Mental State

A Mental State is a psychological condition that encompasses various conditions or modes of thinking and feeling experienced by an individual (a mind).

• AKA: Cognitive Notion, Psychological State, Cognitive State, Mind State.
• Context:
  • It can (typically) encompass various conditions or modes of thinking and feeling experienced by an individual.
  • It can (typically) influence Behavioral Response through neural patterns.
  • It can (typically) affect Cognitive Processing through mental mechanisms.
  • It can (typically) shape Emotional Pattern through psychological processs.
  • It can (typically) determine Decision Process through thought patterns.
  • ...
  • It can (often) be influenced by external stimuli, internal thoughts, and emotional responses.
  • It can (often) modulate Social Interaction through behavioral expressions.
  • It can (often) guide Information Processing through attention patterns.
  • It can (often) influence Memory Formation through encoding processs.
  • ...
  • It can range from being a Transient State to being a Persistent State, depending on its duration characteristic.
  • It can range from being a Simple Mental State to being a Complex Mental State, depending on its cognitive complexity.
  • It can range from being a Conscious State to being an Unconscious State, depending on its awareness level.
  • It can range from transient states like momentary happiness to enduring conditions such as chronic anxiety.
  • ...
  • It can be measured by a Mental State Measure.
  • It can interact with Environmental Condition during situational contexts.
  • It can correlate with Physical State during bodily processs.
  • It can integrate with Social State during interpersonal interactions.
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• Examples:
  • Basic Consciousness States, such as:
    • Wakefulness States, such as:
      • State of Wakefulness during alert period.
      • State of Drowsiness during fatigue period.
    • Sleep States, such as:
      • State of Sleep during rest period.
      • Daydream during mind wandering.
  • Cognitive Processing States, such as:
    • Attention States, such as:
      • State of Awareness during environmental perception.
      • State of Focus during concentration period.
    • Understanding States, such as:
      • State of Insight during comprehension moment.
      • State of Confusion during information overload.
  • Emotional States, such as:
    • Positive Emotion States, such as:
      • Pleasurable Mental State during enjoyment experience.
      • State of Contentment during satisfaction period.
    • Negative Emotion States, such as:
      • Depressive Mental State during low mood period.
      • State of Distress during challenging situation.
  • Decision States, such as:
    • Uncertainty States, such as:
      • State of Hesitation during choice uncertainty.
      • State of Doubt during confidence reduction.
    • Resolution States, such as:
      • State of Determination during goal commitment.
      • State of Certainty during clear decision.
  • Theory of Mind States, such as:
    • Social Understanding States, such as:
      • Theory of Mind (ToM) Measure during belief understanding.
      • False-Belief Understanding Measure during perspective taking.
    • Interpersonal States, such as:
      • State of Empathy during emotional connection.
      • Mutual Understanding during social interaction.
  • Clinical Mental States, such as:
    • Assessment States, such as:
      • Electronic Clinical Outcome Assessment (eCOA) System state during clinical evaluation.
      • Psychological Dissociation State during dissociative episode.
    • Treatment States, such as:
      • Mindfulness Practice during meditation session.
      • Stream of Consciousness during therapeutic process.
  • Agent Mental States, such as:
    • Cognitive Agent States, such as:
      • Agent Intention during goal pursuit.
      • Software-based System State during cognitive processing.
    • Task Performance States, such as:
      • Reference Grounding Task during meaning establishment.
      • Introspection Task during self-examination.
  • Legal Mental States, such as:
    • Criminal Intent States, such as:
      • Mens Rea during legal consideration.
      • Mental Element during criminal act.
    • Competency States, such as:
      • State of Disorientation during impaired judgment.
      • State of Awareness during legal proceeding.
  • Information Processing States, such as:
    • Knowledge States, such as:
      • Information Need during knowledge seeking.
      • State of Understanding during concept grasp.
    • Communication States, such as:
      • Linguistic Sentence Cognitive Interpretation during message processing.
      • Question Statement processing during inquiry period.
  • ...
• Counter-Examples:
  • Psychophysiological Response, which represents physical reactions rather than mental processes.
  • Physical State, which reflects bodily conditions rather than cognitive states.
  • Environmental State, which describes external conditions rather than internal states.
• See: Belief, Interest, Mental Process, Conscious State, Mind, Dream, Artificial Intelligence, Mind-Body Problem.

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References

2014

• (Wikipedia, 2014) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mental_event Retrieved:2014-1-12.
  • A mental event is a particular occurrence of something going on in the mind or mind substitute that make up the conscious mind of an individual. It can be a thought, a dream, a feeling, a realization, or any other mental activity. Some believe that mental events are not limited to human thought but can be associated with animal and artificial intelligence as well. The issue of whether mental events are identical with complex physical events, or whether such an identity even makes sense, is central to the mind-body problem.

    Mental events often occur because of physical events, however, physical events do not always occur because of mental events.

    However, some see such a distinction as erroneous, and state that the mental and the physical are the very same property which cause any event(s).

2009

• (Diab et al., 2009) ⇒ Mona T. Diab, Lori Levin, Teruko Mitamura, Owen Rambow, Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, and Weiwei Guo. (2009). “Committed Belief Annotation and Tagging.” In: Proceedings of the Third Linguistic Annotation Workshop. ISBN:978-1-932432-52-7
  • QUOTE: … Our objective is to explore semantic meaning beyond surface propositions. We aim to model people's cognitive states, namely their beliefs as expressed through linguistic means. … We classify predicates into one of three possibilities: committed belief, non committed belief, or not applicable.

1997

• (Pohl, 1997) ⇒ W. Pohl. (1997). “LaboUr – machine learning for user modeling.” In: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction.
  • ABSTRACT: Traditional user modeling systems are often limited, as far as processing of observations about user behavior and handling of user model dynamics are concerned. In this paper, the LaboUr architecture for user modeling systems is discussed. It realizes user modeling as open learning process, thus overcoming the mentioned limitations.
  • … mental (mentalistic) notions include: knowledge, belief, goals, and interests.

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