase number of relevant hypotheses generated and whether using the platform increases the amount and quality of evidence used to justify hypotheses. We will then evaluate impacts on strategic decision making such as whether using the platform improves closed innovation within the OTA, facilitate increased scientific behaviours and/or intellectual humility amongst employees.

Alison Bowling, Leigh Grant and Dedar AbdulaOVER-CONFIDENCE AND THE CONJUNCTION FALLACY IN THE PREDICTION OF NRL GAMES BY AUSTRALIAN SPORTS BETTORSThis aim of this project was to investigate the extent to which two common cognitive heuristics, the conjunction fallacy and the overconfidence bias, relate to the gambling behaviours of Australian sports bettors. One hundred and fifty-two participants completed an online questionnaire which included items related to the 8 matches for the forthcoming round of the NRL. Respondents were asked to predict the winning team in each match, their confidence in their prediction, whether they would bet on the match, and if so, how much. There were four items asking participants to choose a multibet option (predict winners of 2 games) or a single bet. In addition, participants were asked about their gambling behaviours and preferences. A confidence scale was also administered. Regular sports bettors were significantly more confident in their ability to predict the outcome of NRL games than non-sports bettors. In addition, extent of sports betting together with confidence level significantly predicted the number of bets made on the 8 games, and the amount bet. Almost all participants chose multibet options (displaying the conjuction fallacy), with no differences between levels of sports betting. However, the number of multibets chosen significantly increased with confidence level. Finally, neither extent of sports betting, nor confidence, significantly predicted the accuracy of prediction of winning games. The distribution of matches accurately predicted differed very little from that expected by chance. These results suggest that regular sports bettors are over-confident in their ability to predict the outcome of NRL matches. This belief that they can confidently predict the outcome of a game apparently leads to detrimental gambling behaviours in the form of increased betting and money gambled, whereas in fact, they are no more able to predict the outcome of a match than non-bettors.

Marija Brujic and Vladimir KrsticSWORN VIRGINS: ACTING ON A SOCIAL CONTRACT VS. SUFFERING FROM A DELUSION-LIKE STATEIn this paper, we analyse a peculiar phenomenon endemic for Dinaric Balkan rural areas. It involves a social practice in which women, called “sworn virgins,” either willingly take social roles of men or are predetermined at birth to “become” men. Our specific interest is in cases of girls forced to become men at birth, who were raised as men, and whose true gender was hidden from other people. We expect their upbringing to have a significant effect on their overall mental condition. Our contrast case is of a female from this group who vehemently identified herself as a man and behaved as such; she despised women (but they did attract her sexually) and she even thought that she lacks some characteristics integral to female nature, such as having a period. Our control cases are cases of grown women who willingly accepted male social roles for their sake or the sake of their family. By juxtaposing control cases with the contrast case and by comparing the contrast case with some delusional patients, we argue that the female from the contrast case suffers from a delusion-like state whose aetiology is of particular interest for neuroscientists.

Pablo Lopez-SilvaEXAMINING THE ADAPTIVE ROLE OF MISBELIEFSOften, beliefs are conceptualized as psychologically adaptive mental states when they protect the subject from psychological threats and stress. Now, beliefs are regarded as biologically adaptive when they help to increase a subject’s chances of survival within a specific environment. In this context, delusions (understood as an abnormal type of belief) are commonly regarded as maladaptive beliefs or, in other words, misbeliefs. While it is accepted that some delusions can be psychologically adaptive, it is usually denied that they can be biologically adaptive. I argue that it is possible to characterize a certain type of psychotic delusions as biologically adaptive. After distinguishing between two types of delusions I claim that in trying to make sense of the biological adaptive benefits of psychotic delusions, one needs to understand such phenomena in the general perceptual and affective context in which some of them are adopted. During the period that precedes the adoption of some delusional beliefs patients gradually lose their behavioural and psychological connection with the environment and this disconnection decreases the subjects’ chances of survival. However, in characterizing delusions, current dominant approaches fail to integrate this context into the aetiological picture of the phenomena missing the role that the adoption of some delusional beliefs might play in reorganizing the patients’ disunified and overwhelming (inner and outer) experiential world. Thus, the adoption of delusional beliefs might contribute in some cases to the preservation of behavioural and psychological interaction with the environment as an attempt – however pathological – to render the patients’ reality more predictable and approachable. Human cognitive systems would sacrifice doxastic accuracy in order to secure a minimally functional degree of interaction with the environment and therefore, certain psychotic delusions might be characterized as biologically adaptive under rarefied experiential circumstances.

Ariel SchlesingerTHE GRAND TOUR: A PSYCHOLOGY LECTURER/PHD CANDIDATE'S LIVED EXPERIENCE OF ALL MENTAL ILL-HEALTH SYMPTOMS.The proposed talk will describe my lived experience of having Bipolar disorder. The "Grand Tour" in the title refers to a two-year period of psychosis that I experienced 15 years ago. With hindsight and an Honours degree in Psychology, I have recognised that I experienced ALL possible symptoms (I have yet to come across a symptom that I have not experienced) of the various "disorders" during this terrifying time. The proposed talk will also mention how it was that I recovered from psychosis and includes a method that I hope to be able to utilise and research in the future to help other people who are experiencing psychosis. I have since gone on to obtain a correct diagnosis, have a treatment regime that keeps me (relatively) healthy and have raised three children, whilst completing an Honours degree and commencing a PhD. I believe that it is important to provide examples of people with lived experience of mental illness who live the kind of life that I now live- especially those of us who have some understanding of the cognitive processes that describe and seek to explain what we have been through.

Helene Poissant, B. El-Khoury, B. Mendrek, J. Nolan and N. TalbotEFFECTIVENESS OF MINDFULNESS-BASED INTERVENTIONS FOR ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER (ADHD) IN ADULTS: PRELIMINARY DATAMeta-analysis plays an important role in knowledge translation in allowing more generalizability and consistency of research findings. Explicit methods used in meta-analysis limit bias and improve the reliability and accuracy of conclusions by identifying sources of potential bias in primary studies. This results in improved conduct of subsequent studies. Knowledge syntheses have highlighted the importance of concealment of allocation in randomized trials of treatments and the ongoing problem of publication bias or failure to publish negative studies. Moreover, individual studies may be misleading due to chance or bias. This suggests the need to synthesize the evidence base in order to reliably understand implications of a given treatment. In this study, we develop a detailed protocol that enhances the transparency and accountability of the whole process. Our aim is to present the steps necessary for conducting a meta-analysis on Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) in adults with ADHD and to present preliminary data. We include a description of the protocol for the meta-analysis with step-by-step procedure. Potential biases are also discussed following the guidelines of the Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations. Analytical and statistical methods applied to the data generated by the protocol are described.

PostersGlenn Carruthers, Xiaoqing Gao, Regine Zopf, Alicia Wilcox and Rachel RobbinsTHE CONCEPTUAL SPACE EXPLANATION OF THE RUBBER HAND ILLUSION: FIRST EXPERIMENTAL TESTSThe experience of embodiment may be studied using the rubber hand illusion. Little is known about the cognitive mechanism which elicits the feeling of embodiment. In previous models of the rubber hand illusion bodily signals are processed sequentially. Such models cannot explain some more recent findings. Carruthers (2013) proposed a multidimensional model of embodiment, in which the processing of embodiment is understood in terms of conceptual hand space. Visual features of hands are represented along several dimensions. The rubber hand illusion is then explained as the erroneous matching of the on-line

representation of the artificial hand to the stored prototype in a space defined by those dimensions. We conducted the first experimental tests to investigate the multidimensional conceptual space account. First, participants performed a series of odd-one-out judgements for triads of hand images (including their own hand) and we then employed multidimensional scaling analyses. We found that a multidimensional model of perceived hand similarity could be fitted to our data. Second, we tested if a multisensory bodily signal manipulation (the rubber hand illusion) influences the position of the viewed artificial hand in hand space. We employed synchronous and asynchronous stroking and found that in the synchronous condition, which elicits the rubber hand illusion, compared to the asynchronous condition, which does not, the artificial hand was closer to the center of hand space; that is, to a prototype hand. We discuss these findings in the context of the Carruthers (2013) conceptual space model as well as other rubber hand illusion models.

Peter SlezakINTUITIONS: PHILOSOPHERS, ASD & THREE YEAR OLDSExternalism is the dominant, received view about the semantics of mental representation. However, despite its subjective force, externalism may be undermined by attending to its aetiology and showing how the intuitions arise from deceptive mechanisms. Instead of defending internalism directly, I ask: Why does externalism seem so convincing? This is a cognitive science of biases and illusions among philosophers. In confronting certain persistent puzzles, philosophers resemble the three-year olds and those with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the false-belief task of Wimmer and Perner (1983) where belief is ascribed on the basis of the truth rather than the subject’s justified beliefs. I consider the Kripke-Devitt causal/historical account of naming, Putnam on Twin Earth, Quine on propositional attitude ascriptions and the Gettier Paradox to show that they arise from the same source: Donellan’s omniscient observer.

Elizabeth SchierON THE RATIONALITY OF MORAL INTUTIIONSThose who are skeptical of the claim that our moral judgements are rational appeal to a range of data that demonstrate that moral decision making is intuitive and that we often cannot articulate our reasons. In this paper I use the literature on expertise to call into question the divide between intuition and reason. When we look at experts in domains that are clearly rational, such as chess or medical diagnosis, we see that one of the main differences between experts and novices is that experts have highly-trained and reliable intuitions that reflect the organisation of their knowledge and their ability to bring it to bear in a large chunk with relatively few reasoning/computational steps. I will argue that a cognitive system can be rational not only by having a computational process that follows the norms but also by having a representational scheme that embodies them. The upshot is that intuitive judgement can be rational.

Rhonda Shaw, B. Stevens, B. Paget, and P. SnoymanAGEING IN CORRECTIVE SERVICES: FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF PRISON CHAPLAINSThe number of inmates aged 65 years and over in NSW prisons has increased by approximately 225 percent over the past 10 years. The issue is whether or not corrective services is set up to cater for the increase in the number of older inmates. The current study reports the results of a qualitative study about ageing in a corrective facility. Eight prison

chaplains from four corrective facilities in NSW were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. The results of a thematic analysis revealed four main themes: the system, the services, the environment and the inmate. In conjunction these themes reveal a system that is not designed to cope with an ageing population but one that accentuates narcissism and selfishness because people become resentful of what has happened to them rather than for the damage they have done to somebody else. The current system lacks processes and programs that enable proper rehabilitation for many inmates. As one chaplain noted the current system is “all about managing them.”

Graham WoodMORAL INTUITION: EXTENDING THE LINGUISTIC ANALOGYThe application of the linguistic analogy assumes that the lessons learned within the cognitive science of language will help guide our understanding of moral intuition. The analogy has been applied by Rawls, Hauser, Dwyer, Heuber and Mikhail, among others, in an attempt to understand the nature of the moral faculty, a distinct cognitive faculty assumed to exist by those applying the analogy. This paper assumes the existence of a moral faculty, endorses the application of the linguistic analogy, and extends the application of the analogy to the work of Cosmides & Tooby and Haidt & Joseph. One of the central assumptions of the analogy is the existence of a moral grammar, and current research focuses on attempting to articulate the structure and rules of that moral grammar. Mikhail has applied the idea of a moral grammatical rule to the permissibility or impermissibility of causing harm in trolley car cases. Thus, following Mikhail, the permissibility or impermissibility of causing harm can be understood as relating to one moral grammatical rule. However, the moral status of causing harm is only one dimension of moral judgment. Fairness is another dimension of moral judgment and the work of Cosmides & Tooby concerning rationed benefits can be understood as pointing to a second moral grammatical rule. The work of Haidt & Joseph on Moral Foundations Theory can be understood as pointing to further moral grammatical rules. Their theory lists a number of foundations including: harm/care; fairness/reciprocity; in-group/loyalty; authority/respect; and purity/sanctity. The work of Mikhail on harm, and Cosmides & Tooby on fairness, offer models of how to analyze the moral grammatical rules underlying the first two moral foundations in Haidt and Joseph’s theory, and furthermore this work can be used to help identify possible moral grammatical rules relating to in-group/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity. References Cosmides, Leda, & Tooby, John. 1989. Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, II. Case study: a computational theory of social exchange. Ethology and Sociobiology, 10: 51-97. Haidt, Jonathan & Joseph, Craig. 2007. The moral mind: How five sets of innate intuitions guide the development of many culture-specific virtues, and perhaps even modules. In The Innate Mind, Vol. 3, eds Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence, and Stephen Stich, 397-391, New York: Oxford. Hauser, Marc. 2006. Moral minds: how nature designed our universal sense of right and wrong. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Mikhail, John. 2011. Elements of moral cognition: Rawl’s linguistic analogy and the cognitive science of moral and legal judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

General Meeting Agenda1. Assignment of Facilitator and Minutes Taker2. Nomination of Organisers for the next conference3. Constitution and Election Procedures4. Election of Office Bearers5. Other business6. Close