The purpose of the research is to develop a new theory of mind tasks, test its reliability and validity, and scale the intentional aspect of theory of mind. The study was designed as survey research, one of the quantitative research traditions. One hundred and fifty-eight children whose age ranged between 4 and 10 years were included in the research sample through quota sampling. Data were dichotomous so Rasch analysis was used to analyse the data. As result of Rasch analysis, it was found that the separation index is 7; reliability coefficient is 98; and the battery of the theory of mind task has robust model fit based on RMSE, infit mean-square and outfit mean-square. Difficulty analysis indicated that false belief tasks and real vs. disclosed intention are the hardest tasks, while diverse desires, implicit false beliefs, and diverse beliefs are the easiest tasks in the battery.
The majority of studies have found higher levels of alexithymia and a higher use of maladaptive coping strategies in individuals with eating disorders (ED). In this study, we consider the relationships between alexithymia and coping skills in different types of ED, in order to identify the specific role of these constructs in predicting dysfunctional eating symptoms. Thirty-four patients with anorexia nervosa (AN), 30 patients with bulimia nervosa (BN), 29 with binge eating disorder (BED) and 28 healthy control (HC) took part in the study. Eating Disorder Inventory-2 (EDI-2), Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R), Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and Coping Inventory for Stressful Situation (CISS) were used to assess the constructs of interest. Patients with ED showed higher levels of alexithymia in comparison with HC. Moreover, they presented a higher use of Emotion oriented coping strategy than HC. Regression analysis showed that alexithymia difficult to identify feeling predicted the eating disorder risk in patients with AN, whereas the same risk was predicted by the Emotion oriented coping strategy in BED group. For AN group, the model remain significant also when controlling for anxiety and depression. Alexithymia appears to be a predictor of eating symptoms specifically in an AN group, whereas a high use of emotion-oriented coping strategy appears to be a predictor of ED specifically in BED patients. The present findings may orient various kinds of intervention specifically targeted to different levels of emotion processing.
The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test (Eyes Test; Baron-Cohen et al., J Child Psychol Psychiatry, 38, 813–822, (1997), Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 241–251 2001 is one of the most commonly used and extensively validated tests for assessing social cognitive deficits, especially among those related to autism and schizophrenia. Despite its widespread use, the cognitive mechanisms underlying the Eyes Test are still unclear. We propose that top-down visual attention will result in better performance on the Eyes Test. Seventy-four female participants completed the Eyes Test in conjunction with three congruency tasks, including the flanker, number Stroop, and Navon’s global-local tasks. According to the hypothesis, the Eyes Test scores were found to be negatively associated with the response congruency effects—the difference in performance between congruent and incongruent trials. The neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying these associations are further discussed, and the Eyes Test features that may require top-down visual attention will be explored in depth.
The hard problem of consciousness must be approached through the ontological lens of twentieth-century physics, which tells us that reality is information theoretic Wheeler (American Scientist, 74, 366–375, 1986; Wheeler (1990) and quantized at the level of Planck scale spacetime Snyder (Physical Review D, 67, 38–41, 1947). Through careful deduction, it becomes clear that information cannot exist without consciousness—the awareness of things. And to be aware is to hold the meaning of relationships of objects within consciousness—perceiving abstract objects, while enjoying degrees of freedom within the structuring of those relationships. This defines consciousness as language—(1) a set of objects and (2) an ordering scheme with (3) degrees of freedom used for (4) expressing meaning. And since even information at the Planck scale cannot exist without consciousness, we propose an entity called a “primitive unit of consciousness,” which acts as a mathematical operator in a quantized spacetime language. Quasicrystal mathematics based on E8 geometry Sadoc and Mosseri (Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General, 26, 1789, 1993) seems to be a candidate for the language of reality, possessing several qualities corresponding to recent physical discoveries and various physically realistic unification models.
Cognitive and brain reserve are construct designed to explain the differences between brain damage or pathology and the clinical manifestation of the condition. Brain reserve is typically introduced as a passive model dealing with anatomical and structural changes in the brain, while cognitive reserve represents variability in the synaptic organization and activation of specific areas. Proxy measures and a residual approach are often used to estimate cognitive reserve with both approaches having its statistical and practical (dis)advantages. For brain reserve, intracranial volume or specific patterns of grey matter volume seem to be the most accepted quantitative measure. In psychotic disorders, cognitive and brain reserve might have an impact on cognitive performance and serve as a predictor for cognitive and functional outcomes of patients. Since cognitive deficits are often present in psychotic disorders, the reserves could also benefit treatment targeting cognitive impairment, specifically when designing a more personalized approach to cognitive training. The present paper is a synthesis of previous studies dealing with cognitive and brain reserve mapping the current research and potential of these constructs in psychotic disorders.
