Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Mental state language'

Fractions are very hard to learn. As the joke goes, “Three out of two people have trouble with fractions”. Yet the invention of a notation for fractions is very ancient, dating back to Babylonians and Egyptians. Moreover, it is thought that ratio representation is innate. And obviously, fractions are part of our everyday life. We read them in recipes, we need them to estimate distances on maps or rebates in shops. In addition, fractions play a key role in science and mathematics, in probabilities, proportions and algebraic reasoning. Then why is it so hard for pupils to understand and use them? What is so special about fractions? As in other areas of numerical cognition, a fast-developing field in cognitive science, we tackled this paradox through a multi-pronged approach, investigating both adults and children.

Based on some recent research questions and intense debates in the literature, a first behavioural study examined the mental representations of the magnitude of fractions in educated adults. Behavioural observations from adults can indeed provide a first clue to explain the paradox raised by fractions. Contrary perhaps to most educated adults’ intuition, finding the value of a given fraction is not an easy operation. Fractions are complex symbols, and there is an on-going debate in the literature about how their magnitude (i.e. value) is processed. In a first study, we asked adult volunteers to decide as quickly as possible whether two fractions represent the same magnitude or not. Equivalent fractions (e.g. 1/4 and 2/8) were identified as representing the same number only about half of the time. In another experiment, adults were also asked to decide which of two fractions was larger. This paradigm offered different results, suggesting that participants relied on both the global magnitude of the fraction and the magnitude of the components. Our results showed that fraction processing depends on experimental conditions. Adults appear to use the global magnitude only in restricted circumstances, mostly with easy and familiar fractions.

In another study, we investigated the development of the mental representations of the magnitude of fractions. Previous studies in adults showed that fraction processing can be either based on the magnitude of the numerators and denominators or based on the global magnitude of fractions and the magnitude of their components. The type of processing depends on experimental conditions. In this experiment, 5th, 6th, 7th-graders, and adults were tested with two paradigms. First, they performed a same/different task. Second, they carried out a numerical comparison task in which they had to decide which of two fractions was larger. Results showed that 5th-graders do not rely on the representations of the global magnitude of fractions in the Numerical Comparison task, but those representations develop from grade 6 until grade 7. In the Same/Different task, participants only relied on componential strategies. From grade 6 on, pupils apply the same heuristics as adults in fraction magnitude comparison tasks. Moreover, we have shown that correlations between global distance effect and children’s general fraction achievement were significant.

Fractions are well known to represent a stumbling block for primary school children. In a third study, we tried to identify the difficulties encountered by primary school pupils. We observed that most 4th and 5th-graders had only a very limited notion of the meaning of fractions, basically referring to pieces of cakes or pizzas. The fraction as a notation for numbers appeared particularly hard to grasp.

Building upon these results, we designed an intervention programme. The intervention “From Pies to Numbers” aimed at improving children’s understanding of fractions as numbers. The intervention was based on various games in which children had to estimate, compare, and combine fractions represented either symbolically or as figures. 20 game sessions distributed over 3 months led to 15-20% improvement in tests assessing children's capacity to estimate and compare fractions; conversely, children in the control group who received traditional lessons improved more in procedural skills such as simplification of fractions and arithmetic operations with fractions. Thus, a short classroom intervention inducing children to play with fractions improved their conceptual understanding.

The results are discussed in light of recent research on the mental representation of the magnitude of fractions and educational theories. The importance of multidisciplinary approaches in psychology and education was also discussed.

In sum, by combining behavioural experiments in adults and children, and intervention studies, we hoped to have improved the understanding how the brain processes mathematical symbols, while helping teachers get a better grasp of pupils’ difficulties and develop classroom activities that suit the needs of learners.

Doctorat en Sciences Psychologiques et de l'éducation
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Numerous studies have shown that children identified with Language Impairment (LI) have marked difficulty with producing story narratives compared to their typically developing peers. One particular area of weakness seen in the narratives of children with LI is their ability to incorporate internal states, specifically internal response, internal plan, and emotion words. The current study examines five children with LI and their descriptions of mental and emotional states of characters in story narratives under spontaneous and prompted conditions. Participants produced story retells based on a series of wordless picture books taken from the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument. Story retells were elicited twice for each story, once with and once without verbal prompts. As expected, children produced more internal state story elements in response to prompts. As children produced more of these elements, however, their accuracy decreased, and the states they reported did not always reflect the story content. The children with LI showed limited understanding and ability to interpret the reactions, motivations, and emotions that characters experienced. However, verbal prompts did reveal children's current abilities and understanding of internal states.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2008.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-149). Also available online in Scholars' Bank; and in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

Peter Drucker, a well-known influential writer and philosopher in the field of management theory and practice, once claimed that “the most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.” It is not difficult to see that a similar concept also holds in the context of video scene understanding. In almost every non-trivial video scene, most important elements, such as the motives and intentions of the actors, can never be seen or directly observed, yet the identification of these latent attributes is crucial to our full understanding of the scene. That is to say, latent attributes matter.

In this work, we explore the task of identifying latent attributes in video scenes, focusing on the mental states of participant actors. We propose a novel approach to the problem based on the use of large text collections as background knowledge and minimal information about the videos, such as activity and actor types, as query context. We formalize the task and a measure of merit that accounts for the semantic relatedness of mental state terms, as well as their distribution weights. We develop and test several largely unsupervised information extraction models that identify the mental state labels of human participants in video scenes given some contextual information about the scenes. We show that these models produce complementary information and their combination significantly outperforms the individual models, and improves performance over several baseline methods on two different datasets. We present an extensive analysis of our models and close with a discussion of our findings, along with a roadmap for future research.

This thesis investigates how the language of written texts of a personal nature (especially diaries/journals) can convey the writer's mental states. Sylvia Plath's so-called Smith Journal, as published in The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (Kukil, 2000), is examined as a special case-study. A better understanding of the link between language use and various mental states may be useful in developing more sophisticated automated analytical tools and, on a more practical level, in the timely recognition of mental health issues. Mental state, for the purposes of this thesis, refers to those aspects of cognition that are intrinsically valenced, i.e. can be placed on a cline of positive - negative. The focus is on self-descriptions, direct and metaphorical references to mental states, self- references, especially the use of personal pronouns. In conjunction, temporal orientation and negation are also explored. Halliday's (1994) notion of transitivity, as well as literature on the communication of emotions in linguistics and psychology, is drawn on in the process of these analyses. This involves both automated corpus analyses of the whole text and manual intensive investigations of sample sections. A corpus comparison between the Smith Journal and an autobiography corpus reveals the key characteristics of the data. Those relevant for the investigation of mental states are selected and investigated further later in the thesis. In this process, the author proposes a model of temporal orientation for the differentiation of types of second-person narration. Overall the thesis suggests strong evidence for a negative self-image and extreme self-focus in the Smith Journal. There is also evidence of a general lack of agency and that the negative mental states are not within the experiencer's control. They also seem to be experienced intensely and painfully - sometime suggesting a sense of inner split.

Immigrants lose their unique psychosocial context when their experiences are subsumed under pan ethnic labels such as Hispanics, Latina/o, Asians or Africans. The stress from navigating different cultural contexts becomes problematic when immigrants operate within mainstream cultural norms that are in conflict with their traditional values. The number of Kenyan immigrants to the United States has steadily increased since the 1980s. The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological study was to study the lived experience of Kenyan immigrants by focusing on their integration experience and how the integration processes may have affected their mental health. Very few studies center on the psychological impact of the integration processes on Africans, while even fewer studies focus on Kenyans. The results of the study could be used by helping professionals to assist Kenyan immigrants with mental health problems as well as policy makers on immigration issues in both Kenya and the United States. Future Kenyan immigrants to the United States can also use this information as they prepare to migrate. The transition theory and social constructionism theory were used as the theoretical lens for this study. Data were collected using semi structured interviews conducted with 7 Kenyan men and women over the age of 18 from Northeastern United States who had immigrated from 1996 to the present day. Coding was used to analyze the data by cross-case analysis to search for themes and patterns. Data analysis revealed discrimination, alienation, shame, overcompensation, and cultural shock among other issues faced by immigrants, but from the Kenyan immigrants' perspective.

Uppsatsen behandlar hur barn uttrycker karaktärers känslor, tankar och intentioner i narrativer genom så kallade mentala tillståndstermer. Syftet med uppsatsen var att studera användningen av mentala tillståndstermer i narrativer av enspråkiga svensktalande barn samt tvåspråkiga svensk- och engelsktalande barn i åldrarna 5;8–7;9 år, och att undersöka om produktionen av mentala tillståndstermer påverkas av barns språk och språkstatus. Genom kvantitativa och kvalitativa analyser av 100 redan insamlade och transkriberade narrativer, framgick att det fanns en individuell variation i den totala användningen av mentala tillståndstermer, vilket troligtvis hade större påverkan på barnens produktion av mentala tillståndstermer än språk och språkstatus. Vidare tydliggjordes att mentala tillståndstermer hade specifika funktioner i narrativer. Slutligen fastställdes att kategorin perceptuella tillståndstermer dominerade i barns narrativer, oavsett språk och språkstatus, och att termerna se respektive see var mest frekventa. En slutsats var att mentala tillståndstermer är intressanta att inkludera i narrativ analys då de ger en bild av barns förståelse för karaktärers mentala tillstånd och hur dessa sammankopplas med händelseutvecklingen i berättelsen.

ABSTRACT Depression is one of the oldest known mental health conditions. It is acknowledged to be a global health problem that affects people from any culture or ethnic group. The prevalence of depression widely varied across countries and cultures. The cross-cultural relevance of the concept of depression, its screening or diagnosis, and cultural equivalence of items used to measure symptoms of depression has been area of research interest. Differences in prevalence rates in depression have been suggested as being due to research artifacts, such as use of instrument developed for one culture to another culture. With the current trend of globalization and increased rate of immigration, the need for measurement scales that can be used cross-culturally is becoming essential. Translation and adaptation of existing tools to different languages is time saving and cost effective than developing a new scale. The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale [CES-D; (Radloff, 1977)] has been widely used as a screening tool for depressive symptoms in community and clinical settings. It has been widely accepted and translated to multiple languages and its measurement equivalence tested across groups. This study was designed as a mixed method study. The purpose of this study was three fold: (a) translate and adapt the CES-D scale into Tigrigna Language for use by Tigrigna speaking Eritrean immigrants in the United States using the forward backward translation and cognitive interview techniques (b) test the psychometric properties of the Tigrigna version CES-D scale using confirmatory factor analysis under the framework of structural equation modeling and (c) test measurement equivalence of the scale by comparing data collected from 253 Eritrean immigrants using the Tigrigna version CES-D scale with a secondary data collected from 1918 non Eritrean US citizens using the English version CES-D scale in a separate study. The baseline four factor CES-D scale model originally suggested for the general population fitted the data from both samples. The fit indices for the Tigrigna sample were (χ2 = 299.87, df = 164, RMSEA = .06, SRMR = .06, GFI = .89, and CFI = .98) and for the English sample (χ2 = 1496.81, df = 164, RMSEA = .07, SRMR = .04, GFI = .92, and CFI = .98). The Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis showed reasonably adequate fit (χ2 (328) = 1796.68, RMSEA= .07, SRMR = .06, GFI = .89, CFI = .98). Fourteen of the 20 CES-D items were invariant across the two samples suggesting partial metric invariance. Partial full factor invariance was also supported. In conclusion, the findings of this study provide adequate evidence in support of the applicability of the four factor CES-D scale for measuring depressive symptoms in Tigrigna speaking Eritrean immigrants/refugees in the United States.

This thesis is an examination of euthanasia, eugenics, the ethic of patient care, and linguistic propaganda in the Second World War. The examination of euthanasia discusses not only the history and involvement of the facility at Hadamar in Germany, but also discuss the current euthanasia debate. Euthanasia in World War II arose out of the Nazi desire to cleanse the Reich and was greatly influenced by the American eugenics movement of the early 20th century. Eugenics was built up to include anyone considered undesirable and unworthy of life and killed many thousands of people before the invasion of allied troops in 1944. Paramount to euthanasia is forced sterilization, the ethic of patient care, and how the results of the research conducted on euthanasia victims before their deaths should be used. The Nazis were able to change the generally accepted terms that researchers use to describe their experiments and this change affected how modern doctors and researchers use the terms in current research. This thesis includes research conducted in Germany and the United States from varied resources.

abstract: A cornerstone of children’s socio-cognitive development is understanding that others can have knowledge, thoughts, and perceptions that differ from one’s own. Preschool-aged children often have difficulty with this kind of social understanding, i.e., they lack an explicit theory of mind. The goal of this dissertation was to examine the role mental state language as a developmental mechanism of children’s early understanding of their own mental states (i.e., their introspective ability). Specifically, it was hypothesized that (1) parents’ ability to recognize and appropriately label their children’s mental states and (2) children’s linguistic ability to distinguish between their mental states shapes the development of children’s introspective ability. An initial prediction of the first hypothesis is that parents should recognized differences in the development of children’s self- and other-understanding in order to better help their children’s introspective development. In support of this prediction, parents (N = 400, Mage = 58 months, Range = 28-93 months) reported that children’s understanding of their own knowledge was greater than children’s understanding of others’ knowledge. A prediction of the second hypothesis is that children’s linguistic ability to distinguish between and appropriately label their own mental states should determine their ability to make fined grained judgments of mental states like certainty. In support of this prediction, children’s (N = 197, Mage = 56 months, Range = 36-82 months) ability to distinguish between their own knowledge and ignorance states was associated children’s ability to engage in uncertainty monitoring. Together, these findings provide support for the association between children’s linguistic environment and ability and their introspective development.
Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2018

abstract: Drawing on previous empirical works in the field of Intercultural Competence (ICC) and telecollaboration (Chun, 2011; Elola & Oskoz, 2008; Furstenberg, 2004; Schulz, 2007), this study investigates how a completion of Cultura Project tasks in L1 and L2 helped to determine students' cultural values and behaviors, find out how their mental lexicons are structured, and assess a state of their critical cultural awareness. The theoretical framework for this study is based on Byram's (1997) work on ICC. As a part of their course work, Spanish language learners from a lower-division class participate in three Cultura Project tasks and provided their comments afterwards. The findings revealed cultural values and believes of the participants, as well as the organization of their mental lexicons. Moreover, the findings illustrated how the level of critical cultural awareness, as one of the components of ICC, could be assessed using the rubrics developed based on Byram's (1997) work on ICC and Bloom's (1990) revised taxonomy of learning skills. The results of the study contributed to the field of SLA on what is known about the roles of culturally-based questionnaires in critical cultural awareness assessment and the structure of mental lexicons of L2 learners.
Dissertation/Thesis
Masters Thesis Spanish 2015

Sistemas de conversac ̧a ̃o sa ̃o tecnologias originadas na de ́cada de 60, conhecidos tambe ́m como chatbots, que so ́ tiveram reconhecimento significativo no se ́culo XXI, tornando-se muito populares. Assim, diversas aplicabilidades foram desenvolvidas, de func ̧o ̃es relacionadas ao entretenimento a` educac ̧a ̃o. Por outro lado, no campo da Psicologia, um aspecto significativo para o profissional rece ́m formado na a ́rea se trata de sua proximidade com a realidade da profissa ̃o, caracter ́ıstica associada a` pra ́tica no decorrer do curso e ao esta ́gio, no final. Desse modo, este trabalho propo ̃e um chatbot que busca simular um paciente, de modo que o estudante do curso de Psicologia possa utiliza ́-lo para treinamento no aˆmbito da investigac ̧a ̃o psicopatolo ́gica. Em busca de atingir esse propo ́sito, foi desenvolvida uma aplicac ̧a ̃o Web que serve de mediador entre o usua ́rio e o chatbot, e este, foi desenvolvido com a linguagem Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) e o mecanismo interpretador Program-Y. Para testar a base de conhecimento, primeiramente amostras de conversac ̧a ̃o com o chatbot foram apresentadas a` profissionais da a ́rea de Psicologia, e posteriormente, disponibilizou- seaaplicac ̧a ̃oparatestagemdosistemanapra ́tica. Aofinal,osdadosarmazenadosda conversa entre testador e chatbot foram analisados, assim como tambe ́m foi requerido um feedback dos participantes por meio de um formula ́rio para avaliar a qualidade do chatbot e da aplicac ̧a ̃o. Concluiu-se que o projeto da forma que esta ́ configura-se melhor no aˆmbito do primeiro contato com o paciente, ou seja, englobando a entrevista inicial, como o histo ́rico e comportamentos do sujeito, levantamento de demandas e queixas do indiv ́ıduo. Ale ́m disso, as principais caracter ́ısticas positivas percebidas foram que os participantes na ̃o sentiram desconforto ao trocar mensagens com um chatbot; conseguiram entender com facilidade as respostas do chatbot; e percebem a aplicac ̧a ̃o como uma ferramenta u ́til no estudo teo ́rico- pra ́tico de psicopatologia. Essas avaliac ̧o ̃es foram coletadas por meio de questiona ́rio, que foi considerado com consisteˆncia interna substancial quando avaliado com base no Alfa de Cronbach, apresentando o valor de 0,69.
Conversation systems are technologies originated in the 60’s, also known as chatbots, which only had significant recognition in the 21st century, becoming very popular. Thus, several applications have been developed, from functions related to entertainment up to education. On the other hand, in the field of Psychology, a significant aspect for the newly trained professional in the area is their proximity to the sector of performance, characteristic associated to the practice during the course and to the internship, at the end. Therefore, this paper proposes a chatbot that seeks to simulate a patient, so that the student of the Psychology course can use it for training in the scope of psychopathological investigation. In order to achieve this purpose, we developed a web application that mediates between the user and the chatbot, which was developed using the Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) and the Program- Y interpreter engine. To test the knowledge base, we first present samples of conversations using the chatbot to professionals in the field of Psychology, and later we make the application available for testing the system in practice. At the end, we analyzed the data collected from conversations between the tester and chatbot, as well as requesting feedback from participants through a form to assess the quality of the chatbot and the application. We conclude that the project as it is is best configured in the context of the first contact with the patient, that is, encompassing the initial interview, such as the subject’s history and behavior, survey of the individual’s demands and complaints. In addition, the main positive characteristics perceived were that participants did not feel uncomfortable when exchanging messages with a chatbot; could easily understand chatbot responses; and perceive the application as a useful tool in the theoretical-practical study of psychopathology. These assessments were collected through a questionnaire, which was considered to have substantial internal consistency when evaluated based on Cronbach’s Alpha, with a value of 0.69.

Our lexicon includes terms that demonstrate our understanding of the fact that people’s actions are governed by internal states such as beliefs, desires, and emotions. These words are internal state terms (IST) and their examples include “think”, “want”, “notice”, “surprised”, “scared”. Altogether, they constitute the Internal State Lexicon (ISL). The ISL might be placed at the intersection of language and theory of mind (ToM) development: IST need to be learned as any other words in the lexicon, and their use is an indicator of children’s mentalizing abilities. The present thesis set out to investigate the use of IST in Polish-English bilingual children at pre- and early school age (4.5-7 years old). Bilingual upbringing may uniquely shape the use of IST. On one hand, bilingual children hear less of each language and have to exert constant control over the two languages. This may translate to lower language performance (e.g. Haman, et al., 2017). On the other hand, bilinguals often outperform monolinguals in their cognitive ability, including theory of mind (Farhadian, et al., 2010; Goetz, 2003; Kovács, 2009). The primary aims of the present analysis were to investigate whether language status (bilingual vs. monolingual) influences the use of IST, and whether IST develop comparably in both languages of the bilingual child. The participants included 75 Polish-English bilingual children aged 4.5-7 years old and living in the UK, and matched 75 Polish monolingual children living in Poland. The internal state terms were elicited via child-made narratives based on a set of pictures. Three subclasses of IST were coded: emotional, mental, and perceptual terms. Children were also asked to retell the story immediately after listening to a model story, and to answer comprehension questions about the story protagonists’ internal states. This was done to explore the effect of modelling on the IST production and to compare the IST production in storytelling and a relatively more interactive context of explicit conversation about internal states. Additionally, the children’s vocabulary and grammar knowledge was assessed in their respective languages, and their theory of mind performance was measured with a test of reflection on thinking. The results showed that while bilinguals exhibited relatively poorer language abilities than monolinguals, the children did not differ in the amount of internal state terms produced when telling a story. However, bilinguals outperformed monolingual peers on the theory of mind task. Thus, these two differences might have evened each other out, leading to no overall difference in the use of IST between the groups. Also, bilinguals used IST similarly in their two languages. It was also found that giving children a model story and explicitly asking them about the internal states of story protagonists sensitized them to their knowledge, desires, and beliefs which resulted in more internal state references in the retellings and answers to the questions than in the narratives told by children on the basis of pictures alone.
Nasz słownik zawiera pojęcia, które wskazują na to, że rozumiemy iż ludzkim zachowaniem kierują stany wewnętrzne takie jak przekonania, pragnienia i wiedza. Są to terminy wyrażające stany wewnętrzne (ang. internal state terms, IST) i należą do nich np. „myśleć”, „chcieć”, „zauważyć”, „zaskoczony”, „przestraszony”. Razem terminy te tworzą leksykon terminów wewnętrznych (ang. Internal State Lexicon, ISL). ISL można umiejscowić na styku języka i teorii umysłu: IST muszą zostać przyswojone jak każde inne słowo, a ich użycie jest jednym z wyznaczników zdolności do mentalizacji. Niniejsza praca doktorska bada użycie IST u polsko-angielskich dzieci dwujęzycznych w wieku przed- i wczesnoszkolnym (4,5 – 7 lat). Dwujęzyczność może w sposób unikalny wpływać na użycie IST. Z jednej strony, dzieci dwujęzyczne mają mniej kontaktu z każdym ze swoich języków, w porównaniu z jednojęzycznymi rówieśnikami i muszą monitorować aktywację obu języków. To może skutkować niższymi umiejętnościami językowymi w porównaniu z dziećmi jednojęzycznymi (np. Haman i in., 2017). Z drugiej strony, dzieci dwujęzyczne prześcigają swoich jednojęzycznych rówieśników w zdolnościach poznawczych, w tym teorii umysłu (Farhadian i in., 2010; Goetz, 2003; Kovács, 2009). Głównym celem pracy było zbadanie czy status językowy (jedno- lub dwujęzyczność) wpływa na użycie IST i czy dzieci dwujęzyczne używają IST w podobny sposób w obu swoich językach. Uczestnikami badania było 75 polsko-angielskich dzieci dwujęzycznych w wieku 4,5 – 7 lat mieszkających w Wielkiej Brytanii i grupa dobranych 75 polskich dzieci jednojęzycznych mieszkających w Polsce. Badano użycie terminów wyrażających stany wewnętrzne w dziecięcych opowiadaniach tworzonych na podstawie zestawu obrazków. Kodowano trzy rodzaje terminów: emocjonalne, mentalne i percepcyjne. Dzieci proszone były również o ponowne opowiedzenie historyjki od razu po wysłuchaniu wersji modelowej i o odpowiedzenie na pytania dotyczące rozumienia historyjki, które skupiały się na stanach wewnętrznych postaci. Tym sposobem badano efekt modelowania na użycie IST i porównano produkcję IST podczas opowiadania historyjki i w stosunkowo bardziej interakcyjnym kontekście rozmowy o stanach wewnętrznych. Dodatkowo mierzono zasób słownictwa dzieci, ich zdolności rozumienia struktur gramatycznych w obu językach, oraz refleksję nad myśleniem. Wyniki wskazały, że choć dzieci dwujęzyczne osiągają niższe wyniki w testach językowych od jednojęzycznych rówieśników, to obie grupy nie różnią się ilością IST użytych podczas opowiadania historyjki. Jednakże dzieci dwujęzyczne osiągnęły wyższe – niż dzieci jednojęzyczne – wyniki w teście teorii umysłu. Te dwie różnice w rozwoju dzieci mogły się zniwelować, prowadząc do braku różnic między grupami w ilości użytych IST. Ponadto, dzieci dwujęzyczne używały IST podobnie w obu swoich językach. Wyniki pokazały również, że prezentowanie dziecku historyjki modelowej i pytanie o stany wewnętrzne bohaterów uczula dzieci na wiedzę, przekonania i pragnienia postaci, co prowadzi do zwiększenia – względem opowiedzianych historyjek – użycia IST w ich ponownie opowiedzianych historyjkach oraz w odpowiedziach na pytania dot. rozumienia historyjki.

There exists a broad inclination among those who theorize about mental representation to assume that the meanings of linguistic units, like words, are going to be identical to, and work exactly like, mental representations, such as concepts. This has the effect of many theorists applying facts that seem to have been discovered about the meanings of linguistic units to mental representations. This is especially so for causal theories of content, which will be the primary exemplars here. It is the contention of this essay that this approach is mistaken. The influence of thinking about language and mental representation in this way has resulted in the adoption of certain positions by a broad swathe of theorists to the effect that the content of a concept is identical to the property in the world that the concept represents, and that because of this a concept only applies to an object in the world or it does not. The consequences of such commitments are what appear to be insoluble problems that arise when trying to account for, or explain, misrepresentation in cognitive systems. This essay presents the position that in order to actually account for misrepresentation, conceptual content must be understood as being very much like measurements, in that the application of a content to an object in the world is akin to measuring said object, and that conceptual content ought be understood as being graded in the same way that measurements are. On this view, then, concepts are the kinds of things that can be applied more, or less, accurately to particular objects in the world, and so are not identical to whatever it is that they represent.