方法对比

	Minimally Counterintuitive Recall	Agency Detection Task
领域	Religious Studies	Religious Studies
方法族	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
起源年份	2001	2000
提出者	Pascal Boyer & Charles Ramble	Justin L. Barrett (building on Stewart Guthrie)
类型	Memory-recall experiment for religious-concept transmission	Signal-detection experiment for agency attribution
开创性文献	Boyer, P., & Ramble, C. (2001). Cognitive templates for religious concepts: cross-cultural evidence for recall of counter-intuitive representations. Cognitive Science, 25(4), 535-564.	Barrett, J. L. (2000). Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(1), 29-34.
别名	MCI Recall Paradigm, Counterintuitiveness Recall Experiment, Cognitive Optimum Recall Test, Boyer-Ramble Recall Paradigm	HADD Experiment, Agency Detection Bias Task, Hypersensitive Agency Detection Device Test, Agency Attribution Paradigm
相关	3	3
摘要	The minimally counterintuitive (MCI) recall paradigm is an experimental method in the cognitive science of religion that explains why some supernatural concepts spread and persist while others do not. Pascal Boyer and Charles Ramble's 2001 cross-cultural studies, conducted in France, Gabon, and Nepal, tested the hypothesis that concepts which breach a small number of intuitive ontological expectations - a statue that hears prayers, a person who passes through walls - are remembered better than wholly intuitive concepts and better than bizarre concepts that violate too many expectations at once. By embedding intuitive, minimally counterintuitive, and maximally counterintuitive items in narratives and measuring free recall after a delay, the method locates a 'cognitive optimum' of counterintuitiveness that favours cultural transmission, providing an empirical, memory-based account of the recurrent features of religious representations.	The agency detection task is an experimental method in the cognitive science of religion that measures the human tendency to attribute ambiguous events to intentional agents - a tendency Justin Barrett named the Hyperactive (or Hypersensitive) Agency Detection Device, or HADD. Building on Stewart Guthrie's argument that people anthropomorphize the world, Barrett proposed in 2000 that an evolved bias to err on the side of detecting agents (better to mistake the wind for a predator than the reverse) provides a natural cognitive foundation for belief in gods, spirits, and ghosts. The task presents participants with ambiguous motion, sounds, or images and uses signal-detection theory to separate genuine sensitivity to agents from a liberal response criterion, then relates the resulting over-detection bias to supernatural belief.