Irma--Emma--Martha--Anna. Some additional comments on presentations by K. R. Eissler and H. Thom?

The author re-examines the significance of the Emma-Eckstein-episode and the Irma-dream with their implications for the theory of psychoanalysis. He follows Eissler and contradicts Schur in his argument that the identity of Irma with Emma cannot be proven and is, in any case, improbable. Neither the proof nor the refutation of this identity are of vital significance for psychoanalytic theory, but only for the suppression of dynamic psychiatry in favour of biological psychiatry.     

Do we need a new theory of truthmaking? Some comments on Disjunction Thesis, Conjunction Thesis, Entailment Principle and explanation

In the paper we discuss criticisms against David Armstrong’s general theory of truthmaking by Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, Peter Schulte and Benjamin Schnieder, and conclude that Armstrong’s theory survives these criticisms. Special attention is given to the problems concerning Entailment Principle, Conjunction Thesis, Disjunction Thesis and to the notion of explanation.     

Are the Effects of Height on Well-Being a Tall Tale?

Numerous papers have documented a positive association between height and good physical health and also with good economic outcomes such as earnings. A smaller number have argued for an association with well-being. In this paper, the SHARE survey of over 50 year olds in Europe is used to analyse whether individuals’ height is associated with higher or lower levels of life-satisfaction using ordered probit estimation. In simple models there is a positive, concave relationship between height and life satisfaction. However it is shown that the results are quite sensitive to the inclusion of controls reflecting demographics and, in particular, human capital and health status. Where effects do exist, it is predominantly at low to medium levels of height. That is there is a penalty, in well-being terms, to being short but not necessarily a benefit to being tall. There is also evidence of heterogeneity across countries with the effects being best determined in France.     

Big Five personality traits: Are they really important for the subjective well‐being of Indians?

This study empirically examined the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and subjective well‐being (SWB) in India. SWB variables used were life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect. A total of 183 participants in the age range 30–40 years from Pune, India, completed the personality and SWB measures. Backward stepwise regression analysis showed that the Big Five traits accounted for 17% of the variance in life satisfaction, 35% variance in positive affect and 28% variance in negative affect. Conscientiousness emerged as the strongest predictor of life satisfaction. In line with the earlier research findings, neuroticism and extraversion were found to predict negative affect and positive affect, respectively. Neither openness to experience nor agreeableness contributed to SWB. The research emphasises the need to revisit the association between personality and SWB across different cultures, especially non‐western cultures.     

Are effects of spelling-to-sound irregularity on pronunciation latency confounded by stimulus familiarity?

Summary This article reports subjective experiential familiarity ratings for the experimental items used by Parkin, McMullen, and Graystone (1986). These data were used to examine the possibility that the regularity effects obtained when measuring pronunciation latencies to these materials arose from a confounding of familiarity. It was shown that Parkin et al.'s materials were controlled along the dimension of subjective familiarity. Correlational analyses showed that there was a significant relationship between familiarity and pronunciation latency — the more familiar a word the shorter the latency. Analysis of co-variance revealed that the regularity effects obtained by Parkin et al. remained when the effects of familiarity on latency were partialled out. It is concluded that effects of spelling-to-sound regularity are not due to unintentional confounding of stimulus familiarity.     

Are pets a healthy pleasure? the influence of pets on blood pressure

Pet owners often describe their pets as important and cherished family members who offer solace in times of stress. This article considers evidence suggesting that pets influence human blood pressure. Studies on this topic extend current research testing the hypothesis that having other people around in stressful times can buffer the negative consequences of stress. The existing data suggest that people perceive pets as important, supportive parts of their lives and that the presence of a pet is associated with significant cardiovascular benefits, among both people with normal blood pressure and those with high blood pressure. Studies about pets and blood pressure have examined both naturally occurring and randomly assigned pet ownership but are limited by their focus on responses to short-term, acute stress. Future prospective studies should explore the influence of pets on people at risk for cardiovascular disease and also consider explanatory mechanisms for the pet effect.     

Effects of concerns about pathogens on conservatism and anti-fat prejudice: are they mediated by moral intuitions?

Threat perceptions are associated with politically conservative attitudes. Research has also found that specific forms of threat perception (e.g., concerns about pathogens) are associated with functional reactions (e.g., anti-fat prejudice). Recently, moral intuitions have been implicated in explaining political orientation: Liberals tend to place greater weight on "individualizing foundations" (justice and care concerns) in particular, whereas conservatives tend to place high weight on "binding foundations" (loyalty, respect, and purity concerns) as well. A recent study attempted to integrate the above strands of research by showing that the effect of threat perceptions on conservatism is mediated by a tendency to place relatively greater weight on the binding foundations. The present study was intended to replicate and extend past research by testing (a) whether concerns about pathogens predict conservatism and anti-fat prejudice and (b) whether those effects are mediated by a tendency to place relatively greater weight on the binding foundations.     

Are we puppets on a string? The contextual meaning of unconscious expressive cues

In three studies, the authors show that unconscious expressive cues can lead to opposite evaluations, depending on the context in which they occur. In Study 1, brow (vs. cheek) tension reduced preferences in an easy judgment context but increased preferences in a difficult context. In Study 2, head shaking (vs. nodding) either increased or decreased prosocial affect depending on the context in which the judged character was presented. In Study 3, a subliminal smile (vs. frown) led to higher self-ratings of performance when paired with one's own actions but to lower self-ratings of performance when paired with a competitor's actions. Together, these results suggest that the meaning of unconscious expressive cues is not fixed.     

Are People Successful at Learning Sequences of Actions on a Perceptual Matching Task?

We report the results of an experiment in which human subjects were trained to perform a perceptual matching task. Subjects were asked to manipulate comparison objects until they matched target objects using the fewest manipulations possible. An unusual feature of the experimental task is that efficient performance requires an understanding of the hidden or latent causal structure governing the relationships between actions and perceptual outcomes. We use two benchmarks to evaluate the quality of subjects' learning. One benchmark is based on optimal performance as calculated by a dynamic programming procedure. The other is based on an adaptive computational agent that uses a reinforcement-learning method known as Q-learning to learn to perform the task. Our analyses suggest that subjects were successful learners. In particular, they learned to perform the perceptual matching task in a near-optimal manner (i.e., using a small number of manipulations) at the end of training. Subjects were able to achieve near-optimal performance because they learned, at least partially, the causal structure underlying the task. In addition, subjects' performances were broadly consistent with those of model-based reinforcement-learning agents that built and used internal models of how their actions influenced the external environment. We hypothesize that people will achieve near-optimal performances on tasks requiring sequences of action-especially sensorimotor tasks with underlying latent causal structures-when they can detect the effects of their actions on the environment, and when they can represent and reason about these effects using an internal mental model.     

Distraction of Counting by the Meaning of Background Speech: Are Spatial Memory Demands a Prerequisite?

This paper reexamines the effects of background speech on counting. Previous studies have shown that background sound disrupts counting in comparison with silence, but the magnitude of disruption is no larger for spoken numbers compared with that for non‐number speech (there is no effect of the meaning of background speech). The typical task used previously has been to count the number of sequentially presented visual events. We replicated the general finding in Experiment 1—that there is no effect of the meaning of background speech—in the context of the classic sequence counting task. In Experiment 2, the task was changed by having to‐be‐counted dots presented simultaneously and randomly across the visual field. Here, an effect attributable to the meaning of background speech emerged. Background speech that is similar in meaning to the focal task process contributes to the magnitude of disruption, but apparently only when spatial memory processes are a task prerequisite. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are all letters really processed equally and in parallel? Further evidence of a robust first letter advantage

This present study examined accuracy and response latency of letter processing as a function of position within a horizontal array. In a series of 4 Experiments, target-strings were briefly (33 ms for Experiments 1 to 3, 83 ms for Experiment 4) displayed and both forward and backward masked. Participants then made a two alternative forced choice. The two alternative responses differed just in one element of the string, and position of mismatch was systematically manipulated. In Experiment 1, words of different lengths (from 3 to 6 letters) were presented in separate blocks. Across different lengths, there was a robust advantage in performance when the alternative response was different for the letter occurring at the first position, compared to when the difference occurred at any other position. Experiment 2 replicated this finding with the same materials used in Experiment 1, but with words of different lengths randomly intermixed within blocks. Experiment 3 provided evidence of the first position advantage with legal nonwords and strings of consonants, but did not provide any first position advantage for non-alphabetic symbols. The lack of a first position advantage for symbols was replicated in Experiment 4, where target-strings were displayed for a longer duration (83 ms). Taken together these results suggest that the first position advantage is a phenomenon that occurs specifically and selectively for letters, independent of lexical constraints. We argue that the results are consistent with models that assume a processing advantage for coding letters in the first position, and are inconsistent with the commonly held assumption in visual word recognition models that letters are equally processed in parallel independent of letter position.     

Are effects of emotion expression on trait impressions mediated by babyfaceness? Evidence from connectionist modeling

Two studies provided evidence that bolsters the Marsh, Adams, and Kleck hypothesis that the morphology of certain emotion expressions reflects an evolved adaptation to mimic babies or mature adults. Study 1 found differences in emotion expressions' resemblance to babies using objective indices of babyfaceness provided by connectionist models that are impervious to overlapping cultural stereotypes about babies and the emotions. Study 2 not only replicated parallels between impressions of certain emotions and babies versus adults but also showed that objective indices of babyfaceness partially mediated impressions of the emotion expressions. babyface effects were independent of strong effects of attractiveness, and babyfaceness did not mediate impressions of happy expressions, to which the evolutionary hypothesis would not apply.     

Comment on John Yolton's ‘Is There a History of Philosophy? Some difficulties and suggestions’

In this comment on John Yolton's ‘Is There a History of Philosophy?’ (Yolton, 1985) I review his account of the development during the 17th to 19th centuries of a common sense of the range of philosophical problems and of the canon of philosophical works. I suggest that his account may be read in light of Rorty's four genres of historiography (Rorty, 1984). I criticize his view of the place of the history of philosophy in philosophy as too timid, though correct as far as it goes. I then suggest, but do not attempt to establish, a bolder thesis. Finally, I raise some doubts about the adequacy of Yolton's reading of Descartes and Berkeley set out in two of his ‘Puzzlements.’ The ‘Puzzlements’ themselves are supposed to illustrate typical misreading of major figures in the history of philosophy.     

Is disability really an obstacle to success? Impact of a disability simulation on motivation and performance

In Western societies, statistics on the integration of people with disabilities into the labor market consistently indicate that this category of workers faces serious discrimination. Research has evidenced negative perceptions about their occupational skills, despite positive beliefs about their personal qualities. The main purpose of this study was to show how these subjective beliefs about disability can shape performance (speed and accuracy, Studies 1, 3, and 4) and self‐reported motivation (Studies 2, 3, and 4) of able‐bodied persons simulating a disability. Participants were 281 French students without disabilities who carried out a task either with or without a simulated disability. This simulated disability constituted an actual handicap to perform the task (Studies 1 and 2) or not (Studies 3 and 4). The first three studies were focused on cognitive abilities, whereas Study 4 introduced a job interview component. Results consistently showed that participants in the simulated disability situation completed the task more accurately than controls, but took more time to do so. Higher degrees of motivation and perseverance are found for participants in the simulated disability situation, except in a job interview setting. These results are important for understanding how subjective beliefs about persons with disabilities can constitute objective barriers to social participation, and more specifically, to access to the labor market.