Imperfect Cognitions

The AISB Convention is an annual conference covering the range of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, organised by the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour. The convention is structured as a number of co-located symposia on a wide variety of topics, together with a number of plenary talks and events. This year’s convention took place on 4-6 April at the University of Sheffield and included a most interesting symposium on new approaches to depression. Below I briefly summarise the content of the symposium talks.   Joel Parthemore (University of Skövde, Sweden, pictured above) opened the symposium with his talk ‘Depression viewed from an enactive perspective: It’s the context, stupid.’ He pointed at some most commonly spread myths about depression, which contribute to the popular misunderstanding of the illness and may lead to stigmatization. These include a belief that depression always involves anhedonia or a belief that c...

In this post I interview Helena Matute  (picture below), who is Professor of Psychology and director of the Experimental Psychology laboratory at the University of Deusto in Bilbao, Spain. AJ: You are a leading expert on causal illusions. Could you explain what causal illusions and illusions of control are? HM: A causal illusion (or illusion of causality) occurs when people perceive a causal relationship between two events that are actually unrelated. The illusion of control is just a special type of causal illusion in which the potential cause is our own behavior. That is, a causal illusion is often called an illusion of control when people believe that their own behavior is the cause of the unrelated effect, or, in other words, when they believe that they have control over uncontrollable events in their environment. Illusions of causality and of control occur in most people, particularly under certain conditions. For example, when the potential cause and the potential e...