Insight in the Conspiracist's Mind.

ACADEMIC ABSTRACT: The motto of the conspiracist, "Do your own research," may seem ludicrous to scientists. Indeed, it is often dismissed as a mere rhetorical device that conspiracists use to give themselves the semblance of science. In this perspective paper, we explore the information-seeking activities ("research") that conspiracists do engage in. Drawing on the experimental psychology of aha experiences, we explain how these activities, as well as the epistemic experiences that precede (curiosity) or follow (insight or "aha" experiences) them, may play a crucial role in the appeal and development of conspiracy beliefs. Aha moments have properties that can be exploited by conspiracy theories, such as the potential for false but seemingly grounded conclusions. Finally, we hypothesize that the need for autonomous epistemic agency and discovery is universal but increases as people experience more uncertainty and/or feel epistemically excluded in society, hence linking it to existing literature on explaining conspiracy theories. PUBLIC ABSTRACT: Recent events have made it painfully clear that conspiracy beliefs can tear deep rifts in society and that we still have not found an adequate, de-escalating response to this. To understand the appeal of conspiracy theories and find new, humanizing ways to talk about them, we propose in this perspective paper to start from the universal human need to autonomously make discoveries through personal knowledge-generating actions. Indeed, psychological research shows that the aha experiences that accompany subjective discoveries create confidence in and perceived ownership of ideas that may be exploited by conspiracy theories. We hypothesize that people experiencing more uncertainty and/or epistemic exclusion in society will especially feel the need to re-establish autonomous epistemic agency and discovery. While this explanation starts from shared human experiences and practices, it also illustrates the potential of those processes to lead to a narrowed world and ossified cognition.

Testing visual self-misperception in anorexia nervosa using a symmetrical body size estimation paradigm.

OBJECTIVE: Individuals diagnosed with anorexia nervosa (AN) often report seeing themselves as overweight. While body size estimation tasks suggest that such individuals overestimate their body size, these tasks have failed to establish whether this misestimation stems from visual misperception. Misestimation might, instead, be due to response bias. We designed a paradigm to distinguish between visual and response bias contributions to body size misestimation: the symmetrical body size estimation (s-BSE) paradigm. METHOD: The s-BSE paradigm involves two tasks. In the conventional task, participants estimate the width of their photographed body by adjusting the size of a rectangle to match. In the transposed task, participants adjust the size of a photograph of their body to match the rectangle. If overestimation stems exclusively from visual misperception, then errors in each task would be equal and opposite. Using this paradigm, we compared the performance of women diagnosed with AN (n = 14) against women without any eating disorder (n = 40). RESULTS: In the conventional task, we replicated previous findings indicating that both women with AN and women without any eating disorder overestimate their body size. In the transposed task, neither group adjusted the bodies to be narrower than the rectangle. Participants with AN set their photographs to be significantly wider. DISCUSSION: While we replicated previous findings of body size overestimation amongst women with AN and those without any eating disorder, our results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that such overestimation stems exclusively from visual misperception and instead suggest a substantial response bias effect. PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE: Women with anorexia nervosa overestimate their own body size. Research has not yet determined whether this overestimation stems from them seeing themselves as larger or other, non-visual factors. We employ a new method for distinguishing these possibilities and find that non-visual factors influence size estimates for women with and without anorexia nervosa. This method can help future research control for non-perceptual influences on participant responses.

Waiting longer, feeling fatter: Effects of response delay on tactile distance estimation and confidence in females with anorexia nervosa.

BACKGROUND: Research suggests that patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) exhibit differences in the perceptual processing of their own bodies. However, some researchers suggest that these differences are better explained with reference to non-perceptual factors, such as demand characteristics or emotional responses to the task. In this study, we investigated whether overestimation of tactile distances in participants with AN results from differences in tactile processing or non-perceptual factors, by measuring the role of allowed response time in an adapted version of the tactile distance estimation task (TDE-D). We further investigated the relationship between allowed response time and participants' confidence in their tactile judgments. METHOD: Our sample consisted of females: participants with AN (n = 30), recovered (REC) participants (n = 29) and healthy controls (HC) (n = 31). Participants were asked to estimate tactile distances presented on the skin of either a salient (abdomen) or non-salient (arm) body part, either directly after stimulus presentation (direct condition) or after a 5 s delay (delayed condition). Confidence of estimation accuracy was measured after each response. RESULTS: Results showed that allowing AN and REC more time to respond caused them to estimate tactile distances as larger. Additionally, participants with AN became less confident when given more time to respond. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that non-perceptual influences cause participants with AN to increase their estimates of tactile distances and become less certain of these estimates. We speculate that previous findings-where participants with AN estimate tactile distances as larger than HC-may be due to non-perceptual differences.

Visual Self-Misperception in Eating Disorders.

Many who suffer from eating disorders claim that they see themselves as "fat". Despite decades of research into the phenomenon, behavioural evidence has failed to confirm that eating disorders involve visual misperception of own-body size. I illustrate the importance of this phenomenon for our understanding of perceptual processing, outline the challenges involved in experimentally confirming it, and provide solutions to those challenges.

Body representations and cognitive ontology: Drawing the boundaries of the body image.

The distinction between body image and body schema has been incredibly influential in cognitive neuroscience. Recently, researchers have begun to speculate about the relationship between these representations (Gadsby, 2017, 2018; Pitron & de Vignemont, 2017; Pitron et al., 2018). Within this emerging literature, Pitron et al. (2018) proposed that the long-term body image and long-term body schema co-construct one another, through a process of reciprocal interaction. In proposing this model, they make two assumptions: that the long-term body image incorporates the spatial characteristics of tools, and that it is distorted in the case of Alice in wonderland syndrome. Here, I challenge these assumptions, with a closer examination of what the term "long-term body image" refers to. In doing so, I draw out some important taxonomic principles for research into body representation.

Biased belief in the Bayesian brain: A deeper look at the evidence.

A recent critique of hierarchical Bayesian models of delusion argues that, contrary to a key assumption of these models, belief formation in the healthy (i.e., neurotypical) mind is manifestly non-Bayesian. Here we provide a deeper examination of the empirical evidence underlying this critique. We argue that this evidence does not convincingly refute the assumption that belief formation in the neurotypical mind approximates Bayesian inference. Our argument rests on two key points. First, evidence that purports to reveal the most damning violation of Bayesian updating in human belief formation is counterweighted by substantial evidence that indicates such violations are the rare exception-not a common occurrence. Second, the remaining evidence does not demonstrate convincing violations of Bayesian inference in human belief updating; primarily because this evidence derives from study designs that produce results that are not obviously inconsistent with Bayesian principles.

How are the spatial characteristics of the body represented? A reply to Pitron & de Vignemont.

In their article, Pitron and de Vignemont (2017) provide an insightful and well overdue discussion of the relationship between long-term body representation models and Alice in Wonderland syndrome. Here, I supplement their discussion with a number of observations. First, I present a cautionary note regarding the interpretation of experiential changes in body size as reflective of changes in the content of body representations. Second, I show how their evidence contradicts an alternative model of body representation arising from research into anorexia nervosa-the "LTB" hypothesis. Finally, I highlight a significant issue with their proposed co-construction model.

Explaining body size beliefs in anorexia.

INTRODUCTION: Cognitive neuropsychiatry has had much success in providing theoretical models for the causal origins of many delusional beliefs. Recently, it has been suggested that some anorexia nervosa patients' beliefs about their own body size should be considered delusions. As such, it seems high time the methods of cognitive neuropsychiatry were turned to modelling the false body size beliefs of anorexics. METHODS: In this paper, I adopt an empiricist approach to modelling the causal origins of false body size beliefs in anorexia. Within the background of cognitive neuropsychiatry, empiricist models claim that abnormal beliefs are grounded by abnormal experiences bearing similar content. RESULTS: I discuss the kinds of abnormal experiences of body size anorexics suffer from which could ground their false beliefs about body size. These oversized experiences come in three varieties: false self-other body comparisons, spontaneous mental imagery of a fat body and distorted perception of affordances. CONCLUSIONS: Further theoretical and empirical research into the oversized experiences which anorexics suffer from presents a promising avenue for understanding and treating the disorder.

Taxonomising delusions: content or aetiology?

INTRODUCTION: Many theoretical treatments assume (often implicitly) that delusions ought to be taxonomised by the content of aberrant beliefs. A theoretically sound, and comparatively under-explored, alternative would split and combine delusions according to their underlying cognitive aetiology. METHODS: We give a theoretical review of several cases, focusing on monothematic delusions of misidentification and on somatoparaphrenia. RESULTS: We show that a purely content-based taxonomy is empirically problematic. It does not allow for projectability of discoveries across all members of delusions so delineated, and lumps together delusions that ought to be separated. We demonstrate that an aetiological approach is defensible, and further that insofar as content-based approaches are plausible, it is only to the extent that they implicitly link content to aetiology. CONCLUSIONS: We recommend a more explicit focus on cognitive aetiology as the grounds for delusion taxonomy, even when that would undermine traditional content-based boundaries. We also highlight the iterative and complex nature of evidence about aetiologically grounded taxonomies.

Distorted body representations in anorexia nervosa.

In this paper, I discuss empirical evidence regarding anorexic patients' distorted body representations. I fit this evidence into a broader framework for understanding how the spatial content of the body is tracked and represented. This framework is motivated by O'Shaughnessy's (1980) long-term body image hypothesis. This hypothesis posits a representation that tracks changes in the spatial content of the body and supplies this content to other body representations. I argue that a similar kind of body representation might exist and, in the case of anorexia, be distorted. Finally, I suggest that this body representation might become distorted through influence by affect.