New knowledge for old credences: Asymmetric information search about in-group and out-group members

Three experiments examined how people gather information on in-group and out-group members. Previous studies have revealed that category-based expectancies bias the hypothesis-testing process towards confirmation through the use of asymmetric-confirming questions (which are queries where the replies supporting the prior expectancies are more informative than those falsifying them). However, to date there is no empirical investigation of the use of such a question-asking strategy in an intergroup context. In the present studies, participants were asked to produce (Study 1) or to choose (Studies 2 and 3) questions in order to investigate the presence of various traits in an in-group or an out-group member. Traits were manipulated by valence and typicality. The results revealed that category-based expectancies do not always lead to asymmetric-confirming testing: whereas participants tended to ask questions that confirmed positive in-group and negative out-group stereotypical attributes, they used a more symmetric strategy when testing for the presence of negative in-group or positive out-group traits. Moreover, Study 3 also revealed a moderation effect of in-group identification. The findings point to the role played by motivational factors associated with preserving a positive social identity. Possible consequences of these hypothesis-testing processes in preserving a positive social identity for intergroup relations are discussed.     

Synaesthesia: the prevalence of atypical cross-modal experiences

Sensory and cognitive mechanisms allow stimuli to be perceived with properties relating to sight, sound, touch, etc, and ensure, for example, that visual properties are perceived as visual experiences, rather than sounds, tastes, smells, etc. Theories of normal development can be informed by cases where this modularity breaks down, in a condition known as synaesthesia. Conventional wisdom has held that this occurs extremely rarely (0.05% of births) and affects women more than men. Here we present the first test of synaesthesia prevalence with sampling that does not rely on self-referral, and which uses objective tests to establish genuineness. We show that (a) the prevalence of synaesthesia is 88 times higher than previously assumed, (b) the most common variant is coloured days, (c) the most studied variant (grapheme-colour synaesthesia)--previously believed most common--is prevalent at 1%, and (d) there is no strong asymmetry in the distribution of synaesthesia across the sexes. Hence, we suggest that female biases reported earlier likely arose from (or were exaggerated by) sex differences in self-disclosure.     

Coloured Vowels: Wittgenstein on Synaesthesia and Secondary Meaning

The aim of this article is to give both a sustained interpretation of Wittgenstein’s obscure remarks on the experience of meaning of language, synthaesthesia and secondary use and to apply his insights to recent philosophical discussions about synthaesthesia. I argue that synthaesthesia and experience of meaning are conceptually related to aspect-seeing. The concept of aspect-seeing is not reducible to either seeing or imaging but involves a modified notion of experience. Likewise, synthaesthesia involves a modified notion of experience. In particular, the concept of synthaesthesia involves a secondary use of ‘experience’ and hence is intrinsically dependent on the primary use of language. Recent discussions tend to overlook this distinction between the primary and secondary use of language.     

Challenging the transcendental position: the holism of experience

Taking the problem of perception and illusion as a leading clue, this article presents a new phenomenological approach to perception and the world: “holism of experience.” It challenges not only Husserl’s transcendentalism, but also what remains of it in Heidegger’s early thought, on the grounds that it is committed to the skeptical inference: “Since we can always doubt any perception, we can always doubt perception as a whole.” The rejection of such an implicit inference leads to a relational paradigm of Being-in-the-World that differs from Heidegger’s on many points.     

Strategies in the information search process: interaction among task structure, knowledge, and source

The authors explored the information search strategies of 145 individuals in the predecisional stage. Decision-making participants selected pieces of information from a list including relevant and irrelevant data. The authors investigated the influence of the individual's knowledge and information source. In Experiment 1, the authors experimentally manipulated the information source reliability. The results revealed that participants tended to use a sequential strategy when the authors presented information as supplied by a reliable source. In Experiment 2, the authors analyzed the interaction between information source and the individuals' knowledge. When participants believed the source to be reliable, even knowledgeable participants adopted a strategy as sequential as that chosen by naive individuals. In Experiment 3, a mediational model corroborated the hypothesis that the search strategy affects the final judgment. The results were consistent with the constructivist framework, which emphasizes the role of individual, task, and context in the decision-making process.     

Looking and search measures of object knowledge in preschool children

The same preschoolers were tested on an observation task and a search task involving the invisible displacement of an object. In the observation task, children watched an object roll behind a screen from which protruded the top of a solid wall. Analyses revealed significantly longer looking to impossible than to possible outcomes in all children. In search, the child was allowed to retrieve the rolled object. Most 3-year-olds but significantly fewer 2.5-year-olds completed the search successfully. An unexpected sex difference was found, with boys outperforming girls. Search performance was not associated with observation measures. The findings indicate that children visually discriminate violations of solidity but that this sensitivity is not associated with successful search performance.     

Motion coherence and conjunction search: Implications for guided search theory

Feature integration theory has recently been revised with two proposals that visual conjunction search can be parallel under some circumstances—either because items with nontarget features are inhibited, or because items with target features are excited. We examined whether excitatory or inhibitory guidance controlled conjunction search for an X oscillating in one direction among Os oscillating in that direction and Xs oscillating in another. Search was affected by whether items oscillated in phase with each other, and it was exceptionally difficult when items with target motion moved out of phase with each otherand items with nontarget motion moved out of phase. The results suggest that conjunction search can be guided both by excitation of target features and by inhibition of nontarget features.     

Infants' search for visible objects: implications for the interpretation of early search errors

This study examined the error patterns of 9-month-old infants searching for hidden objects and objects that were visible within a container. Although errors occurred in both conditions, there were important differences between them. When the object was hidden, infants showed significant perseveration in that they searched more often at the object's previous hiding place than at a control location. When the object was visible, however, they made fewer errors and the errors they did make were as likely to be to the control location as to the previous hiding place. These results suggest that infants' errors in searching for a visible object reflect lapses of attention rather than systematic misunderstandings of objects or space and so are not incompatible with an information-processing account of early search.     

Phantom of consistency: Alain Badiou and Kantian transcendental idealism

Immanuel Kant is one of Alain Badiou’s principle philosophical enemies. Kant’s critical philosophy is anathema to Badiou not only because of the latter’s openly aired hatred of the motif of finitude so omnipresent in post-Kantian European intellectual traditions—Badiou blames Kant for inventing this motif—but also because of its idealism. For Badiou-the-materialist, as for any serious philosophical materialist writing in Kant’s wake, transcendental idealism must be dismantled and overcome. In his most recent works (especially 2006’s Logiques des mondes), Badiou attempts to invent a non-Kantian notion of the transcendental, a notion compatible with the basic tenets of materialism. However, from 1988’s Being and Event up through the present, Badiou’s oeuvre contains indications that he hasn’t managed fully to purge the traces of Kantian transcendental idealism that arguably continue to haunt his system—with these traces clustering around a concept Badiou christens “counting-for-one” (compter-pour-un). The result is that, in the end, Kant’s shadow still falls over Badiouian philosophy—this is despite Badiou’s admirable, sophisticated, and instructive attempts to step out from under it—thus calling into question this philosophy’s self-proclaimed status as materialist through and through.

Motion coherence and conjunction search: implications for guided search theory.

Feature integration theory has recently been revised with two proposals that visual conjunction search can be parallel under some circumstances--either because items with nontarget features are inhibited, or because items with target features are excited. We examined whether excitatory or inhibitory guidance controlled conjunction search for an X oscillating in one direction among Os oscillating in that direction and Xs oscillating in another. Search was affected by whether items oscillated in phase with each other, and it was exceptionally difficult when items with target motion moved out of phase with each other and items with nontarget motion moved out of phase. The results suggest that conjunction search can be guided both by excitation of target features and by inhibition of nontarget features.