Eye movement in perception of another person's looking behavior.

Eye contact is a non-verbal behavior category of major concern in the study of social interaction. Within this category many behaviors are included which serve a wide range of functions. It was hypothesied that (1) one of the important stimulus properties that distinguish these behaviors is the movement pattern of the eye and (2) that people use different criteria to judge whether another person is looking at them, depending upon whether the other person is displaying a dynamic or static eye presentation. Data are presented to support these hypotheses.     

It’s one thing to rule them all and another thing to bind them

In this paper we offer a response to one argument in favour of Priority Monism, what Jonathan Schaffer calls the nomic argument for monism. We proceed in three stages. We begin by introducing Jonathan Schaffer’s Priority Monism and the nomic argument for that view. We then consider a response to the nomic argument that we presented in an earlier paper (Baron and Tallant in Philos Phenomenol Res 93:583–606, 2016). We show that this argument suffers from a flaw. We then go on to offer a different response to the nomic argument. The core idea is that the current laws of physics are not integrated in the manner that Schaffer requires to get the nomic argument for monism off the ground.

     

Thinking one thing,saying another: The behavioral correlates of mind-wandering while reading aloud

Although mind-wandering during silent reading is well documented, to date no research has investigated whether similar processes occur during reading aloud. In the present study, participants read a passage either silently or aloud while periodically being probed about mind-wandering. Although their comprehension accuracies were similar for both reading conditions, participants reported more mind-wandering while they were reading aloud. These episodes of mindless reading were associated with nearly normal prosody, but were nevertheless distinguished by subtle fluctuations in volume that were predictive of both overall comprehension accuracy and individual sentence comprehension. Together, these findings reveal that previously hidden within the common activity of reading aloud lies: (1) a demonstration of the remarkable automaticity of speech, (2) a situation that is surprisingly conducive to mind-wandering, (3) subtle vocal signatures of mind-wandering and comprehension accuracy, and (4) the promise of developing useful interventions to improve reading.     

I thought you were looking at me: direction-specific aftereffects in gaze perception

Gaze direction is an important social signal in humans and other primates. In this study, we used an adaptation paradigm to investigate the functional organization of gaze perception in humans. Adaptation to consistent leftward or rightward gaze produced a powerful illusion that virtually eliminated observers' perception of gaze in the adapted direction; gaze to that side was seen as pointing straight ahead, though perception of gaze to the opposite side was unimpaired. This striking dissociation held even when retinotopic mapping between adaptation and test stimuli was disrupted by changes in size or head orientation, suggesting that our findings do not reflect adaptation to low-level visual properties. Moreover, adaptation to averted gaze did not affect judgments of line bisection, illustrating that our findings do not reflect a general spatial bias. Our findings provide evidence that humans have distinct populations of neurons that are selectively responsive to particular directions of seen gaze.     

"Saying one thing and doing another": examining the impact of event order on hypocrisy judgments of others

This study investigated whether the temporal order of people's expressed statements and their behaviors affected others' judgments of hypocrisy, and why. It was proposed that hypocrisy would be greater when a statement establishing a personal standard preceded a behavior violating that standard as opposed to the reverse order. This order effect occurred in three studies, generalizing across two topic areas (healthy living and safe sex) and for both normative and non-normative statements (pro/anti-safe sex). Mediation analyses indicated that the reverse order mitigated against hypocrisy because the target's inconsistency was attributed to dispositional change. The discussion addresses additional variables likely to affect hypocrisy and the relationship of this research to hypocrisy paradigms in dissonance.     

Technique and final cause in psychoanalysis: Four ways of looking at one moment

This paper argues that if one considers just a single clinical moment there may be no principled way to choose among different approaches to psychoanalytic technique. One must in addition take into account what Aristotle called the final cause of psychoanalysis, which this paper argues is freedom. However, freedom is itself an open‐ended concept with many aspects that need to be explored and developed from a psychoanalytic perspective. This paper considers one analytic moment from the perspectives of the techniques of Paul Gray, Hans Loewald, the contemporary Kleinians and Jacques Lacan. It argues that, if we are to evaluate these techniques, we must take into account the different conceptions of freedom they are trying to facilitate.     

Context attributes in memory are bound to item information,but not to one another

In four experiments, we compared binding between item and context information with binding between different types of context information. Participants studied line drawings of common objects that appeared in both different colors and different locations. We explored the effects of reinstating one type of information on recognition memory for another type, and we also tested the participants’ ability to discriminate intact from rearranged pairings of two types of information. Results showed that different contextual dimensions (i.e., color and location) were bound to item information (i.e., object information), but not to each other.     

Violence and forgiveness: from one mimesis to another

Continental Philosophy Review - René Girard’s breakthrough consists in uncovering the mechanism of violence, namely the mimesis and rivalry it permits. Yet, mimetic violence still leaves...     

Do the right thing: but only if others do so

Social norms play an important role in individual decision making. We argue that two different expectations influence our choice to obey a norm: what we expect others to do (empirical expectations) and what we believe others think we ought to do (normative expectations). Little is known about the relative importance of these two types of expectation in individuals' decisions, an issue that is particularly important when normative and empirical expectations are in conflict (e.g., systemic corruption, high crime cities). In this paper, we report data from Dictator game experiments where we exogenously manipulate dictators' expectations in the direction of either selfishness or fairness. When normative and empirical expectations are in conflict, we find that empirical expectations about other dictators' choices significantly predict a dictator's own choice. However, dictators' expectations regarding what other dictators think ought to be done do not have a significant impact on their decisions after controlling for empirical expectations. Our findings about the crucial influence of empirical expectations are important for designing institutions or policies aimed at discouraging undesirable behavior. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

From one to another: Group consultation for group psychotherapy

Supervisees and consultees may take their groups and the feelings associated with them to another group for clinical advice. Crucial to the practice of consultation is the perplexing question of how material is carried from one group to another. This paper presents a model, with illustrative vignettes, of a consultative sequence that relies on the conveyance of subjective as well as objective data. As the presenter tells about his or her therapy group, the members of the consultant or supervisory group experience reactions that mirror, parallel, or identify with dynamic processes that originated in the first place. In response to the creative interaction between presenter, presented, and receivers, the consultation group can arrive at formulations that provide the consultee with new understandings and action plans. This protocol can be used for single-session consultations or adapted for ongoing group supervision.     

The ISI Change phenomenon: When contradicting one stereotype changes another

When a population is perceived to consist of two mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups, the stereotypes that people form of these groups are likely to be interdependent. We predicted that stereotype-incongruent information about members of one group (target group) may then evoke change in the stereotype of another group (alternative group) even in the absence of any stereotype-incongruent information about members of the alternative group. We demonstrated this Indirect Stereotype-Incongruence Induced (ISI) Change phenomenon in two studies using novel groups (Study 1 and 2). The effect occurred when the incongruent information was about a competent target group (changing the stereotype about the less competent alternative group) but not when it was about an incompetent target group (Study 2). The ISI Change phenomenon implies that stereotypes may change even in the absence of directly stereotype-incongruent information.     

Concurrent performances: inhibition of one response by reinforcement of another

In an analysis of interactions between concurrent performances, variable-interval reinforcement was scheduled, in various sequences, for both keys, for only one key, or for neither key of a two-key pigeon chamber. With changeover delays of 0.5 or 1.0 sec, and with each key's reinforcements discriminated on the basis of key-correlated feeder stimuli, reinforcement of pecks on one key reduced the pecking maintained by reinforcement on the other key. The decrease in pecking early after reinforcement was discontinued on one key was not substantially affected by whether pecks on the other key were reinforced, but after reinforcement was discontinued on both keys, reinstatement of reinforcement for one key sometimes produced transient increases in pecking on the other key. Correlating the availability of right-key reinforcements with a stimulus, which maintained right-key reinforcement while reducing right-key pecking to negligible levels, demonstrated that these interactions depended on concurrent reinforcement, not concurrent responding. Thus, reinforcement of a response, but not necessarily the occurrence of the response, inhibits other reinforced responses. Compared with accounts in terms of excitatory effects of extinction, often invoked in treatments of behavioral contrast, this inhibitory account has the advantage of dealing only with observed dimensions of behavior.     

Disorder in sequential speech perception: a case study on pure word deafness

We described disorders of a patient which were uniquely restricted to speech perception of syllable sequences after brain damage. The results of series of experiments using syllable sequences showed "negative recency effect," in which the subject's repetition performance at the latter syllable position was remarkably poor. Experimental analyses suggested that the "negative recency effect" could be due to dual factors: the lower rate of processing of speech sounds and the memory load of holding processes of preceding syllables imposed on the succeeding phonological processing. The results also suggested that the holding processes which imposed the memory load on the succeeding auditory phonological coding processing were modality nonspecific.     

Children's and adults' perception of missing subjects in complement clauses: Evidence from another language

Findings on perception of missing subjects in complement clauses are reported in two experiments with school-aged children and adults. The complement clauses were embedded into four matrix verbs in Greek, such as Ask (ask information), Promise, Tell₁ (orderl command), and Tell₂ (give information) equivalent to English in syntactic and semantic constraints. The data from Experiment 1 show the following: (1) Perception of missing subjects in Ask, Promise, and Tell₁ complement clauses is significantly higher than in Tell₂, but Guttman coefficient of scalability (.58) was slightly lower than the required one (over .60) to document a developmental sequence between the four constructions. (2) In general, these results, as other findings, contradict with Minimal Distance Principle (MDP) advocated by Chomsky (1969, 1972). (3) Differences in perceiving the source (i.e., NP₁) in Ask and Promise and the goal/recipient (i.e., NP₂) as subject in the complement clauses on Tell₁ and Tell₂ cannot consistently be explained by the Semantic Role Principle (SRP) postulated by Maratsos (Lederberg & Maratsos, 1981; Maratsos, 1974) either. (4) Results from Experiment 2 with three age groups, despite minor differences, confirm the results in Experiment 1, suggesting that comprehension of complement clauses with Ask, Promise, and Tell₁ is a prerequisite to comprehension of complement clauses with Tell₂, according to Guttman coefficients of scalability (over .60 for all groups). (5) The findings are discussed within the framework of the SRP, but the emphasis is placed on the interaction of semantic and pragmatic presuppositions over processing the four construction types.The order of the authors is alphabetical.     

Same but different: how agency modulates pain perception

Why is analgesic treatment more effective when it is self-administered? Strube et al. compare two possible accounts and show that the effect of agency on perception is linked to a shift in expectation (prior) rather than to reduced likelihood precision, highlighting that agency has a profound impact on the entire perceptual process.