What's outside the black box?: The status of behavioral outcomes in neuroscience research

Kievit et al.'s target paper exemplifies a trend in recent years in psychology and neuroscience to focus on internal mental and neural processes without integrating actual behavior. We discuss the theoretical status of behavior in the context of their model, and present an extension of the model that explicitly includes behavior. Several theoretical and methodological issues relevant to integrating behavior into the model are considered, particularly the distinction between behavior as measured in the laboratory along with neural and psychological processes (proximal behavior) and behavior as measured in situ as part of ongoing daily experience (distal behavior). We conclude by describing several studies that integrate neural, psychological, and behavioral indicators and discuss how these kinds of studies can facilitate a better understanding of behavior and contribute to theory development.     

What are the phenomena of physics?

Depending on different positions in the debate on scientific realism, there are various accounts of the phenomena of physics. For scientific realists like Bogen and Woodward, phenomena are matters of fact in nature, i.e., the effects explained and predicted by physical theories. For empiricists like van Fraassen, the phenomena of physics are the appearances observed or perceived by sensory experience. Constructivists, however, regard the phenomena of physics as artificial structures generated by experimental and mathematical methods. My paper investigates the historical background of these different meanings of “phenomenon” in the traditions of physics and philosophy. In particular, I discuss Newton’s account of the phenomena and Bohr’s view of quantum phenomena, their relation to the philosophical discussion, and to data and evidence in current particle physics and quantum optics.     

What are the objects of perceptual consciousness?

Four answers to the title question are critically reviewed. (a) The first answer proposes that we perceive our brain events, certain occurrences in our brain that appear to us as parts of the environment. (b) Gestalt psychology distinguishes the phenomenal from the physical and proposes that we always perceive some aspect of our own phenomenal world--which is isomorphic but not identical to certain of our brain events. (c) J. J. Gibson held that our perceptual experiences are registrations of properties of the external environment--which is, therefore, perceived directly (i.e., without experiencing anything else). (d) The fourth answer comprehends perceptual experience to be a qualitative form of noninferential awareness of the apparent properties of specific environmental things. It differs from Gibson's answer in several respects, including the claim that some aspect of the external world appears to us whenever we have perceptual experience.     

What are the positive consequences of illness?

Abstract

Fifty five people, either currently sick or having recovered from their illness, were recruited if they reported positive consequences of illness. They were questioned about their experiences of illness, 41 by semi-structured interview and 14 by open-ended questionnaire and responses were classified into 17 categories. The categories were similar but slightly more extensive than previous accounts of positive consequences reported in the literature. The content of the interviews and questionnaires was used to construct a 66 item questionnaire about positive consequences of illness which was then completed by 97 patients. A principal components analysis indicated a large first factor accounting for 27% of the variance. Endorsement of items varied between 87% and zero for chronic lung disease patients attending pulmonary rehabilitation. However, all patients endorsed at least one item and the median number of items endorsed was 31. Positive consequences of illness are highly varied and more common than often realised, and this has implications for the concept and measurement of quality of life.     

Coping and defence mechanisms: What are we assessing?

The present research study addresses the disparity between theoretical considerations and empirical evidence regarding the relationships between coping strategies and defence mechanisms. Self‐reported measures of coping and defences were administered to a Romanian adult sample (N = 542; 74.53% female, mean age = 31.28). Using structural equation modelling, models that assumed independence between coping and defences were compared with models that assumed the existence of relationships between the two concepts. Findings identified strong relationships between coping and defences, indicating large common variance between the two concepts. Furthermore, results suggested that coping and defences can be classified into two independent types of adaptation processes. Results of this research study suggested that coping and defences are facets of common adaptation processes.     

What are we frightened of?

I am concerned to understand that relation to a situation which we call fearing it. Some say this cannot be done: it is a brute fact about us that we fear certain things and we understand another's fear when we see that he confronts a situation of this sort (a basic fear object) or one which he understandably associates with this sort. In Section I, I argue that being associated with a basic fear object will not usefully explain a current fear. In Section II, I argue that the obvious candidates for being basic fears will not do the required work. The notion should be rejected. I then argue that to fear an object is to take it as exhibiting one's lack of control and I proceed to describe the nature and content of this notion.     

Exploring the black box of the contingent reward leadership–performance relationship: The role of perceived justice and emotional exhaustion

Using data collected from three different sources (N = 294), we examined a model in which perceived organizational justice (distributive, procedural, and interactional) and emotional exhaustion mediate the relationship between contingent reward leadership (CRL) and two performance indicators, namely organizational citizenship behaviours (OCB) and absenteeism. We found that procedural justice mediates the negative relationship between CRL and emotional exhaustion while controlling for work overload and transformational leadership. We also found that emotional exhaustion plays a mediating role in the relationship between two dimensions of justice (procedural and interactional) and both OCB and absenteeism. Interactional justice and distributive justice were also directly linked to OCB. Implications of these findings for research on leadership, psychological health, and organizational justice are discussed.     

What kind of evaluative states are emotions? The attitudinal theory vs. the perceptual theory of emotions

This paper argues that Deonna and Teroni's attitudinal theory of emotions faces two serious problems. The first is that their master argument fails to establish the central tenet of the theory, namely, that the formal objects of emotions do not feature in the content of emotions. The second is that the attitudinal theory itself is vulnerable to a dilemma. By pointing out these problems, our paper provides indirect support to the main competitor of the attitudinal theory, namely, the perceptual theory of emotions.     

Pandora's box reopened? The assessment of social skills

Social skills are viewed as an organizing principle for relating a variety of superficially dissimilar behaviors under a single megaconstruct. The underlying theme of this article is that since social skills are a megaconstruct we must be constantly vigilant lest we begin to regard them as a static, invariant dispositional-trait-like unit. Within this context, various theoretical-definitional issues are discussed and reduction of these issues is urged for any particular assessment task if adequate assessment is to be achieved. Social skills are viewed as response capabilities inferred from performance. Since performance is influenced by other parameters (e.g., cognitive factors — emotional states), these other parameters may need to be measured depending on the assessment task. The advantages and disadvantages of both molar unit and molecular unit recording of social skills are discussed. It is concluded that neither type of unit should be regarded as the proper measurement unit. The proper unit size is an empirical question which may differ as a function of the assessment task. An analogy is provided regarding the assessment of the megaconstruct of intelligence. It is hoped that we can profit from an examination of the strategies employed in intellectual assessment. Behavior assessors are urged to refamiliarize themselves with various psychometric theories and strategies to increase their methodological sophistication with respect to the assessment of social skills.     

What comes out of the consulting-room? The reporting of clinical material

The author addresses the difficulties inherent in reporting clinical material. These fall into two main categories, the ethical problem of upholding confidentiality, and the technical problems which include the definition of analytical data, and the numerous ways in which truth can be distorted in the analytic context. It is advocated that consent be obtained from patients before publishing their material. It is also suggested that clinical reports should contain enough detail of the analytic interaction, including the analyst's thoughts and feelings, to convey the analytic process, and to enable the listener/reader to consider the evidence for himself and to draw his own conclusions. It is concluded that an analyst's anxiety about exposing a patient might obscure an anxiety about exposing himself.     

What are the shapes of response time distributions in visual search?

Many visual search experiments measure response time (RT) as their primary dependent variable. Analyses typically focus on mean (or median) RT. However, given enough data, the RT distribution can be a rich source of information. For this paper, we collected about 500 trials per cell per observer for both target-present and target-absent displays in each of three classic search tasks: feature search, with the target defined by color; conjunction search, with the target defined by both color and orientation; and spatial configuration search for a 2 among distractor 5s. This large data set allows us to characterize the RT distributions in detail. We present the raw RT distributions and fit several psychologically motivated functions (ex-Gaussian, ex-Wald, Gamma, and Weibull) to the data. We analyze and interpret parameter trends from these four functions within the context of theories of visual search.     

What are the Causes of the Attention Deficits Observed in Children with Dyslexia?

Dyslexic children often show attention problems at school, but it is not clear the nature of their impairments. The aim of this study was to analyze whether verbal processing artefacts could mediate attention deficits. Forty-seven children (22 dyslexics and 25 controls), aged between 7 to 12, were assessed through an ADHD rating scale and a battery of tasks tapping different attentional processes (selective, sustained, executive, and orienting). Phonological measures were used as covariates. Children with dyslexia showed attentional impairments (using both rating scales and neuropsychological tasks); however their performance was significantly affected by phonological performance. In conclusion, dyslexics may be inattentive at school because they are slow processors, in particular when they are presented with verbal stimuli.