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Each day people are presented with circumstances that may require speculation. Scientists may ponder questions such as why a star is born or how rainbows are made, psychologists may ask social questions such as why people are prejudiced, and military strategists may imagine what the consequences of their actions might be. Speculations may lead to the generation of putative explanations called hypotheses. But it is by checking if hypotheses accurately reflect the encountered facts that lead to se…Read more
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65Human Rights and Psychology in the Rep. of Ireland: Aspirations for Everyday Practice and Introducing the Kyrie Farm ModelClinical Psychology Forum 2 (369): 47-63. 2023.The Republic of Ireland is introducing major human rights-based reform to its mental health laws. This paper outlines the new legal landscape in which psychologists must operate against the backdrop of present day effects of Ireland’s dark legacy of institutionalisation. A rights-based approach aims to positively transform mental health service delivery and we advocate for person-centred treatments as the ‘new normal’. We summarise the recent advocacy work undertaken by the Psychological Society…Read more
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79PSI Response to the Call from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child: Draft General Comment No. 26, Specific Rights of the Convention as They Relate to the Environment and With a Special Focus on Climate ChangeOhchr, Gc26-Cs-Psychological-Society-Ireland-2023-02-14. 2023.The Psychological Society of Ireland’s (PSI) response to the call from the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Rights of the Child: Draft General Comment No. 26 Calls for comment on the draft general comment on children’s rights and the environment with a special focus on climate change III. ‘Specific rights of the Convention as they relate to the environment’, B. The right to the highest attainable standard of health (art. 24), 27. … children’s current and anticipated psychosocial, emotional a…Read more
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71PSI in action: Contributing to International Practice in Responding to Crises and Emergencies (Feature Article)The Irish Psychologist. 2023.In response to the International Union of Psychological Sciences (IUPsyS) call for member organisations to ‘contribute ideas on the IUPsyS responses in crises and emergencies’, the Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI), through guidance from the PSI Special Interest Group in Human Rights and Psychology (SIGHRP),proposed a set of human rights-based recommendations to aid the IUPsyS policy mission for actions moving forward. This article speaks to the reasoning behind the rights-based framework,…Read more
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175It's Not My Fault, Your Honor, I'm Only the EnablerIn Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Vol. 29, 2007, Extended Abstract., . pp. 1755. 2007.According to the mental model theory, causes and enablers differ in meaning, and therefore in their logical consequences (Goldvarg & Johnson-Laird, 2001). They are consistent with different possibilities. Recent psychological studies have argued to the contrary, and suggested that linguistic cues guide this distinction (Kuhnmünch & Beller, 2005). The issue is important because neither British nor American law recognizes this distinction (e.g., Roberts & Zuckerman, 2004). Yet, in our view, it is …Read more
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215The Cognitive Perspective - Introduction to Psychology: Theory and Practice (Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Developmental Notes)Human Cognition in Evolution and Development eJournal 9 (22). 2017.This notebook presents an introductory overview to the cognitive perspective on the psychology of human behaviour for social science students. Starting with an introduction to cognitive developmental theories of how babies reason, the overview then moves to discuss how children develop into better thinkers. Adult theories of cognition are subsequently outlined and critically evaluated. A chronology of topics include: the rise of 'this thing we call cognition', Piaget's theory of cognitive develo…Read more
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156Introduction to Psychological Criminology: Jury Verdicts and Jury Research MethodologyLegal Anthropology eJournal, Archives of Vols. 1-3, 2016-18 Vol. 2, Issues 248: December 20,. 2017.This summary note series outlines legal empirical approaches to the study of juries and jury decision-making behaviour for undergraduate students of sociology, criminology and legal systems, and forensic psychology. The note series is divided into two lectures. The first lecture attends to the background relevant to the historical rise of juries and socio-legal methodologies used to understand jury behaviour. The second lecture attends to questions surrounding jury competence, classic studies il…Read more
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433Chess Masters' Hypothesis Testing in Games of Dynamic EquilibriumSSRN Econometrics: Econometric and Statistical Methods – General eJournal, Vol. 9, Issue 5: Jan 12, 2016. 2016.The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed technical protocol analysis of chess masters' evaluative expertise, paying particular attention to the analysis of the structure of their memory process in evaluating foreseen possibilities in games of dynamic equilibrium. The paper has two purposes. First, to publish a results chapter from my DPhil thesis (in revised journal article form) attending to the measurement of foresight in chess masters' evaluation process, testing alternative theori…Read more
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136Reasoning about Criminal Evidence: Revealing Probabilistic Reasoning Behind Logical ConclusionsSSRN E-Library Maurer School of Law Law and Society eJournals. 2007.There are two competing theoretical frameworks with which cognitive sciences examines how people reason. These frameworks are broadly categorized into logic and probability. This paper reports two applied experiments to test which framework explains better how people reason about evidence in criminal cases. Logical frameworks predict that people derive conclusions from the presented evidence to endorse an absolute value of certainty such as ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’ (e.g., Johnson-Laird, 1999). B…Read more
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186Intended and Merely Foreseen Consequences: The Psychology of the ‘Cause or Allow’ OffenceSSRN E-Library Maurer School of Law's Law and Society Series | Media Summary, SLSA Newsletter, Spring Issue, 2012. 2012.Intended and merely foreseen consequences: The psychology of the ‘cause or allow’ offence. A short report for the Socio-Legal Community on ESRC Grant RES-000-22-3114.
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209Causes, Enablers and the LawSSRN E-Library Legal Anthropology eJournal, Archives of Vols. 1-3, 2016-2018. 2018.Many theories in philosophy, law, and psychology, make no distinction in meaning between causing and enabling conditions. Yet, psychologically people readily make such distinctions each day. In this paper we report three experiments, showing that individuals distinguish between causes and enabling conditions in brief descriptions of wrongful outcomes. Respondents rate actions that bring about outcomes as causes, and actions that make possible the causal relation as enablers. Likewise, causers (a…Read more
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372Hypothesis Falsification in the 2-4-6 Number Sequence Test: Introducing Imaginary CounterpartsPhilosophy of Mind eJournal 8 (41). 2015.Two main cognitive theories predict that people find refuting evidence that falsifies their theorising difficult, if not impossible to consider, even though such reasoning may be pivotal to grounding their everyday thoughts in reality (i.e., Poletiek, 1996; Klayman & Ha, 1987). In the classic 2-4-6 number sequence task devised by psychologists to test such reasoning skills in a simulated environment – people fail the test more often than not. In the 2-4-6 task participants try to discover what r…Read more
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Foresight and Reasonable Prevention in Child Protection Contexts: Evaluating Foresee-Ability Relevant to Section 5 of the Domestic Violence, Crime, & Victims Act UKESRC E-Policy 2011/2019 Public Copy. 2011.This focus report presents a critical evaluation of the problems that the psychology of intent and foresight present to legal framework building for the protection of children in contemporary society. The report examines current public survey data on the role of intent and foresight in attributions of punishment and responsibility across: (i) contexts relevant to prior conviction evidence and disclosure (Ch. 11, Criminal Justice Act, 2003); and (ii) foresight and reasonable prevention when a chi…Read more
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138When Falsification is the Only Path to TruthIn M. Bucciarelli, L. Barsalou & B. G. Bara (eds.), Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society., . 2005.Can people consistently attempt to falsify, that is, search for refuting evidence, when testing the truth of hypotheses? Experimental evidence indicates that people tend to search for confirming evidence. We report two novel experiments that show that people can consistently falsify when it is the only helpful strategy. Experiment 1 showed that participants readily falsified somebody else’s hypothesis. Their task was to test a hypothesis belonging to an ‘imaginary participant’ and they knew it w…Read more
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7A classic problem for artificial intelligence is to build a machine that imitates human behavior well enough to convince those who are interacting with it that it is another human being. One approach to this problem focuses on building machines that imitate internal psychological facets of human interaction, such as artificially intelligent agents that play grandmaster chess. Another approach focuses on building machines that imitate external psychological facets by building androids. The dispar…Read more
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170Chess Masters' Hypothesis TestingIn K. D. Forbus, D. Gentner & Regier (eds.), Proceedings of the Twenty- Sixth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society., . 2004.Falsification may demarcate science from non-science as the rational way to test the truth of hypotheses. But experimental evidence from studies of reasoning shows that people often find falsification difficult. We suggest that domain expertise may facilitate falsification. We consider new experimental data about chess experts’ hypothesis testing. The results show that chess masters were readily able to falsify their plans. They generated move sequences that falsified their plans more readily th…Read more
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165Lenses of Evidence – Jurors’ Evidential Reasoning. *Invited Talk –Experimental Psychology Oxford Seminar Series 2010.SSRN E-Library Legal Anthropology eJournal, Archives of Vols. 1-3, 2016-2018. 2010.This paper presents empirical findings from a set of reasoning and mock jury studies presented at the Experimental Psychology Oxford Seminar Series (2010) and the King's Bench Chambers KBW Barristers Seminar Series (2010). The presentation asks the following questions and presents empirical answers using the Lenses of Evidence Framework (Cowley & Colyer, 2010; see also van Koppen & Wagenaar, 1993): Why is mental representation important for psychology? Why is mental representation important for …Read more
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401‘The Innocent v The Fickle Few’: How Jurors Understand Random-Match-Probabilities and Judges’ Directions when Reasoning about DNA and Refuting EvidenceJournal of Forensic Science and Criminal Investigation 3 (5). 2017.DNA evidence is one of the most significant modern advances in the search for truth since the cross examination, but its format as a random-match-probability makes it difficult for people to assign an appropriate probative value (Koehler, 2001). While Frequentist theories propose that the presentation of the match as a frequency rather than a probability facilitates more accurate assessment (e.g., Slovic et al., 2000), Exemplar-Cueing Theory predicts that the subjective weight assigned may be af…Read more
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323Asymmetries in prior conviction reasoning: Truth suppression effects in child protection contextsPsychology, Crime and Law 3 (16): 211-231. 2010.In three empirical studies we examined how people reason about prior convictions in child abuse cases. We tested whether the disclosure of similar prior convictions prompts a mental representation or an additive probative value (Criminal Justice Act, 2003). Asymmetrical use of similar priors were observed in three studies. A pilot study showed that disclosure of a second prior did not contribute a weight equivalent to that of the first disclosure. Study 1 showed jurors did not see left-handed ev…Read more
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447Hypothesis Testing: How We Foresee Falsification in Competitive GamesLambert Academic Publishing. 2017.Each day people are presented with circumstances that may require speculation. Scientists may ponder questions such as why a star is born or how rainbows are made, psychologists may ask social questions such as why people are prejudiced, and military strategists may imagine what the consequences of their actions might be. Speculations may lead to the generation of putative explanations called hypotheses. But it is by checking if hypotheses accurately reflect the encountered facts that lead to se…Read more
Michelle B. Cowley-Cunningham (nee Cowley)
Dublin City University
Royal Statistical Society
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Royal Statistical SocietyPost-doctoral fellow (Part-time)
Areas of Specialization
Popper: Philosophy of Science |
Experimental Philosophy |
Thought Experiments |
Psycholinguistics |
Areas of Interest
Legal Reasoning and Adjudication |
Experimental Philosophy |