Will the real Charles Fried please stand up?

In response to the preceding commentary by Jerry Menikoff in this issue of the Journal, the authors argue that Fried's central concern is not that randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are conducted without consent, but rather that various aspects of the design and conduct of RCTs are in tension with physicians' duties of personal care to their patients. Although Fried does argue that the existence of equipoise cannot justify failure to obtain consent from research subjects, informed consent by itself does not supplant ill subjects' rights to personalized judgment and care embodied in Fried's equipoise.     

Will the real grandmother please stand up? The psychological reality of dual meaning representations

Two types of meaning representation are described, symptom and criterion, and it is argued that both have psychological status in mental representations of kinship terms. Certain symptoms, such as old age and biofocals for grandmothers, are likely indicators of grandmotherhood, but they do not reliably pick out all positive instances, nor do they indicate negative ones. Criteria specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for grandmotherhood: having a grandchild. The psychological reality of these two representations was demonstrated by asking children and adults to select kin-term exemplars from pictures in which both age and reciprocal kin symptoms are displayed, and to justify their selections. In both tasks, there was change with age away from using typical age as the sole basis for performance; older subjects selected pictures displaying reciprocal kin, and justified their choices by referring to the criterion. More important, at each age level, there was evidence for dual representation: Even subjects who selected pictures based on the age symptom often gave criterial justifications, and subjects who selected pictures based on the reciprocal kin symptom still preferred pictures displaying age symptoms in addition to the reciprocal kin.     

Will moral outrage stand up?: Distinguishing among emotional reactions to a moral violation

Moral outrage—anger at violation of a moral standard—is claimed to be a prevalent and powerful moral emotion. However, evidence for moral outrage has been compromised by failure to distinguish it from personal anger—anger at harm to self—felt by victims of a moral violation. Although it does not seem possible to distinguish these two forms of anger by measurement, it is possible to do so by experimental manipulation of their distinct eliciting conditions. Extending previous research, the current study manipulated how a victim (self vs. stranger) was excluded (fairly vs. unfairly) from a favorable experience. Reported anger and behavioral retribution provided evidence of personal anger and revenge, not of moral outrage. These findings suggest that the prevalence and power of moral outrage has been exaggerated. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modularity and attention: Is the binding problem real?

Abstract

Van der Heijden rejects the feature integration theory of visual attention (Treisman, 1988, 1993; Treisman & Gelade, 1980) and proposes instead a theory relating modularity in the visual system to selection for action. His positive proposals about the relations between visual processing, intention, and selection for action are interesting, but I do not believe they are incompatible with my theory. In this paper I will focus on and question his arguments about the binding problem and the role of attention in visual perception. Van der Heijden attacks two claims that are fundamental to my theory: (1) the idea that modularity gives rise to a “binding problem” (the need to specify which of the features present characterize any particular object), and (2) the more general idea that there are limits to capacity at the level of perceptual processing. I will argue that he is wrong to reject the two claims, that the binding problem is a real one, for his model as for others, and that his account is more similar to mine than he appears to realize.     

Empirically Supported Therapies and Therapy Relationships: What are the Serious Problems and Plausible Alternatives?

Task forces have identified practice guidelines based upon empirically supported therapies and therapy relationships. A case is made for (a) the serious problems in and (b) the plausible alternatives to, the general strategy underlying the task forces. The invitation is to address and to solve the serious problems, and to give serious consideration to the plausible alternatives.     

Will the most informative object stand? Determining the impact of structural context on informativeness judgements

A fundamental unsolved problem in the cognitive sciences concerns why, how, and to what extent humans judge object stimuli as conveying different amounts of information. Central to this problem is how the notion of informativeness is conceptualised by humans in the first place. In this paper, we investigate this question from the standpoint of how the structure of categories of objects influences informativeness judgements about their members. Results from our two experiments show that the structural or relational context surrounding single-object cues from a categorical stimulus largely determines such informativeness judgements. Moreover, we found that object cues elicit absolute magnitude judgements about their associated concept that are not consistent with the prototype interpretation of the concept. We were able to account for over 90% of the variance in the data from our two judgement experiments with a general theory and measure of information referred to as Representational Information.     

Stopping points: ‘I’, immunity and the real guarantee

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to bring out exactly what makes first-personal (and more generally indexical and demonstrative) contents special, by showing that they perform a distinctive cognitive function. Namely, they are stopping points of inquiry. First, I articulate this idea and then I use it to clear the ground from a troublesome conflation. That is, the conflation of this particular function all first-person thoughts have with the property of immunity to error through misidentification, which only some I-thoughts enjoy. Afterward, I show the implications of this idea for a theory of first-person content and of immunity to error though misidentification. I then make some comparisons with Pryor’s notion of wh-misidentification and immunity thereof and with Cappelen and Dever’s position on immunity to error through misidentification and show why they are defective.     

The hollow-face illusion: object-specific knowledge, general assumptions or properties of the stimulus?

The hollow-face illusion, in which a mask appears as a convex face, is a powerful example of binocular depth inversion occurring with a real object under a wide range of viewing conditions. Explanations of the illusion are reviewed and six experiments reported. In experiment 1 the detrimental effect of figural inversion, evidence for the importance of familiarity, was found for other oriented objects. The inversion effect held for masks lit from the side (experiment 2). The illusion was stronger for a mask rotated by 90 degrees lit from its forehead than from its chin, suggesting that familiar patterns of shading enhance the illusion (experiment 2). There were no effects of light source visibility or any left/right asymmetry (experiment 3). In experiments 4-6 we used a 'virtual' hollow face, with illusion strength quantified by the proportion of noise texture needed to eliminate the illusion. Adding characteristic surface colour enhanced the illusion, consistent with the familiar face pigmentation outweighing additional bottom-up cues (experiment 4). There was no difference between perspective and orthographic projection. Photographic negation reduced, but did not eliminate, the illusion, suggesting shading is important but not essential (experiment 5). Absolute depth was not critical, although a shallower mask was given less extreme convexity ratings (experiment 6). We argue that the illusion arises owing to a convexity preference when the raw data have ambiguous interpretations. However, using a familiar object with typical orientation, shading, and pigmentation greatly enhances the effect.     

Adolescent Suicidality: Who Will Ideate,Who Will Act?

Responses to the 1999 Youth Risk Behavior Survey including suicide ideation, attempt, medically treated attempt, and six problem behaviors were analysed. Youth across the spectrum ideated. Overwhelmingly, the 17% of youth with more than three problem behaviors were the youth who acted; they accounted for 60% of medically treated suicidal acts. Compared to adolescents with zero problem behaviors, the odds of a medically treated suicide attempt were 2.3 times greater among respondents with one, 8.8 with two, 18.3 with three, 30.8 with four, 50.0 with five, and 227.3 with six. A count of problem behaviors offers a reliable way to identify suicide risk.     

Gazzaniga,Michael S., Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain

A review, with reflections, of Michael S. Gazzaniga's (2011) book, Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain. Gazzaniga, a distinguished neuroscientist, wishes to connect contemporary understandings of the functioning of the human brain to the proper functioning of the American courtroom. What effect, if any, should these current understandings (and current technologies) have on legal conceptions of personal responsibility, guilt, and punishment? If, as many neuroscientists hold, the functioning of the brain wholly determines the functioning of the mind, can people rightly be held responsible for their actions? Gazzaniga argues that they can.     

Barely legal: Is attraction and estimated age of young female faces disrupted by alcohol use,make up,and the sex of the observer?

One ‘reasonable ground’ for unlawful sex with a minor is mistaken age. Alcohol consumption and make‐up are often deemed further influences on impaired perception. Two hundred and forty persons in bars and cafes rated the attractiveness of composite faces of immature and mature females with and without additional make‐up, alcohol users having their concurrent blood–alcohol level measured using a breathalyser. A non‐sex‐specific preference for immature faces over sexually mature faces was found. Alcohol and make‐up did not inflate attractiveness ratings in immature faces. While alcohol consumption significantly inflated attractiveness ratings for participants viewing made‐up sexually mature faces, greater alcohol consumption itself did not lead to overestimation of age. Although alcohol limited the processing of maturity cues in female observers, it had no effect on the age perceptions of males viewing female faces, suggesting male mate preferences are not easily disrupted. Participants consistently overestimated the age of sexually immature‐ and sexually mature‐faces by an average of 3.5 years. Our study suggests that even heavy alcohol consumption does not interfere with age‐perception tasks in men, so is not of itself an excuse for apparent mistaken age in cases of unlawful sex with a minor.     

Self‐Regulation and the Problem of Human Autonomy: Does Psychology Need Choice,Self‐Determination,and Will?

The term autonomy literally refers to regulation by the self. Its opposite, heteronomy, refers to controlled regulation, or regulation that occurs without self-endorsement. At a time when philosophers and economists are increasingly detailing the nature of autonomy and recognizing its social and practical significance, many psychologists are questioning the reality and import of autonomy and closely related phenomena such as will, choice, and freedom. Using the framework of self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), we review research concerning the benefits of autonomous versus controlled regulation for goal performance, persistence, affective experience, quality of relationships, and well-being across domains and cultures. We also address some of the controversies and terminological issues surrounding the construct of autonomy, including critiques of autonomy by biological reductionists, cultural relativists, and behaviorists. We conclude that there is a universal and cross-developmental value to autonomous regulation when the construct is understood in an exacting way.