Associative theories of cognitive representation begin with an ontology of two kinds of entities: concepts and associations. According to most social cognitive theories of attitudes, attitudes are object-evaluation associations of varying strength, where strength is defined in terms of accessibility. This paper proposes a cognitive account of belief such that beliefs are object-attribute associations of varying strength: thus, insofar as evaluative concepts are examples of attribute concepts, attitudes are a species of belief. This cognitive account of belief also denies that additional processes of endorsement—explicit or otherwise—are strictly required for an object-attribute association to count as a belief.

中文翻译：

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信念是不同强度的对象-属性关联

认知表征的联想理论以两种实体的本体论开始：概念和关联。根据大多数态度的社会认知理论，态度是不同强度的对象评估关联，其中强度是根据可及性来定义的。本文提出了一种信念的认知解释，即信念是不同强度的对象-属性关联：因此，就评价概念是属性概念的例子而言，态度是一种信念。这种对信念的认知解释也否认了额外的认可过程——明确的或其他的——对于将客体-属性关联算作信念是严格要求的。