Trust my face: cognitive factors of head fakes in sports

In many competitive sports, players try to deceive their opponents about their behavioral intentions by using specific body movements or postures called fakes. For example, fakes are performed in basketball when a player gazes in one direction but passes or shoots the ball in another direction to avert efficient defense actions. The present study aimed to identify the cognitive processes that underlie the effects of fakes. The paradigmatic situation studied was the head fake in basketball. Observers (basketball novices) had to decide as quickly as possible whether a basketball player would pass a ball to the left or to the right. The player's head and gaze were oriented in the direction of an intended pass or in the opposite direction (i.e., a head fake). Responding was delayed for incongruent compared to congruent directions of the player's gaze and the pass. This head fake effect was independent of response speed, the presence of a fake in the immediately preceding trial, and practice with the task. Five further experiments using additive-factors logic and locus-of-slack logic revealed a perceptual rather than motor-related origin of this effect: Turning the head in a direction opposite the pass direction appears to hamper the perceptual encoding of pass direction, although it does not induce a tendency to move in the direction of the head's orientation. The implications of these results for research on deception in sports and their relevance for sports practice are discussed.     

On applying cognitive psychology

Recent attempts to assess the practical impact of scientific research prompted my own reflections on over 40 years worth of combining basic and applied cognitive psychology. Examples are drawn principally from the study of memory disorders, but also include applications to the assessment of attention, reading, and intelligence. The most striking conclusion concerns the many years it typically takes to go from an initial study, to the final practical outcome. Although the complexity and sheer timescale involved make external evaluation problematic, the combination of practical satisfaction and theoretical stimulation make the attempt to combine basic and applied research very rewarding.     

Tie my hands, tie my eyes

Previous studies have demonstrated that motor abilities allow us not only to execute our own actions and to predict their consequences, but also to predict others' actions and their consequences. But just how deeply are motor abilities implicated in action observation? If an observer is prevented from acting while witnessing others' actions, will this impact on their making sense of others' behavior? We recorded proactive eye movements while participants observed an actor grasping objects. The participants' hands were either freely resting on the table or tied behind their back. Proactivity of gaze behavior was dramatically impaired when participants observed others' actions with their hands tied. Since we don't literally perceive actions with our hands, the effect may be explained by the hypothesis that effective observation of action depends not only on motor abilities but on being in a position to exercise them. This suggests, for the first time, that actions are observed best when we are actually in the position to perform them.     

迷途知返

我那中西合璧的三层小楼主体工程刚显出一点眉目,九九重阳节这天,二三十人在脚手架上攀援,他们都十分认真地工作着,可是山涧骤然刮过来一阵强     

A critical review of postfeminist sensibility

This paper critically reviews how feminist academic psychologists, social scientists, and media scholars have developed Rosalind Gill's generative construct “postfeminist sensibility.” We describe the key themes of postfeminist sensibility, a noncoherent set of ideas about femininity, embodiment, and empowerment circulating across a range of media. Ideas that inform women's sense of self, making postfeminist sensibility an important object for psychological study. We then consider research that drew on postfeminist sensibility, focusing on new sexual subjectivities, which developed analysis of agency, empowerment, and the possibilities and limitations in taking up new subjectivities associated with postfeminism, as well as who could take up these subjectivities. We show how such work identified complexities and contradictions in postfeminist sensibility and offer suggestions for how this work might be further developed, particularly by intersectionality‐informed research. In the final section, we address contemporary debates surrounding postfeminism. We consider challenges and counterarguments to postfeminist sensibility as a useful term for describing contemporary patterns of sense‐making on gender, making the case for continuing research on postfeminist sensibility in the areas of digital cultures, a transformative imperative that includes the mind as well as the body, transnational postfeminism, and new forms of feminist activism. We conclude that such work would benefit from considering the ways that different technologies mediate the ideas and practices associated with postfeminist sensibility.     

My body or my mind: The impact of state and trait objectification on women's cognitive resources

Objectification theory posits that as a result of pervasive sexual objectification of the female body in American culture, women are socialized to take an observers' perspective towards the self, resulting in self‐objectification. This tendency, combined with an objectifying context, is hypothesized to increase cognitive load, thereby impairing performance. Two experiments tested this hypothesis by investigating the joint impact of trait and state objectification on cognitive load among women. Results of the first experiment showed longer response latencies on a Letter Number Sequencing task, specifically among women high in trait self‐objectification (TSO), in a highly objectifying condition. The second experiment replicated results from the first while also exploring possible correlates of the effects. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the properties of cognitive modules

Summary This paper evaluates the properties of cognitive modules and central systems as defined by Fodor (1983) against a set of empirical data from the domain of language processing. On the basis of results from normal and pathological language behavior the Fodorian dichotomy between domain-specific input systems and general central systems is rejected. Instead a model of cognitive processes is proposed which assumes three qualitative different types of system: a general system similar to that defined by Fodor, a domain-specific system that represents knowledge in procedural form, called input system, and a domain-specific system that respresents knowledge in declarative form and serves as an interface between the input system and the central system. These interface systems represent the same knowledge domain as their corresponding input systems, but in a different format. As the representational format of these interface systems is declarative, it allows for direct communication with the central system whose representational format is propositional by definition.     

Spirituality,spiritual sensibility and human growth

While notions of spirituality, spiritual experience and spiritual development seem much neglected in the literature of modern analytical philosophy, such terminology continues to be current in both common usage and religious contexts. This author has previously taken issue with some recent attempts to develop (educational and other professional) conceptions of spirituality and spiritual experience as substantially independent of religious attachment. Notwithstanding this, the present paper considers whether such a ‘religiously-untethered’ notion of spirituality, spiritual experience or sensibility might yet be sustainable in terms of two key criteria: (1) as a capacity for non-instrumental perspectives on, or interpretations of, the world of ordinary experience; and (2) as a corresponding capacity to identify goals and values that transcend or are not reducible to the meeting of immediate natural or material—either individual or social—needs.     

On resolving conflicting views of cognitive conflict

F. B. Murray's (Developmental Review, 1983, 3, 54–61) conclusion that a theoretically ambiguous relationship exists between cognitive conflict and Piaget's notion of equilibration was considered. It was suggested that theoretical clarity can be achieved if a distinction is drawn between conflict induction (disequilibrium) and conflict resolution (equilibration). Murray's suggestion that in Piaget's theory internal (cognitive) conflict can be mentally created was disputed. G. N. Cantor's (Developmental Review, 1983, 3, 39–53) concerns about the adequacy of the measures of internal conflict in B. J. Zimmerman & D. E. Blom's (Developmental Review, 1983, 3, 18–38) study due to their independence from external conflict manipulations was discussed. We agreed with Cantor that such findings obviate direct disconfirmation of an internal conflict construct; however, we suggested that evidence of conservation learning in the absence of either external or internal conflict renders Piaget's account less tenable.     

Cognitive functions, bodily sensibility and the brain

Body representations traverse the whole of the brain. They provide vital sources of information for every facet of an animal’s behavior, and such direct neural connectivity of visceral input throughout the nervous system demonstrates just how strongly cognitive systems are linked to bodily representations. At each level of the neural axis there are visceral appraisal systems that are integral in the organization of action. Cognition is not one side of a divide and viscera the other, with action merely a reflexive outcome. There is no divide between cognition and bodily functions once the brain is involved. Cognitive mechanisms that permeate neural function are a cardinal piece of biological function and adaptation.     

Touching my face with my supernumerary hand: a cheeky illusion

A self-touch paradigm elicits a surprising illusion. With the participant's eyes closed, the examiner guides the participant's right index finger to administer strokes and taps to the right side of the participant's face. At the same time, the examiner strokes and taps the corresponding location on the left side of the participant's face. Although the participant administered touch to only the right side of the face, this paradigm elicited the illusion of self-touch to both sides of the face, and the illusion often implicated a third, disconnected or disembodied, hand. We propose an explanation, and draw parallels with the phenomenon of supernumerary phantom limb.