Coaches and athletes often talk about ‘mental abilities’ that improve athletic performance in a way distinct from physical talents. But the existence of distinct mental abilities in sport is prima...

This paper presents a series of meta-analyses of the validity of general mental ability (GMA) for predicting five occupational criteria, including supervisory ratings of job performance, production records, work sample tests, instructor ratings, and grades. The meta-analyses were conducted with a large database of 467 technical reports of the validity of the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) which included 630 independent samples. GMA showed to be a consistent predictor of the five criteria, but the magnitude of the operational validity (...) was not the same across the five criteria. Results also showed that job complexity is a moderator of the GMA validity for the performance criteria. We also found that the GMA validity estimates are slightly smaller than the previous ones obtained by Hunter (1983a; Hunter & Hunter, 1984). Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for the research and practice of personnel selection. (shrink)

Lucy O'Brien has argued that defenders of the object-dependence of singular thought should attend to mental agency. A recent trend in action theory, towards what John Maier calls ‘agentive modality’, suggests that we conceive agency in terms of the exercise of abilities, and this is how I propose to approach O'Brien's challenge. For Gareth Evans, an early defender of object-dependence, maintained that thinking is the exercise of a complex of abilities. The debate about object-dependence gives way to (...) the question whether we have what I call dedicated singular mental abilities. In arguing that we do, I defend the thesis of object-dependence. (shrink)

Communication by shared meaning, themastery of word semantics,metarepresentation and metamentation aremental abilities, uniquely human, that share a sense ofintentionality or reference. The latteris developed by a naive psychology or interpretation – acompetence dedicated to representingintentional relations between conspecifics and the world. Theidea that interpretation builds new mentalabilities around a sense of reference is based on three linesof analysis – conceptual, psychological andevolutionary. The conceptual analysis reveals that a senseof reference is at the heart of the abilitiesin question. Psychological data (...) track tight developmentalcorrelations between interpretation and theabilities it designs. Finally, an evolutionary hypothesislooks at why interpretation designed thosenew abilities around a sense of reference. (shrink)

This paper explores citizens’ views about the welfare of farmed fish and the mental abilities of fish with a large survey data sample from Finland (n = 1,890). Although studies on attitudes towards animal welfare have been increasing, fish welfare has received only limited empirical attention, despite the rapid expansion of aquaculture sector. The results show that the welfare of farmed fish is not any great concern in the Finnish society. The analysis confirms the distinct character given to (...) farmed fish compared to traditional farmed animals. Salmon are rated low in their mental abilities, including the capacity to feel pain, which may weaken ethical concerns for fish welfare. When analyzing the social determinants surrounding the rating of the welfare of farmed fish, it was shown that fish welfare attitudes follow general animal welfare attitudes regarding age and place of residence as fish welfare tends to be rated more negatively among younger age groups and among urban residents. However, no clear connection could be identified between gender and the rating of fish welfare, which may suggest that the distinct cultural categorization of fish diminishes the typical gender difference identified in animal attitudes. It is concluded that in order to improve awareness about fish welfare, there is a need to increase dissemination of scientific knowledge about fish and their welfare. Moreover, further research should be directed toward studying the moral positioning of fish and the distinct moral categorization they receive. (shrink)

Over the last decades, various predictors have proven relevant for job performance [e.g., general mental ability, broad personality traits, such as the Big Five]. However, prediction of job performance is far from perfect, and further potentially relevant predictors need to be investigated. Narrower personality traits, such as individuals' character strengths, have emerged as meaningfully related to different aspects of job performance. However, it is still unclear whether character strengths can explain additional variance in job performance over and above already (...) known powerful predictors. Consequently, the present study aimed at examining the incremental validity of character strengths as predictors of job performance beyond GMA and/or the Big Five traits and identifying the most important predictors of job performance out of the 24 character strengths, GMA, and the Big Five. Job performance was operationalized with multidimensional measures of both productive and counterproductive work behavior. A sample of 169 employees from different occupations completed web-based self-assessments on character strengths, GMA, and the Big Five. Additionally, the employees' supervisors provided web-based ratings of their job performance. Results showed that character strengths incrementally predicted job performance beyond GMA, the Big Five, or GMA plus the Big Five; explained variance increased up to 54.8, 43.1, and 38.4%, respectively, depending on the dimension of job performance. Exploratory relative weight analyses revealed that for each of the dimensions of job performance, at least one character strength explained a numerically higher amount of variance than GMA and the Big Five, except for individual task proactivity, where GMA exhibited the numerically highest amount of explained variance. The present study shows that character strengths are relevant predictors of job performance in addition to GMA and other conceptualizations of personality. This also highlights the role of socio-emotional skills, such as character strengths, for the understanding of performance outcomes above and beyond cognitive ability. (shrink)

Robots are used in various social interactions that require them to be perceived as credible agents. To be rated credible a robot’s mentalizing abilities have shown to be beneficial because they allow a robot to infer users’ inner states, thus serving as a prerequisite for understanding their beliefs and attitudes. However, social robots are often deployed by private and thus profit-oriented companies. In such cases where an organization’s implied manipulative intent is salient, the effect of robots’ mentalizing abilities (...) might be reversed. The reason for this is that mentalizing abilities could pose a persuasive threat to users rather than a feature for better understanding, thereby decreasing credibility attributions. These assumptions were tested in a three by two between-subjects, pre-registered, laboratory experiment during which participants interacted with a social robot that recommended experience vouchers as potential gifts for participants’ target persons. Contrary to our assumptions, inferential statistical results revealed no significant differences in explicit or indirect credibility attributions caused by the experimental manipulation. The external manipulative intent of an organization using the robot caused no differences in participants’ behavioral intentions or evaluations of it. Furthermore, only participants’ attribution of empathic understanding to the robot varied significantly between the three mentalizing conditions. Our results suggest that people focus more on the robot than on the organization using it, causing potential opportunities for such organizations to hide their economic interests from the users. (shrink)

The goal of the present study was to evaluate the roles of response times in the achievement of students in the following latent ability domains: verbal, math and spatial reasoning, mental flexibility, and scientific and mechanical reasoning. Participants were 869 students who took on the Multiple Mental Aptitude Scale. A mixture item response model was implemented to evaluate the roles of response times in performance by modeling ability and non-ability classes. Results after applying this model to the data (...) across domains indicated the presence of several behaviors related to rapid responding which were covaried with low achievement likely representing unsuccessful guessing attempts. (shrink)

What is it to have a mental disorder? The paper proposes an ability-based view of mental disorder. It argues that such a view is preferable to biological dysfunction views such as Wakefield’s Harmful Dysfunction Analysis and Boorse’s Biostatistical Theory. According to the proposed view, having a mental disorder is basically a matter of having a certain type of inability (or: an ability that is not sufficiently high): the inability to respond adequately to some of one’s available reasons (...) in some of one’s reasons-sensitive attitudes or actions, where the threshold of inability is determined by one’s being harmed. The relevant concepts of inability, reasons, and harm are sketched. The paper argues that the proposed view evades some problems of biological dysfunction views by remaining neutral on questions of causation and the evolution of the mind. Furthermore, it can capture better what is distinctively “mental” about mental disorder. On the proposed view, it is the rational relations among an individual’s attitudes and actions that are “disordered” and the relevant norms in mental disorder are the norms of reasons. As further merits, the view can account for degrees of disorder, incorporate biological as well as social aspects, and elucidate the relations among disorders, symptoms, and their causes. (shrink)

In this study, we demonstrate a previously unknown finding that mindful learning can improve an individual’s spatial cognition without regard to gender differences. Thirty-two volunteers participated in the experiment. Baselines for spatial ability were first measured for the reaction time on the mental rotation task. Next, the participants were randomly assigned to either a mindful or mindless learning condition. After learning, the mental rotation task showed that those in the mindful learning condition responded faster than those in the (...) mindless learning condition. This study provides promising evidence for applying mindful learning to education. (shrink)

This book offers an ability-based view of mental disorders. It develops a detailed analysis of the concept of inability that is relevant in the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic context by drawing on the most recent literature on the concepts of ability, reasons and harm. What is it to have a mental disorder? This book contends that an individual has a mental disorder if and only if (1) they are-in the relevant sense-unable to respond adequately to their available (apparent) (...) reasons in their thinking, feeling or acting and (2) they are harmed by the condition underlying or resulting from that inability. The author calls this the "Rehability View". This view can account for what is "mental" about mental disorders: it is the rational relations among an individual's attitudes and actions that is "disordered", and the relevant norms are the norms of reasons. This view is compatible with explanations of mental disorders in terms of biological dysfunctions, without reducing the former to the latter. The aim is not to offer just another conception of mental disorder, but to develop a systematic approach that incorporates insights from philosophy of psychiatry and adjacent philosophical disciplines. Philosophy of Mental Disorder will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of psychiatry, philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, ethics, and mental health. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Dance requires optimal range-of-motion and cognitive abilities. Mental imagery is a recommended, yet under-researched, training method for enhancing both of these. This study investigated the effect of Dynamic Neuro-Cognitive Imagery (DNI™) training on developpé performance (measured by gesturing ankle height and self-reported observations) and kinematics (measured by hip and pelvic range-of-motion), as well as on dance imagery abilities. Thirty-four university-level dance students (M age = 19.70 + 1.57) were measured performing three developpé tasks (i.e., 4 repetitions, (...) 8 consecutive seconds hold, and single repetition) at three time-points (2 x pre-, 1 x post-intervention). Data were collected using three-dimensional motion capture, mental imagery questionnaires, and subjective reports. Following the DNI™ intervention, significant increases (p <.01) were detected in gesturing ankle height, as well as in hip flexion and abduction range-of-motion, without significant changes in pelvic alignment. These gains were accompanied by self-reported decrease (p <.05) in level of difficulty experienced and significant improvements in kinesthetic (p <.05) and dance (p <.01) imagery abilities. This study provides evidence for the motor and non-motor benefits of DNI™ training in university-level dance students. (shrink)

AimTo investigate the status of positive mental characters and humanistic care ability among Chinese nursing students, and confirm the association between positive mental characters and humanistic care ability.MethodsA cross-sectional survey was conducted. Nine hundred eighty-one Chinese nursing students were recruited from hospitals and community healthcare services in Changsha, Hunan, China. Three different self-reported questionnaires were applied: The Demographic Characteristics Questionnaire, Humanistic care ability of Nursing Undergraduates Assessment Scale and Positive Mental Characters Scale for Chinese College Students. Pearson (...) correlation analysis and multiple liner regression analysis were performed to analyze the association between positive mental character and humanistic care ability for Chinese nursing students.ResultsThe mean scores of nursing students' humanistic care ability and positive mental character were 125.94 ± 21.19, 233.18 ± 38.59, respectively. The Pearson correlation results showed that positive mental character was significantly associated with humanistic care ability. Multiple liner regression analysis indicated that positive mental characters, four dimensions of courage, humanity, justice and transcendence in positive mental character, care from classmates were found to be independent predictors of humanistic care ability.ConclusionPositive mental characters are important considerations in the development, implementation and evaluation of humanistic care ability interventions. (shrink)

Mentalization is a useful ability for social functioning and a crucial aspect of mentalizing is emotion regulation. Literature suggests programmes for children and adults to increase mentalizing abilities useful both for emotional and social competences. For this reason, the issue of how to prompt children’s mentalization has started to attract researchers’ attention, supporting the importance of the interpersonal dimension for the individual differences in the developmental of mentalization. The TiM (Thoughts in Mind) Project, a training programme based on the (...) explanation of mentalization mechanisms and designed for adults, deals with emotion regulation. Starting from the TiM Project, this study tests the effects of the TiM Child (TiM-C) training programme, over a control training programme, a conversational training designed for the school context, in children attending Year 2 of primary school. We designed a training based on narratives, followed by multiple-choice questions and conversations about mental states. Our results revealed significant improvements over the training period only in the TiM-C Project group for Metacognition, Emotion Regulation Strategies and a Theory of Mind task. As far as the educational implications, our findings suggest that it is possible to enhance mentalization through activities at school by promoting not only the understanding of the relations between mind and emotion, but also metacognitive skills. (shrink)

This article presents seven principles that have guided our thinking about emotional intelligence, some of them new. We have reformulated our original ability model here guided by these principles, clarified earlier statements of the model that were unclear, and revised portions of it in response to current research. In this revision, we also positioned emotional intelligence amidst other hot intelligences including personal and social intelligences, and examined the implications of the changes to the model. We discuss the present and future (...) of the concept of emotional intelligence as a mental ability. (shrink)

Menschen haben psychische Störungen, zum Beispiel Depressionen, Angst- oder Abhängigkeitsstörungen. Doch was genau heißt es, eine psychische Störung zu haben? Dies ist die Hauptfrage, um die es in meinem Buch geht. Die Hauptthese, für die ich argumentiere, ist folgende: Eine Person hat dann und nur dann eine psychische Störung, wenn sie (i) mindestens eine der Fä- higkeiten, in ihrem Denken, Fühlen oder Handeln angemessen auf die ihr ver- fügbaren (scheinbaren) Gründe zu reagieren, nicht hat und sie (ii) durch den Zustand, (...) der dieser Unfähigkeit zugrunde liegt oder aus ihr resultiert, geschädigt wird. Ich nenne dies den “;Rehability View" (RHA), wobei “;;Rehability" ein Port- manteau aus den drei relevanten Grundbegriffen “;reasons" (Gründe), “;;harm" (Schädigung) und “;ability" (Fähigkeit) ist. (shrink)

Much of the current imaging literature either denies the existence of wakeful non-mental imagers, views non-imagers motivationally as 'repressors' or 'neurotic', or acknowledges them but does not fully incorporate them into their models. Neurobiologists testing for imaging loss seem to assume that visual recognition, describing objects, and free-hand drawing require the forming of conscious images. The intuition that 'the psyche never thinks without an image.... the reasoning mind thinks its ideas in the form of images' (Aristotle) has a long (...) tradition in philosophical psychology, from Aristotle through the British empiricists to the British-empiricist-inspired introspection paradigm of Titchener. The massive shift in early experimental psychology to the introspective-antagonistic paradigm of Watson's behaviourism, may have sprung from the contrary intuition that no one thinks in mental images. In both cases, people seemed to assume that what is in one's own mind is in everybody's mind. A third, mediating, intuition - that some people do not think with conscious mental imagery -- seems to be confirmed by empirical studies on many levels. From the early imagery interviews of Francis Galton through many modern surveys, including my own, a consistent diversity of self-reports on ones own mental imagery abilities suggests that some 2-5% of people are very poor- or non-visual- imagers who, yet, maintain normal visual recognition abilities. Comparable estimates have been made in auditory and other imagery modalities. (shrink)

The Mental Capacity Act received Royal Assent on 7 April 2005, and it will be implemented in 2007. The Act defines when someone lacks capacity and it supports people with limited decision-making ability to make as many decisions as possible for themselves. The Act lays down rules for substitute decision making. Someone taking decisions on behalf of the person lacking capacity must act in the best interests of the person concerned and choose the options least restrictive of his or (...) her rights and freedoms. Decision making will be allowed without any formal procedure unless specific provisions apply, such as a written advance decision, lasting powers of attorney or a decision by the court of protection. (shrink)

Recent legal developments challenge how valid the concept of mental capacity is in determining whether individuals with impairments can make decisions about their care and treatment. Kong defends a concept of mental capacity but argues that such assessments must consider how relationships and dialogue can enable or disable the decision-making abilities of these individuals. This is thoroughly investigated using an interdisciplinary approach that combines philosophy and legal analysis of the law in England and Wales, the European Court (...) of Human Rights, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. By exploring key concepts underlying mental capacity, the investigation concludes that both primary relationships and capacity assessments themselves must display key competencies to ensure that autonomy skills are promoted and encouraged. This ultimately provides scope for justifiable interventions into disabling relationships and articulates the dialogical practices that help better situate, interpret, and understand the choices and actions of individuals with impairments. (shrink)

Mental time travel is the ability to simulate alternative pasts and futures. It is often described as the ability to project a sense of self in the service of diachronic agency. It requires not only semantic representation but affective sampling of alternative futures. If people lose this ability for affective sampling their sense of self is diminished. They have less of a self to project hence are compromised as agents. If they cannot “feel the future” they cannot imaginatively inhabit (...) it and hence their agency is compromised. The extent of such losses and consequent impairments to moral agency can be matters of degree. (shrink)

Recent literature have underlined the connections between children’s reading skills and capacity to create and use mental representations or mental images; furthermore data highlighted the involvement of visuospatial abilities both during math learning and during subsequent developmental phases in performing math tasks. The present research adopted a longitudinal design to assess whether the processes of mental imagery in preschoolers (ages 4–5 years) are predictive of mathematics skills, writing and reading, in the early years of primary school (...) (ages 6–7 years). The research lasted for two school years; in the first phase, the general group of participants consisted of 100 children, and although all participants agreed to be part of the research, in the second phase, there was a mortality rate of 30%. In order to measure school learning and mental imagery processes four batteries of tests were used. The mental imagery battery evaluated mental generation, inspection and transformation processes. Data underlined that the different aspects in which mental imagery processes are articulated are differently implied in some skills that constitute school learning. These findings emphasise the potential usefulness of a screening for mental imagery ability for schoolchildren to adopt effective measures to increase their mental imagery abilities. (shrink)

On June 16, 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that forced administration of antipsychotic drugs to a defendant facing serious criminal charges is appropriate in order to render that defendant competent to stand trial, but only in limited circumstances. The treatment must be medically appropriate, substantially unlikely to have side effects that may undermine the fairness of the trial, and necessary to significantly further important government interests, after taking account of less-intrusive alternatives.Charles Sell, a former dentist, had a long history of (...) mental illness. He had been hospitalized twice, in 1982 and 1984, after expressing paranoid ideas to law enforcement officials. In May 1997, Sell was charged with fifty-six counts of mail fraud, six counts of Medicaid fraud, and one count of money laundering. He was released on bail after a magistrate determined that he was currently competent to stand trial. (shrink)

What is it to remember an episode from one’s past? How does episodic memory give us knowledge of the personal past? What explains the emergence of the apparently uniquely human ability to relive the past? Drawing on current research on mental time travel, this book proposes an integrated set of answers to these questions, arguing that remembering is a matter of simulating past episodes, that we can identify metacognitive mechanisms enabling episodic simulation to meet standards of reliability sufficient for (...) knowledge, and that the subjective experience of reliving the past is a precondition for the reliability of simulational remembering. The resulting account of memory, memory knowledge, and their evolution will be of interest both to philosophers interested in empirically-informed approaches to memory and to psychologists interested in the philosophical implications of empirical memory research. (shrink)

The capacity to stabilize the content of attention over time varies among individuals, and its impairment is a hallmark of several mental illnesses. Impairments in sustained attention in patients with attention disorders have been associated with increased trial-to-trial variability in reaction time and event-related potential deficits during attention tasks. At present, it is unclear whether the ability to sustain attention and its underlying brain circuitry are transformable through training. Here, we show, with dichotic listening task performance and electroencephalography, that (...) training attention, as cultivated by meditation, can improve the ability to sustain atten- tion. Three months of intensive meditation training reduced variability in attentional processing of target tones, as indicated by both enhanced theta-band phase consistency of oscillatory neural responses over anterior brain areas and reduced reaction time variability. Furthermore, those individuals who showed the greatest increase in neural response consistency showed the largest decrease in behav- ioral response variability. Notably, we also observed reduced variability in neural processing, in particular in low-frequency bands, regardless of whether the deviant tone was attended or unattended. Focused attention meditation may thus affect both distracter and target processing, perhaps by enhancing entrainment of neuronal oscillations to sensory input rhythms, a mechanism important for controlling the content of attention. These novel findings highlight the mechanisms underlying focused attention meditation and support the notion that mental training can significantly affect attention and brain function. (shrink)

Introduction -- A default position -- Experience -- The character of experience -- Understanding-experience -- A note about dispositional mental states -- Purely experiential content -- An account of four seconds of thought -- Questions -- The mental and the nonmental -- The mental and the publicly observable -- The mental and the behavioral -- Neobehaviorism and reductionism -- Naturalism in the philosophy of mind -- Conclusion: The three questions -- Agnostic materialism, part 1 -- Monism (...) -- The linguistic argument -- Materialism and monism -- A comment on reduction -- The impossibility of an objective phenomenology -- Asymmetry and reduction -- Equal-status monism -- Panpsychism -- The inescapability of metaphysics -- Agnostic materialism, part 2 -- Ignorance -- Sensory spaces -- Experience, explanation, and theoretical integration -- The hard part of the mind-body problem -- Neutral monism and agnostic monism -- A comment on eliminativism, instrumentalism, and so on -- Mentalism, idealism, and immaterialism -- Mentalism -- Strict or pure process idealism -- Active-principle idealism -- Stuff idealism -- Immaterialism -- The positions restated -- The dualist options -- Frege's thesis -- Objections to pure process idealism -- The problem of mental dispositions -- Mental -- Shared abilities -- The sorting ability -- The definition of mental being -- Mental phenomena -- The view that all mental phenomena are experiential phenomena -- Natural intentionality -- E/c intentionality -- The experienceless -- Intentionality and abstract and nonexistent objects -- Experience, purely experiential content, and n/c intentionality -- Concepts in nature -- Intentionality and experience -- Summary with problem -- Pain and pain -- The neo-behaviorist view -- A linguistic argument for the necessary connection between pain and behavior -- A challenge -- The Sirians -- N.N. Novel -- An objection to the Sirians -- The Betelgeuzians -- The point of the Sirians -- Functionalism, naturalism, and realism about pain -- Unpleasantness and qualitative character -- The weather watchers -- The rooting story -- What is it like to be a weather watcher? -- The aptitudes of mental states -- The argument from the conditions for possessing the concept of space -- The argument from the conditions for language ability -- The argument from the nature of desire -- Desire and affect -- The argument from the phenomenology of desire -- Behavior -- A hopeless definition -- Difficulties -- Other-observability -- Neo-behaviorism -- The concept of mind. (shrink)

Mental time travel and theory of mind develop, both phylo- and ontogenetically, at the same stage. We argue that this synchrony is due to the emergence of a shared competence, namely, the ability to become aware of frames of reference.