A philosophical and empirical approach to the nature of perception and belief. This project offers substantial benefits - intellectual, practical, and ultimately economic - to the nation. On the intellectual side, the project will contribute to research output and will further enhance the national research strength in the study of delusions, rationality, and agency, within both philosophy of mind and inter-disciplinary cognitive science. On the practical side, the project offers the prospect of ....A philosophical and empirical approach to the nature of perception and belief. This project offers substantial benefits - intellectual, practical, and ultimately economic - to the nation. On the intellectual side, the project will contribute to research output and will further enhance the national research strength in the study of delusions, rationality, and agency, within both philosophy of mind and inter-disciplinary cognitive science. On the practical side, the project offers the prospect of considerable benefits for the community as improved theories of the nature and causes of delusions generate strategies for earlier detection or even prevention of the development of delusions, new methods of therapy for patients, and better understanding for families.Read moreRead less
Normal and abnormal processes of social attention orienting. Human beings are capable of rapidly detecting the direction of another person's eye-gaze and shifting attention reflexively in that direction. This project will compare shifts of attention to non-social and social cues of direction to determine whether attentional shifts to gaze-direction are fast because humans are biologically hard-wired to respond to social cues of evolutionary significance (eyes) or because humans are well-practice ....Normal and abnormal processes of social attention orienting. Human beings are capable of rapidly detecting the direction of another person's eye-gaze and shifting attention reflexively in that direction. This project will compare shifts of attention to non-social and social cues of direction to determine whether attentional shifts to gaze-direction are fast because humans are biologically hard-wired to respond to social cues of evolutionary significance (eyes) or because humans are well-practiced at using a number of different signals for direction in their environment. Findings from this work will than be used to investigate whether a selective impairment of responding to gaze-direction contributes to the social impairments so characteristic of people with schizophrenia.
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