On the time necessary for a visual impression to come into consciousness

Summary A translation is given of Baxt's pioneering paper on tachistoscopic perception (1871). Baxt showed how a stimulus can fail to be masked by a second stimulus coming after it, if a certain interval elapses between the two stimuli, an interval long enough, Baxt assumed, for the perception of the first stimulus to become conscious. Baxt showed how this interval varied with the intensity of the second stimulus, the complexity of the first stimulus, and the size of the first stimulus. It was also shown that the fainter the overall illumination, the shorter the interval could be, as would be expected from Fechner's Law.Translation and introduction by D.J. Murray, Queen's University Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6     

Time in the mind: using space to think about time

How do we construct abstract ideas like justice, mathematics, or time-travel? In this paper we investigate whether mental representations that result from physical experience underlie people's more abstract mental representations, using the domains of space and time as a testbed. People often talk about time using spatial language (e.g., a long vacation, a short concert). Do people also think about time using spatial representations, even when they are not using language? Results of six psychophysical experiments revealed that people are unable to ignore irrelevant spatial information when making judgments about duration, but not the converse. This pattern, which is predicted by the asymmetry between space and time in linguistic metaphors, was demonstrated here in tasks that do not involve any linguistic stimuli or responses. These findings provide evidence that the metaphorical relationship between space and time observed in language also exists in our more basic representations of distance and duration. Results suggest that our mental representations of things we can never see or touch may be built, in part, out of representations of physical experiences in perception and motor action.     

Happiness, time consciousness, and subjective life expectancy.

84 men and 141 women enrolled at a university reported their sexes and ages, rated their happiness and their time consciousness, and estimated how many more years they expected to live. Men significantly overestimated their subjective life span compared to actuarial data. Women (but not men) who were happier tended to be younger, had greater subjective life expectancies, and felt that they had lived a smaller percentage of their total lives. Both older men and older women tended to be more time conscious.     

Personality and mental time travel: a differential approach to autonoetic consciousness

Recent research on autonoetic consciousness indicates that the ability to remember the past and the ability to project oneself into the future are closely related. The purpose of the present study was to confirm this proposition by examining whether the relationship observed between personality and episodic memory could be extended to episodic future thinking and, more generally, to investigate the influence of personality traits on self-information processing in the past and in the future. Results show that Neuroticism and Harm Avoidance predict more negative past memories and future projections. Other personality dimensions exhibit a more limited influence on mental time travel (MTT). Therefore, our study provide an additional evidence to the idea that MTT into the past and into the future rely on a common set of processes by which past experiences are used to envision the future.     

How to, and how not to, bridge computational cognitive neuroscience and Husserlian phenomenology of time consciousness

A number of recent attempts to bridge Husserlian phenomenology of time consciousness and contemporary tools and results from cognitive science or computational neuroscience are described and critiqued. An alternate proposal is outlined that lacks the weaknesses of existing accounts.     

Now or never: How consciousness represents time

Consciousness has a peculiar affinity for presence; conscious states represent their contents as now. To understand how conscious states come to represent time in this way, we need a distinction between a mental state that represents now and one that simply occurs now. A teleofunctional theory accounts for the distinction in terms of the development and function of explicit temporal representation. The capacity to represent a situation explicitly as ‘now’ and compare it with past situations in order to prepare for the future involves the separation of goals from the particular action required to attain them. That is, when a creature is able to consider alternative paths of action, it becomes necessary to conceive of alternate future times as distinct from the present moment. The developmental, functional approach of a teleofunctional theory is promising in its ability to integrate research from diverse empirical fields for support of its claims.     

Freedom to play,dream and think

The intention in this paper is to study what we mean when we say that play is a mediator of an inner psychic world. The internal scene becomes furnished with your own impressions from the external world. The passions and the experiences from within have no forms of their own and will use the forms in time and space in external reality. An inner object world will be created, and thus far it is the same process as it is for the creation of the dream image and its furniture. In play, there is a circular movement: the furnishings from the inner world intrude into external reality; the external form and the form of the inner object create a double exposure. We look at the object in the room with a binocular view. The experience from psychoanalysis with three children is presented to give different perspectives on the internal movements inherent in play and playing.     

The time of consciousness and vice versa

The temporal granularity of consciousness may be far less fine than the real-time information processing mechanisms that underlie our sensitivity to small temporal differences. It is suggested that conscious time perception, like space perception, is subject to errors that belie a unitary underlying representation. E. R. Clay's (The Alternative: A Study in Psychology, 1882) concept of the "specious present," an extended moment represented in consciousness, is suggested as an alternative to the more common notion of instantaneous experience that underlies much reasoning based on the "time of arrival" in consciousness.     

Choice and self-expression: a cultural analysis of variety-seeking

Three studies examined whether the tendency to seek variety in choices depends in part on cultural assumptions of choice and uniqueness. Study 1 showed that people from different cultures where different assumptions of choice and uniqueness dominate show different levels of variety in their choice rule use. Study 2 primed participants with magazine ads highlighting different representations of uniqueness dominant in individualist versus collectivist cultures to show the influence of cultural meanings of uniqueness on the variety-seeking tendency. Study 3 manipulated the motivation to display variety to demonstrate that variety-seeking in the United States partly hinges on cultural meanings of choice as self-expression. Variety-seeking in choice rule use was eliminated when participants had the chance to self-express through choice listing. The research illustrates the role of cultural assumptions in the variety-seeking tendency.     

Enactive individuation: technics,temporality and affect in digital design and fabrication

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - The nature of creative engagement with computers and software presents a number of challenges to 4E cognition and requires the development of analytical...     

On representationalism,common-factorism,and whether consciousness is here and now

Philosophical Studies - A strong form of representationalism says that every conscious property of every mental state can be identified with some part of the state’s representational...     

Personhood,consciousness, and god: how to be a proper pantheist

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion - In this paper I develop a theory of personhood which leaves open the possibility of construing the universe as a person. If successful, it removes...     

Second-order conditioning in human predictive judgements when there is little time to think

Associative accounts uniquely predict that second-order conditioning might be observed in human predictive judgements. Such an effect was found for cue X in two experiments in which participants were required to predict the outcomes of a series of training trials that included P + and PX-, but only when training was paced by requiring participants to make a prediction within 3 s on each trial. In Experiment 1 training on P + ended before training was given on PX - . In Experiment 2 trials with P+, PX-, T + and other cues were intermixed. In the unpaced group inhibitory learning was revealed by a summation test, TX versus TM, where M was a control stimulus. These results suggest either that pacing interferes with learning successive associations more than with learning simultaneous associations or that lack of time to think interferes with inferential processes required for this type of inhibitory learning.     

To think or not to think,that is the question: Individual differences in suppression and rebound effects in autobiographical memory

Two studies explored the effects of forget instructions on autobiographical memory at immediate test and following delays of either 12–13 months, or 3–4 months. Using the Autobiographical Think/No-Think procedure (cf., Noreen & MacLeod, 2013), 24 never-depressed participants (Study 1) first generated 12 positive and 12 negative autobiographical memories and associated cues. Participants were then asked to recall the memory associated with some of the cues (i.e., ‘think’ condition), or to avoid saying or thinking about the memory associated with other cues (i.e., ‘no-think’ condition). Participants were then asked to recall the memories associated with all the cues at immediate test and following a delay of 12–13 months. Participants were found to be successful at forgetting both positive and negative autobiographical memories following ‘no-think’ instructions at immediate test but this forgetting effect did not persist following a 12–13 month delay. This pattern of remembering and forgetting was replicated in a second study (using 27 never-depressed participants) following a 3–4 month delay. Participants who had been less successful at forgetting ‘no-think’ memories at immediate test, were more likely to show rebound effects for those memories following a delay compared to memories which received neither ‘think’ nor ‘no-think’ instructions. Individual differences in inhibitory control and the efficacy of potential therapeutic interventions of ‘no-think’ instructions are considered.     

On thinking and not being able to think: reflections on viewing the Abu Ghraib photos

Using experiences from childhood, from encounters with contemporary art, from clinical experience, and, most elaborately, from an initial viewing of the Abu Ghraib photos, the author argues that the interpretability of experience depends upon its being legible. This legibility, in turn, depends upon the interpreter maintaining contact with his/her own capacities for thought, and, more fundamentally, with the vitally necessary community of others with whom he/she shares those capacities.     

Wanting, having, and needing: integrating motive disposition theory and self-determination theory

Four studies explored the motivational and experiential dynamics of psychological needs, applying both self-determination theory and motive disposition theory. In all 4 studies, motive dispositions toward achievement and affiliation ("wanting" particular experiences) predicted corresponding feelings of competence and relatedness ("having" those experiences). Competence and relatedness in turn predicted well-being, again indicating that these 2 experiences may really be "needed." Illuminating how wanting gets to having, in Studies 2 and 3, participants reported greater self-concordance for motive-congruent goals, which, in longitudinal Study 3, predicted greater attainment of those goals and thus enhanced well-being. Study 4 replicated selected earlier results using an implicit as well as an explicit motive disposition measure. Supporting the presumed universality of competence and relatedness needs, in no studies did motive dispositions moderate the effects of corresponding need-satisfaction on well-being. Discussion focuses on a "sequential process" model of psychological needs that views needs as both motives that instigate and outcomes that reward behavior.