How experienced phenomena relate to things themselves: Kant,Husserl, Hoche,and reflexive monism

What we normally think of as the “physical world” is also the world as experienced, that is, a world of appearances. Given this, what is the reality behind the appearances, and what might its relation be to consciousness and to constructive processes in the mind? According to Kant, the thing itself that brings about and supports these appearances is unknowable and we can never gain any understanding of how it brings such appearances about. Reflexive monism argues the opposite: the thing itself is knowable as are the processes that construct conscious appearances. Conscious appearances (empirical evidence) and the theories derived from them can represent what the world is really like, even though such empirical knowledge is partial, approximate and uncertain, and conscious appearances are species-specific constructions of the human mind. Drawing on the writings of Husserl, Hoche suggests that problems of knowledge, mind and consciousness are better understood in terms of a “pure noematic” phenomenology that avoids any reference to a “thing itself.” I argue that avoiding reference to a knowable reality (behind appearances) leads to more complex explanations with less explanatory value and counterintuitive conclusions—for example Hoche’s conclusion that consciousness is not part of nature. The critical realism adopted by reflexive monism appears to be more useful, as well as being consistent with science and common sense.     

Children's responses to meaningful pictures varying in diversity: exploration time vs. preference.

This investigation extends the study of children's response to stimulus complexity to meaningful pictorial material. The primary purpose was to compare the functions relating complexity to two different response variables: voluntary looking time vs. preference, considered as measures of an information-extraction as opposed to an aesthetic mode of response, respectively. A further interest was in possible age differences in each of these functions. The 192 subjects taken from Grades 1 to 8 were presented with two sets of stimuli: one taken from scenes of the physical environment scaled for diversity, the other representing constellations of postage stamps, varying from all identical to all different.In the case of the Environment set, the results gave support to the hypothesis that the two response measures relate differentially to diversity, with looking times increasing monotonically with diversity, whereas preference peaked in the middle of the diversity scale, falling off irregularly to either side; for the Stamp set the difference between the two functions emerged in attenuated form. Age differences for these functions were relatively slight, for the most part. The results are discussed in relation to theories (e.g., Dember and Earl's) postulating increases with experience in preference for complexity.     

How children remember neutral and emotional pictures: boundary extension in children's scene memories

Boundary extension is the tendency to remember more of a scene than was actually shown. The dominant interpretation of this memory illusion is that it originates from schemata that people construct when viewing a scene. Evidence of boundary extension has been obtained primarily with adult participants who remember neutral pictures. The current study addressed the developmental stability of this phenomenon. Therefore, we investigated whether children aged 10-12 years display boundary extension for neutral pictures. Moreover, we examined emotional scene memory. Eighty-seven children drew pictures from memory after they had seen either neutral or emotional pictures. Both their neutral and emotional drawings revealed boundary extension. Apparently, the schema construction that underlies boundary extension is a robust and ubiquitous process.     

Perceptual representations in false recognition and priming of pictures

Using a new procedure, we investigate whether imagination can induce false memory by creating a perceptual representation. Participants studied pictures and words with and without an imagery task and at test performed both a direct recognition test and an indirect perceptual identification test on pictorial stimuli. Corrected false recognition rates were 7% for pictures studied in word form (Experiment 1), 26% for pictures imagined once (Experiment 2), and 48% for pictures imagined multiple times (Experiment 3), although on the indirect test, no priming was found for these items. Furthermore, a perceptual/conceptual imagery manipulation did not affect the tendency to claim that imagined items had been studied as pictures (Experiment 4). These results suggest that the false memories reported on direct tests are not driven by perceptual representations.     

Development of the self-system: How children perceive their own and others' ideas about themselves

The purpose of this article is to present a model for the development of the self-system in which six concepts within and related to the self-system are distinguished as follows: Four intraindividual self-concepts involving the real and the ideal self-concepts, the perceived real concepts of others about the self, and the perceived ideal concepts or expectancies of others about the self and two environmental concepts involving the actual ideas of others about the child and the others' ideal concepts of or expectancies toward the child. The development and interrelationships among these concepts were studied with 204 children from six age groups (i.e., 6-, 8-, 10-, 12-, 14- and 16-year-olds) with respect to their fit. The intraindividual self-concepts of the children were assessed by means of a Repertory Grid procedure presented to the children. The environmental concepts were obtained by interviewing both parents. The results suggest that although adolescents believe that they do not fulfill their parents expectations, their parents are reasonably satisfied with the extent to which their children have met their ideal expectations.     

Thinking of things unseen: infants' use of language to update mental representations

One of the most distinctive characteristics of humans is the capacity to learn from what other people tell them. Often new information is provided about an entity that is not present, requiring incorporation of that information into one's mental representation of the absent object. Here we present evidence regarding the emergence of this vital ability. Nineteen- and 22-month-old infants first learned a name for a toy and later were told that the toy had undergone a change in state (it had become wet) while out of view. The 22-month-olds (but not the 19-month-olds) subsequently identified the toy solely on the basis of the property that they were told about but had never seen. Thus, before the end of their 2nd year, infants can use verbal information to update their representation of an absent object. This developmental advance inaugurates a uniquely human and immensely powerful form of learning about the world.     

Pupillary responses to pictures and descriptions of sex-stereotyped stimuli

An attempt was made to replicate Hess and Polt's (1960) report of sex differences in pupillary responses to sex-stereotyped pictures. Some methodological refinements were used that seem desirable for future studies. College men and women were either shown or told they would be shown pictures of a semi-nude man, a semi-nude woman, a baby, and a landscape. With resting pupil size as covariate, a three-factor analysis of covariance did not show sex differences in response to visually presented stimuli. Men responded more to verbal than visual mode of presentation and more than women to verbal stimuli. Contrary to previous results, men responded as much or more than women to verbal or visual presentation of baby stimuli. The verbal or anticipatory mode seems to be at least as sensitive as the visual and eliminates problems of control of visual materials.     

Authoritarianism and fear responses to pictures: The role of social differences

Authoritarianism can be defined as the covariation of authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism (Altemeyer, 1981). All three of these tendencies involve adherence to specific standards of behavior: standards that could be exposed to threat and disruption. This study is an investigation of the self‐reported fear of authoritarians in response to threats. A sample of 126 university students was exposed to a series of pictures of potentially threatening people and situations. In general, participants with high scores on authoritarianism were more fearful than participants with low scores. This result was found for both social threats (i.e., social differences, social disorder) and personal threats (i.e., animals, dangerous situations). The strongest association between authoritarianism and fear involved cases of social differences, defined as elements of a person's appearance or behavior that involve diversity or deviance from common social norms. Regression analyses also indicated that variation in authoritarianism could be best predicted by fear of social differences. Thus, these data suggest that authoritarians are relatively sensitive to threat, and particularly to threats involving the “outsider” who does not fit authoritarian standards of uniformity and order. The data are also consistent with recent research and theory that right‐wing ideology is at least partly motivated by threat and fear.     

从心理学的角度看“法轮功”的“向内找”

近年来,从社会学角度对“法轮功”的内容予以批判和揭露的文章很多,但从心理学角度对“法轮功”这一邪教现象予以分析和批判的研究并不多。本文由“法轮功”的亲身经历者从独特的心理学内省技术的独特视角对“法轮功”的“向内找”予以分析,揭露了李洪志是如何利用心理技术以修身养性之名来行精神控制之实。     

Perceptual closure and object identification: electrophysiological responses to incomplete pictures.

Event-related potentials were recorded during the naming of pictures of concrete objects. The pictures were presented at three levels of completeness: 10, 30, and 60%. The ERP waveforms were evaluated according to the level of picture completeness and the correctness of naming. A negative wave in the latency range of 250-550 ms was significantly more negative when the pictures were more incomplete, regardless of the correctness of response. This N400 wave is proposed as being related to hypotheses about the identity of the object. A late positive wave in the latency range of 550-650 ms followed the negativity, but only when the response was correct. This may reflect the subject's certainty about the perceptual analysis, a verification of the identity of the object. A slow parietal negativity lasting up to 2 sec was largest for the least complete picture. This therefore varied with the perceptual difficulty.     

Children's justifications of plants as living things between 5 and 7 years of age

Children do not recognize plants as living things before the age of 6. In order to consider plants as part of the biological domain, children have to inhibit motion as a mandatory characteristic of life and consider other properties as well. We designed a special animated task to help us study how children's explanations about plants change during preschool. This task contained pairs of items, with unexpectedly moving plants being contrasted with motionless animals and artefacts. Children were requested to compare these pairs and to answer “why” questions. Participants were 60 typically developing children aged 5, 6 and 7. Mention of the unexpected motion of plants increased with age, while biological justifications tended to be more frequent in older children for animals only. Functional justifications were hardly ever provided and only for plant–artefact pairs. These findings contribute to a better understanding of young children's conceptions of plants.     

There's something about obesity: culture, contagion, rationality, and children's responses to drinks "created" by obese children

Theories of the development of obesity stereotypes cannot easily explain the stigma associated with being obese. Evidence that important similarities exist between the symptoms of obesity and contagious illnesses, young children have "theories" of illnesses, and obesity stereotypes are among the earliest that children develop led to the hypothesis that children would find beverages purportedly created by obese children less tasteful and more memorable than beverages created by average weight children. After assignment to two story conditions in which a child became ill after eating an unfamiliar food, Caucasian-American and Chinese 7- and 10-year-olds sampled identically flavored "obese-created" and "average-created" beverages. Taste ratings were lower, ratings of the chances of feeling sick were higher, and memory was superior for obese-created drinks than for average-created drinks, particularly when the character in the story contracted a contagious illness and memory was scored for "gist." Finally, children often created the false memory that the story character was an obese beverage creator. The roles of contagion and magical beliefs are discussed, as are the rationality of children's responses and the relevance of the findings for theories of obesity stereotypes.     

Unconscious responses to threatening pictures: interactive effect of trait anxiety and social desirability on skin conductance responses

The purpose of the present study was to examine the role of trait anxiety and social desirability on skin conductance responses (SCRs) following exposure to masked and unmasked pictures in a non-clinical sample. The most prominent results were found with regard to masked pictures (i.e. subliminal). Higher levels of social desirability were associated with a decrease in SCRs to masked threat pictures (relative to neutral), whereas elevated levels of trait anxiety were associated with an increase in SCRs. This latter effect, however, was mainly seen among participants who simultaneously scored low on social desirability. These results were discussed in terms of trait anxiety (combined with lower social desirability scores) being associated with (i) enhanced autonomic responses to threatening information most evident at a pre-attentive level, that (ii) may potentially be a vulnerability marker for anxiety disturbances.     

Primacy of functional knowledge in semantic representations: the case of living and nonliving things

In 3 experiments, participants decided whether sensory and functional features were true of living and nonliving concepts. In Experiments 1 and 2, concepts were presented twice: test phase followed study phase after either 3 min (Experiment 1) or 3 s (Experiment 2). At test, concepts were paired with the same feature as that at study, or a different feature from either the same modality (within-modality priming) or another modality (cross-modality priming). In both experiments functional decisions were faster than sensory decisions for living and nonliving concepts. Whilst no semantic priming occurred between study and test in Experiment 1, the shorter study-test interval of Experiment 2 did lead to test phase semantic priming. Here there was greater within- than cross-modality priming for sensory decisions, but equivalent within- and cross-modality priming for functional decisions owing to significantly greater facilitation of functional decisions from prior sensory decisions than vice versa. Experiment 3 involved a single verification phase: For half the participants the feature name preceded the concept name, and for half the concept name preceded the feature name. The functional processing advantage persisted irrespective of presentation order. Results suggest that functional information is central to the representation of all concepts: Function is processed faster than sensory information and is activated obligatorily.