Meta-diagnosis: Towards a hermeneutical perspective in medicine with an emphasis on alcoholism

This essay argues that making a diagnosis in medicine is essentially a hermeneutic enterprise, one in which interpretation skills play a major part in understanding a disease. The clinical encounter is an event comprised of two voices; one is the voice of science which is grounded in empiricism, the other is that of human experience, which is grounded in story-telling and the interpretation of those stories.Using two voices, one from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-III-Revised, which describes alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence, and the other, that of Claire, a character in Edward Albee's play, A Delicate Balance, who is conversing with her brother-in-law, Tobias, I apply principles from Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics to the clinical diagnostic process. The essay will demonstrate that we overlook an enormous amount of information about alcoholism by an overreliance on objective data and that our hope for understanding alcoholics is in listening to their voices, and sharing the interpretation of their experiences with them.     

Rorty's Dewey: Pragmatism,education and the public sphere

In Habits of the Heart and The Good Society, Bellah et al. diagnose our loss of public life in areas such as education and relate this loss both to flaws in moral ecology and to our institutions. Their opposition to the Lockean metaphysic of self and community and to objectivist epistemology as a way of understanding schools is helpful in that it naturally suggests the kind of piecemeal, contextualized change that we locate within Dewey's viewpoint. But, I argue, Bellah et al.'s penchant for first philosophy ultimately taints their work. While I applaud their turn to Dewey, I find their choice of a metaphysical, rather than a Rortyan reading of Dewey misguided. The proper alternative to a Lockean metaphysics is not a communitarian/Aristotelian one; the proper corrective to objectivist epistemology is not Deweyan epistemology or critical theory. We need to see, as in Rorty (1991b), that democracy exists prior to normative philosophy just as it has priority over substantive religion. To think otherwise would lead to a loss of contact with the ordinary, specific, ever-changing realms where our lives, and our democratic institutions — including the university — must either thrive or flounder. Finally, there is no epistemology or metaphysics that will adequately ground the university's workings. Instead, there is only, as Dewey put it, growth or failure to grow, guided by hints and resonances that arise in evolving circumstances.     

Shutters,Boxes, but No Paradoxes: Time Symmetry Puzzles in Quantum Theory

The “N‐box experiment” is a much‐discussed thought experiment in quantum mechanics. It is claimed by some authors that a single particle prepared in a superposition of N+1 box locations and which is subject to a final “post‐selection” measurement corresponding to a different superposition can be said to have occupied “with certainty” N boxes during the intervening time. However, others have argued that under closer inspection, this surprising claim fails to hold. Aharonov and Vaidman have continued their advocacy of the claim in question by proposing a variation on the N‐box experiment, in which the boxes are replaced by shutters and the pre‐ and post‐selected particle is entangled with a photon. These authors argue that the resulting “N‐shutter experiment” strengthens their original claim regarding the N‐box experiment. It is argued in this article that the apparently surprising features of this variation are no more robust than those of the N‐box experiment and that it is not accurate to say that the particle is “with certainty” in all N shutters at any given time.

Shutters, Boxes, but No Paradoxes: Time Symmetry Puzzles in Quantum Theory

All authors

Ruth E. Kastner

https://doi.org/10.1080/02698590412331289279

Published online:

14 October 2010

Figure 1 Hilbert Space of the Shutter Particle.     

5.

Recognition without awareness: An elusive phenomenon     

Annette Jeneson  C. Brock Kirwan  Larry R. Squire 《Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.)》2010,17(9):454-459

Two recent studies described conditions under which recognition memory performance appeared to be driven by nondeclarative memory. Specifically, participants successfully discriminated old images from highly similar new images even when no conscious memory for the images could be retrieved. Paradoxically, recognition performance was better when images were studied with divided attention than when images were studied with full attention. Furthermore, recognition performance was better when decisions were rated as guesses than when decisions were associated with low or high confidence. In three experiments, we adopted the paradigm used in the earlier studies in an attempt to repeat this intriguing work. Our attempts were unsuccessful. In all experiments, recognition was better when images were studied with full attention than when images were studied with divided attention. Recognition was also better when participants indicated high or low confidence in their decision than when they indicated that their decision was a guess. Thus, our results conformed to what typically has been reported in studies of recognition memory, and we were unable to demonstrate recognition without awareness. We encourage others to explore this paradigm, and to try to identify conditions under which the phenomenon might be demonstrated.Declarative memory refers to the capacity to recollect facts and events, and can be contrasted with a collection of nondeclarative memory abilities, including skills, habits, and the phenomenon of priming, which are expressed through performance rather than recollection (Squire et al. 2004). Declarative memory depends on the integrity of medial temporal lobe structures, while the various forms of nondeclarative memory depend on other brain systems (Schacter and Tulving 1994; Eichenbaum and Cohen 2001; Squire 2004). The best-studied example of declarative memory is recognition memory—the ability to judge items as having been encountered previously. Successful recognition is ordinarily accompanied by a conscious experience of familiarity, and sometimes by conscious memory of the prior encounter itself (Gabrieli 1998).One interesting idea that has been explored in some detail is that recognition memory decisions based on familiarity might also benefit from priming. Priming refers to an improved ability to produce or identify an item on the basis of a recent encounter with the same item or a related item, but without a requirement that there be conscious knowledge of the prior encounter (Tulving and Schacter 1990; Schacter and Buckner 1998). In early studies, it was suggested that previously encountered items might be processed more fluently (e.g., with greater speed and with more ease), and that improved fluency might influence familiarity judgments. Specifically, items perceived with greater fluency might tend to be identified as familiar (Mandler 1980; Jacoby and Dallas 1981; Johnston et al. 1991).This idea encountered difficulty when it was found that severely amnesic patients can perform at chance on conventional recognition tests despite exhibiting intact perceptual priming (Hamann and Squire 1997; Stark and Squire 2000). If fluency facilitates recognition, severely amnesic patients who exhibit intact perceptual priming should perform better than chance on recognition memory tests. Thus, it has seemed that the perceptual fluency that mediates priming does not also support familiarity-based recognition judgments, at least not to a measurable degree. Indeed, the contribution of perceptual fluency appears to be too weak to drive recognition performance noticeably above chance (Conroy et al. 2005).Nonetheless, it remains possible that conditions might be found under which recognition decisions can benefit from perceptual fluency, and in this way be linked to nondeclarative memory. Two recent studies (Voss et al. 2008; Voss and Paller 2009) described conditions under which recognition memory appeared to be significantly driven by nondeclarative memory. Participants studied difficult-to-verbalize images (Fig. 1) with either full attention or divided attention. At test, each image was paired with a highly similar new image, and participants made a speeded forced-choice decision. The striking finding was that, under these conditions, accurate recognition memory performance occurred, but without the awareness that ordinarily accompanies successful recognition. Specifically (and paradoxically), performance was better under divided-attention conditions (which ordinarily degrade memory performance) than under full-attention conditions (Fig. 2A). Furthermore, in one study (Voss et al. 2008), recognition was better when participants reported that they were guessing than when they reported conscious memory of the images (combined high- and low-confidence trials) (Fig. 2B). Notably, this phenomenon occurred only when the test was given in a forced-choice format, and not in a yes/no format. The other study (Voss and Paller 2009) reported a similar advantage for guessing in the divided-attention condition. These two reports appear to demonstrate recognition without awareness and a significant contribution of nondeclarative memory to recognition performance.Open in a separate windowFigure 1.In the full-attention condition, participants studied 14 images for 2 sec each (1.5-sec intertrial interval). Alternatively, in the divided-attention condition, participants studied the images while deciding whether a digit heard during the previous trial was odd or even. The forced-choice recognition test probed memory for the middle 10 images presented in the study sequence. Each studied item was presented together with a highly similar new item, and participants selected the old item by responding “left” or “right.” After each response, participants indicated how confident they were in their recognition decision (G, guess; L, low confidence; H, high confidence).Open in a separate windowFigure 2.Data from Experiment 2 in Voss et al. (2008), estimated from their Figure 2. (A) When recognition was probed using a forced-choice format, performance was more accurate in the divided-attention condition than in the full-attention condition. (B) In both conditions, forced-choice recognition was more accurate in trials where participants indicated that their recognition decision was a guess (G) than in trials where participants indicated low or high confidence (L/H) in their decision. Asterisks indicate performance significantly above chance (P < 0.05). Error bars indicate SEM.These findings challenge the conventional view that recognition memory is more effective when full attention is given to a task than when attention is divided (Anderson 1980), that recognition memory is associated with a conscious experience of familiarity (Gabrieli 1998), and that recognition memory accuracy is positively correlated with ratings of confidence (Reed et al. 1997; Mickes et al. 2007). Because the reported findings are exceptional, we explored the phenomenon further in three separate experiments in an attempt to replicate it and identify its boundary conditions. We adopted the same paradigm as was used in the original study (Voss et al. 2008).     

6.

A brief nap is beneficial for human route-learning: The role of navigation experience and EEG spectral power     

Erin J. Wamsley  Matthew A. Tucker  Jessica D. Payne  Robert Stickgold 《Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.)》2010,17(7):332-336

Here, we examined the effect of a daytime nap on changes in virtual maze performance across a single day. Participants either took a short nap or remained awake following training on a virtual maze task. Post-training sleep provided a clear performance benefit at later retest, but only for those participants with prior experience navigating in a three-dimensional (3D) environment. Performance improvements in experienced players were correlated with delta-rich stage 2 sleep. Complementing observations that learning-related brain activity is reiterated during post-navigation NREM sleep in rodents, the present data demonstrate that NREM sleep confers a performance advantage for spatial memory in humans.A growing body of animal and human literature suggests that the consolidation of memories occurs optimally during periods of post-learning sleep. Nonrapid eye movement sleep (NREM), in particular, may be beneficial for the offline consolidation of hippocampus-dependent learning. The neurophysiological basis for this hypothesis is derived largely from electrophysiological studies in rodents, demonstrating that patterns of hippocampal place cell activity first seen during waking exploration are later reexpressed during post-learning sleep (Wilson and McNaughton 1994; Kudrimoti et al. 1999; Nadasdy et al. 1999; Ji and Wilson 2007). Behavioral studies in humans meanwhile demonstrate that NREM sleep is beneficial for declarative memory performance, relative to equivalent periods of wakefulness (Plihal and Born 1997; Tucker et al. 2006). However, the memory tasks typically employed in human research are quite different from those used in rodents, with human studies most often focusing on the memorization of verbal or visual stimuli (Plihal and Born 1997; Schabus et al. 2004; Clemens et al. 2005; Ellenbogen et al. 2006; Tucker et al. 2006; Daurat et al. 2008). Thus far, sleep-dependent memory reactivation has not been established to be directly beneficial for memory performance in an animal model, as the protocols employed in this research typically involve well-learned simple tasks which do not easily lend themselves to measurement of learning across time (Wilson and McNaughton 1994; Kudrimoti et al. 1999). Although the hippocampal memory reactivation described in rodents is a possible explanation for the effect of NREM sleep on human declarative memory, widely divergent methodologies employed across species prohibit confidence in this conclusion.Bridging this conceptual gap, a small handful of studies have begun to explore the relationship between spatial navigation and NREM sleep in humans. Notably, a PET study by Peigneux et al. (2004) demonstrated that learning-related hippocampal activity seen while training on a virtual maze task is again expressed during post-learning human sleep. Furthermore, this hippocampal reactivation strongly predicted overnight improvement on the task (Peigneux et al. 2004). Additional studies have suggested a link between sleep and other types of spatial-related learning, including mental rotation performance (Plihal and Born 1999), the ability to reproduce a complex figure (Clemens et al. 2006; Tucker and Fishbein 2008), performance on a computerized version of Milner''s (1965) “bolt head” maze (Tucker and Fishbein 2008), and memory for the location of verbal information on a screen (Daurat et al. 2008).Yet it remains unclear whether sleep, relative to wakefulness, provides a performance benefit for human route-learning in the context of a realistic spatial environment. Navigation through virtual environments is a strongly hippocampus-dependent task (Peigneux et al. 2004; Astur et al. 2005) and provides an experimental model closely paralleling the spatial exploration tasks employed in the rodent literature. However, the few studies reporting effects of sleep on human navigation performance have been contradictory. Using a navigation task similar to that of Peingeux et al. (2004), Orban et al. (2006) failed to detect any effect of post-learning sleep deprivation on maze performance but did find evidence of altered task-related brain activity, concluding that sleep supports “covert” memory reorganization (Orban et al. 2006). In direct contrast, Ferrara et al. found that spatial memory is improved when a retention interval falls across a night of sleep, relative to when route memory must be retained during daytime wakefulness, or across a night of sleep deprivation (Ferrara et al. 2006, 2008).The present study clarifies these issues by examining the effect of a post-learning nap on complex route-learning in a three-dimensional (3D) virtual environment. When controls are tested at a different time of day than sleep participants, circadian confounds may present a substantial problem. Alternatively, overnight protocols employing sleep-deprived subjects necessarily suffer from confounds related to this sleep deprivation during the retention interval. The use of a daytime nap as a sleep intervention avoids these pitfalls by allowing all subjects to be trained and tested at the same circadian time, and in the absence of sleep deprivation. A series of recent studies confirm that a daytime nap is sufficient to induce performance improvements on declarative and procedural memory tasks, relative to wake subjects (Mednick et al. 2003; Backhaus and Junghanns 2006; Nishida and Walker 2006; Tucker et al. 2006; Lahl et al. 2008; Tucker and Fishbein 2008).Participants (n = 53, 34 female) were trained on a virtual maze-learning task at 12:30 pm. Following training, nap participants lay down for a 1.5-h sleep opportunity. These subjects were allowed to obtain as much NREM sleep as possible but were awoken at the first signs of REM (see Table 

Recognition without awareness: An elusive phenomenon

Two recent studies described conditions under which recognition memory performance appeared to be driven by nondeclarative memory. Specifically, participants successfully discriminated old images from highly similar new images even when no conscious memory for the images could be retrieved. Paradoxically, recognition performance was better when images were studied with divided attention than when images were studied with full attention. Furthermore, recognition performance was better when decisions were rated as guesses than when decisions were associated with low or high confidence. In three experiments, we adopted the paradigm used in the earlier studies in an attempt to repeat this intriguing work. Our attempts were unsuccessful. In all experiments, recognition was better when images were studied with full attention than when images were studied with divided attention. Recognition was also better when participants indicated high or low confidence in their decision than when they indicated that their decision was a guess. Thus, our results conformed to what typically has been reported in studies of recognition memory, and we were unable to demonstrate recognition without awareness. We encourage others to explore this paradigm, and to try to identify conditions under which the phenomenon might be demonstrated.Declarative memory refers to the capacity to recollect facts and events, and can be contrasted with a collection of nondeclarative memory abilities, including skills, habits, and the phenomenon of priming, which are expressed through performance rather than recollection (Squire et al. 2004). Declarative memory depends on the integrity of medial temporal lobe structures, while the various forms of nondeclarative memory depend on other brain systems (Schacter and Tulving 1994; Eichenbaum and Cohen 2001; Squire 2004). The best-studied example of declarative memory is recognition memory—the ability to judge items as having been encountered previously. Successful recognition is ordinarily accompanied by a conscious experience of familiarity, and sometimes by conscious memory of the prior encounter itself (Gabrieli 1998).One interesting idea that has been explored in some detail is that recognition memory decisions based on familiarity might also benefit from priming. Priming refers to an improved ability to produce or identify an item on the basis of a recent encounter with the same item or a related item, but without a requirement that there be conscious knowledge of the prior encounter (Tulving and Schacter 1990; Schacter and Buckner 1998). In early studies, it was suggested that previously encountered items might be processed more fluently (e.g., with greater speed and with more ease), and that improved fluency might influence familiarity judgments. Specifically, items perceived with greater fluency might tend to be identified as familiar (Mandler 1980; Jacoby and Dallas 1981; Johnston et al. 1991).This idea encountered difficulty when it was found that severely amnesic patients can perform at chance on conventional recognition tests despite exhibiting intact perceptual priming (Hamann and Squire 1997; Stark and Squire 2000). If fluency facilitates recognition, severely amnesic patients who exhibit intact perceptual priming should perform better than chance on recognition memory tests. Thus, it has seemed that the perceptual fluency that mediates priming does not also support familiarity-based recognition judgments, at least not to a measurable degree. Indeed, the contribution of perceptual fluency appears to be too weak to drive recognition performance noticeably above chance (Conroy et al. 2005).Nonetheless, it remains possible that conditions might be found under which recognition decisions can benefit from perceptual fluency, and in this way be linked to nondeclarative memory. Two recent studies (Voss et al. 2008; Voss and Paller 2009) described conditions under which recognition memory appeared to be significantly driven by nondeclarative memory. Participants studied difficult-to-verbalize images (Fig. 1) with either full attention or divided attention. At test, each image was paired with a highly similar new image, and participants made a speeded forced-choice decision. The striking finding was that, under these conditions, accurate recognition memory performance occurred, but without the awareness that ordinarily accompanies successful recognition. Specifically (and paradoxically), performance was better under divided-attention conditions (which ordinarily degrade memory performance) than under full-attention conditions (Fig. 2A). Furthermore, in one study (Voss et al. 2008), recognition was better when participants reported that they were guessing than when they reported conscious memory of the images (combined high- and low-confidence trials) (Fig. 2B). Notably, this phenomenon occurred only when the test was given in a forced-choice format, and not in a yes/no format. The other study (Voss and Paller 2009) reported a similar advantage for guessing in the divided-attention condition. These two reports appear to demonstrate recognition without awareness and a significant contribution of nondeclarative memory to recognition performance.Open in a separate windowFigure 1.In the full-attention condition, participants studied 14 images for 2 sec each (1.5-sec intertrial interval). Alternatively, in the divided-attention condition, participants studied the images while deciding whether a digit heard during the previous trial was odd or even. The forced-choice recognition test probed memory for the middle 10 images presented in the study sequence. Each studied item was presented together with a highly similar new item, and participants selected the old item by responding “left” or “right.” After each response, participants indicated how confident they were in their recognition decision (G, guess; L, low confidence; H, high confidence).Open in a separate windowFigure 2.Data from Experiment 2 in Voss et al. (2008), estimated from their Figure 2. (A) When recognition was probed using a forced-choice format, performance was more accurate in the divided-attention condition than in the full-attention condition. (B) In both conditions, forced-choice recognition was more accurate in trials where participants indicated that their recognition decision was a guess (G) than in trials where participants indicated low or high confidence (L/H) in their decision. Asterisks indicate performance significantly above chance (P < 0.05). Error bars indicate SEM.These findings challenge the conventional view that recognition memory is more effective when full attention is given to a task than when attention is divided (Anderson 1980), that recognition memory is associated with a conscious experience of familiarity (Gabrieli 1998), and that recognition memory accuracy is positively correlated with ratings of confidence (Reed et al. 1997; Mickes et al. 2007). Because the reported findings are exceptional, we explored the phenomenon further in three separate experiments in an attempt to replicate it and identify its boundary conditions. We adopted the same paradigm as was used in the original study (Voss et al. 2008).     

A brief nap is beneficial for human route-learning: The role of navigation experience and EEG spectral power

Here, we examined the effect of a daytime nap on changes in virtual maze performance across a single day. Participants either took a short nap or remained awake following training on a virtual maze task. Post-training sleep provided a clear performance benefit at later retest, but only for those participants with prior experience navigating in a three-dimensional (3D) environment. Performance improvements in experienced players were correlated with delta-rich stage 2 sleep. Complementing observations that learning-related brain activity is reiterated during post-navigation NREM sleep in rodents, the present data demonstrate that NREM sleep confers a performance advantage for spatial memory in humans.A growing body of animal and human literature suggests that the consolidation of memories occurs optimally during periods of post-learning sleep. Nonrapid eye movement sleep (NREM), in particular, may be beneficial for the offline consolidation of hippocampus-dependent learning. The neurophysiological basis for this hypothesis is derived largely from electrophysiological studies in rodents, demonstrating that patterns of hippocampal place cell activity first seen during waking exploration are later reexpressed during post-learning sleep (Wilson and McNaughton 1994; Kudrimoti et al. 1999; Nadasdy et al. 1999; Ji and Wilson 2007). Behavioral studies in humans meanwhile demonstrate that NREM sleep is beneficial for declarative memory performance, relative to equivalent periods of wakefulness (Plihal and Born 1997; Tucker et al. 2006). However, the memory tasks typically employed in human research are quite different from those used in rodents, with human studies most often focusing on the memorization of verbal or visual stimuli (Plihal and Born 1997; Schabus et al. 2004; Clemens et al. 2005; Ellenbogen et al. 2006; Tucker et al. 2006; Daurat et al. 2008). Thus far, sleep-dependent memory reactivation has not been established to be directly beneficial for memory performance in an animal model, as the protocols employed in this research typically involve well-learned simple tasks which do not easily lend themselves to measurement of learning across time (Wilson and McNaughton 1994; Kudrimoti et al. 1999). Although the hippocampal memory reactivation described in rodents is a possible explanation for the effect of NREM sleep on human declarative memory, widely divergent methodologies employed across species prohibit confidence in this conclusion.Bridging this conceptual gap, a small handful of studies have begun to explore the relationship between spatial navigation and NREM sleep in humans. Notably, a PET study by Peigneux et al. (2004) demonstrated that learning-related hippocampal activity seen while training on a virtual maze task is again expressed during post-learning human sleep. Furthermore, this hippocampal reactivation strongly predicted overnight improvement on the task (Peigneux et al. 2004). Additional studies have suggested a link between sleep and other types of spatial-related learning, including mental rotation performance (Plihal and Born 1999), the ability to reproduce a complex figure (Clemens et al. 2006; Tucker and Fishbein 2008), performance on a computerized version of Milner''s (1965) “bolt head” maze (Tucker and Fishbein 2008), and memory for the location of verbal information on a screen (Daurat et al. 2008).Yet it remains unclear whether sleep, relative to wakefulness, provides a performance benefit for human route-learning in the context of a realistic spatial environment. Navigation through virtual environments is a strongly hippocampus-dependent task (Peigneux et al. 2004; Astur et al. 2005) and provides an experimental model closely paralleling the spatial exploration tasks employed in the rodent literature. However, the few studies reporting effects of sleep on human navigation performance have been contradictory. Using a navigation task similar to that of Peingeux et al. (2004), Orban et al. (2006) failed to detect any effect of post-learning sleep deprivation on maze performance but did find evidence of altered task-related brain activity, concluding that sleep supports “covert” memory reorganization (Orban et al. 2006). In direct contrast, Ferrara et al. found that spatial memory is improved when a retention interval falls across a night of sleep, relative to when route memory must be retained during daytime wakefulness, or across a night of sleep deprivation (Ferrara et al. 2006, 2008).The present study clarifies these issues by examining the effect of a post-learning nap on complex route-learning in a three-dimensional (3D) virtual environment. When controls are tested at a different time of day than sleep participants, circadian confounds may present a substantial problem. Alternatively, overnight protocols employing sleep-deprived subjects necessarily suffer from confounds related to this sleep deprivation during the retention interval. The use of a daytime nap as a sleep intervention avoids these pitfalls by allowing all subjects to be trained and tested at the same circadian time, and in the absence of sleep deprivation. A series of recent studies confirm that a daytime nap is sufficient to induce performance improvements on declarative and procedural memory tasks, relative to wake subjects (Mednick et al. 2003; Backhaus and Junghanns 2006; Nishida and Walker 2006; Tucker et al. 2006; Lahl et al. 2008; Tucker and Fishbein 2008).Participants (n = 53, 34 female) were trained on a virtual maze-learning task at 12:30 pm. Following training, nap participants lay down for a 1.5-h sleep opportunity. These subjects were allowed to obtain as much NREM sleep as possible but were awoken at the first signs of REM (see Table 

Extinction as new learning versus unlearning: considerations from a computer simulation of the cerebellum

Like many forms of Pavlovian conditioning, eyelid conditioning displays robust extinction. We used a computer simulation of the cerebellum as a tool to consider the widely accepted view that extinction involves new, inhibitory learning rather than unlearning of acquisition. Previously, this simulation suggested basic mechanistic features of extinction and savings in eyelid conditioning, with predictions born out by experiments. We review previous work showing that the simulation reproduces behavioral phenomena and lesion effects generally taken as evidence that extinction does not reverse acquisition, even though its plasticity is bidirectional with no site dedicated to inhibitory learning per se. In contrast, we show that even though the sites of plasticity are, in general, affected in opposite directions by acquisition and extinction training, most synapses do not return to their naive state after acquisition followed by extinction. These results suggest caution in interpreting a range of observations as necessarily supporting extinction as unlearning or extinction as new inhibitory learning. We argue that the question “is extinction reversal of acquisition or new inhibitory learning?” is therefore not well posed because the answer may depend on factors such as the brain system in question or the level of analysis considered.Pavlovian eyelid conditioning is robustly bidirectional. Conditioned responses that are acquired via training that pairs a conditioned stimulus (CS) with an unconditioned stimulus (US) can be rapidly extinguished with CS-alone training or unpaired CS-US training (Gormezano et al. 1983; Napier et al. 1992; Macrae and Kehoe 1999; Kehoe and Macrae 2002; Kehoe and White 2002; Weidemann and Kehoe 2003). Whether extinction involves unlearning or separate inhibitory learning that suppresses conditioned response expression remains an important issue for both behavioral theories and for investigations of underlying neural mechanisms (Pavlov 1927; Hull 1943; Konorski 1948, 1967; Rescorla and Wagner 1972; Mackintosh 1974; Rescorla 1979; Bouton 1993, 2002; Falls 1998; Myers and Davis 2002; Kehoe and White 2002). Here, we addressed this issue using a computer simulation of the cerebellum that is capable of emulating many aspects of eyelid conditioning. Although simulation results cannot resolve such issues, several aspects of the simulation''s behavior are instructive. Even though the sites of plasticity are, in general, affected in opposite directions by acquisition and extinction training, the simulation can emulate several behavioral phenomena that are generally taken as evidence that extinction does not involve unlearning. Moreover, we found that the strengths of most synapses are quite different from their naive state following acquisition and then extinction. Independent of the overall biological accuracy of this simulation, these results highlight a variety of implications for ongoing debates about the roles of unlearning versus new learning in extinction.A combination of factors makes it possible to analyze the neural basis of eyelid conditioning in detail, and to build and test computer simulations of its cerebellar mechanisms (Medina and Mauk 2000). Foremost among these is the close association between eyelid conditioning and the cerebellum (Thompson 1986; Raymond et al. 1996; Mauk and Donegan 1997). Previous studies from several labs have shown that (1) cerebellar output drives the motor pathways that produce the conditioned responses (McCormick and Thompson 1984), (2) presentation of a CS is conveyed to the cerebellum via activation of certain of its mossy fiber inputs (Steinmetz et al. 1986; Hesslow et al. 1999), and (3) presentation of the US is conveyed via activation of certain climbing fiber inputs to the cerebellum (Fig. 1A; Mauk et al. 1986). These factors are complemented by the extent to which the synaptic organization and physiology of the cerebellum are known (Eccles et al. 1967; Ito 1984), as are the behavioral properties of eyelid conditioning (Gormezano et al. 1983; Kehoe and Macrae 2002). These advantages combine with the speed of current computers to make possible the construction of biologically detailed and large-scale computer simulations of the cerebellum that can then be thoroughly tested using standard eyelid conditioning protocols (Medina et al. 2000, 2001, 2002; Medina and Mauk 1999, 2000).Open in a separate windowFigure 1Emulation of eyelid conditioning in a computer simulation of the cerebellum. (A) A schematic representation of the simulation and how it was trained using an eyelid conditioning-like protocol. The output of the simulation comes from the summed activity of the six cerebellar deep nucleus cells (blue box). The CS was conveyed to the simulation by phasic activation of 18 of the 600 mossy fibers and tonic activation of six mossy fibers (green box). The US was emulated by a brief excitatory conductance applied to the single climbing fiber. The remainder of the simulation consisted of 10,000 granule cells, 900 Golgi cells, 20 stellate/basket cells, and 20 Purkinje cells with essentials of the connectivity as shown. (B) Acquisition, extinction, and savings by the simulation. Each panel shows the equivalent of 10 d of acquisition (left panel), extinction (center), and reacquisition (right) training. Individual sweeps are averages of 10 trials, which are clustered together to approximate the equivalent of one daily session of eyelid conditioning. These sessions are numbered at the left, progressing from front to back. The blue portion of the sweeps denotes the presence of the CS. (C) The strength of the mossy fiber-to-nucleus synapses in the simulation over the three phases of training. The synapses that progressively increase in strength during acquisition and reacquisition and decrease during extinction are the six that are tonically activated by the CS. Note that extinction training only slowly and thus incompletely reverses the strengthened synapses. Savings during reacquisition in the simulation is largely attributable to this residual plasticity. The continued increase in the strength of these synapses does not produce a comparable increase in response amplitude, rather, it reflects the tendency for the network to transfer plasticity from cortex (pauses in Purkinje activity produced by LTD) to the nucleus (increased strength of mossy fiber-to-nucleus synapses). How long this process continues depends on a number of unknown factors.The present results are more easily appreciated with a brief review of previous studies (Medina et al. 2000, 2001, 2002) showing how the simulation emulates acquisition, extinction, and savings during reacquisition. These phenomena are shown for the simulation in the three panels of Figure 1B. The underlying essential elements can be summarized briefly. Presentation of a CS activates subsets of granule cells, and these subsets change somewhat over the duration of the CS. Paired training induces long-term depression (LTD) at CS-activated granule-to-Purkinje synapses that are activated when the US is presented. This leads to a learned and well timed decrease in the activity of Purkinje cells during the CS (Hesslow and Ivarsson 1994), which leads to the induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) at mossy fiber-to-nucleus synapses activated by the CS. As this plasticity develops, nucleus cells encounter during the CS strong excitation combined with release from inhibition and therefore discharge robustly, thereby driving the expression of conditioned responses (McCormick and Thompson 1984). These steps suggest that learning first occurs in the cerebellar cortex, before robust conditioned responses are seen. We have observed evidence for this latent learning in cerebellar cortex (Ohyama and Mauk 2001).During extinction, CS-activated granule-to-Purkinje synapses undergo LTP because their activation occurs in the absence of climbing fiber activity. The essential suppression of climbing fiber activity below the typical level of 1 Hz is produced by inhibition from cerebellar output (Sears and Steinmetz 1991; Hesslow and Ivarsson 1996; Kenyon et al. 1998a,b; Miall et al. 1998), which is robust during the expression of conditioned responses. This prediction of the simulation is supported by observations that blocking inhibition of climbing fibers prevents extinction (Medina et al. 2002).We have shown previously that savings during reacquisition results, at least in part, from plasticity in the cerebellar deep nucleus that is relatively resistant to extinction (Medina et al. 2001). The strengths of the CS-activated mossy fiber-to-nucleus synapses in the simulation are shown in Figure 1C for acquisition, extinction, and reacquisition. Because learned pauses in Purkinje cell activity are still present early in extinction training, the strengths of CS-activated mossy fiber-to-nucleus synapses continue to increase. Once conditioned responses are fully extinguished, due to the restoration of robust Purkinje cell activity during the CS via the induction of LTP at CS-activated granule-to-Purkinje synapses, then CS-activated mossy fiber-to-nucleus synapses begin to undergo LTD and decrease in strength. The rate at which these synapses decrease in strength with additional extinction training depends on unknown factors such as the level of Purkinje activity required for induction of LTD. These results show in principle, however, that plasticity in the cerebellar cortex is sufficient to extinguish conditioned responses, and that a network displaying fully extinguished conditioned responses can still contain strengthened mossy fiber-to-nucleus synapses. In the simulation, savings occur largely because this residual plasticity in the cerebellar nucleus enhances the conditioned responses produced by the relearning of decreased activity in the Purkinje cells. In support, we have shown in rabbits that plasticity in the cerebellar nucleus persists following extinction, and that a measure of the magnitude of this residual plasticity correlates with the rate of reacquisition (Medina et al. 2001).Here, we used the mechanisms of extinction in this simulation to stimulate discussion regarding the issue of extinction as unlearning versus extinction as new learning.     

Theories between theories: Asymptotic limiting intertheoretic relations

This paper addresses a relatively common scientific (as opposed to philosophical) conception of intertheoretic reduction between physical theories. This is the sense of reduction in which one (typically newer and more refined) theory is said to reduce to another (typically older and coarser) theory in the limit as some small parameter tends to zero. Three examples of such reductions are discussed: First, the reduction of Special Relativity (SR) to Newtonian Mechanics (NM) as (v/c)²0; second, the reduction of wave optics to geometrical optics as 0; and third, the reduction of Quantum Mechanics (QM) to Classical Mechanics (CM) as0. I argue for the following two claims. First, the case of SR reducing to NM is an instance of a genuine reductive relationship while the latter two cases are not. The reason for this concerns the nature of the limiting relationships between the theory pairs. In the SR/NM case, it is possible to consider SR as a regular perturbation of NM; whereas in the cases of wave and geometrical optics and QM/CM, the perturbation problem is singular. The second claim I wish to support is that as a result of the singular nature of the limits between these theory pairs, it is reasonable to maintain that third theories exist describing the asymptotic limiting domains. In the optics case, such a theory has been called catastrophe optics. In the QM/CM case, it is semiclassical mechanics. Aspects of both theories are discussed in some detail.I wish to thank Roger Jones and Joe Mendola for valuable comments on this and related work. Discussions with Bill Wimsatt also helped me get clear about certain issues related to intertheoretic reductions. Of course, they are not responsible for any mistakes and misinterpretations that still remain.     

Posterior parietal cortex and episodic retrieval: Convergent and divergent effects of attention and memory

Functional neuroimaging studies of humans engaged in retrieval from episodic memory have revealed a surprisingly consistent pattern of retrieval-related activity in lateral posterior parietal cortex (PPC). Given the well-established role of lateral PPC in subserving goal-directed and reflexive attention, it has been hypothesized that PPC activation during retrieval reflects the recruitment of parietal attention mechanisms during remembering. Here, we evaluate this hypothesis by considering the anatomical overlap of retrieval and attention effects in lateral PPC. We begin by briefly reviewing the literature implicating dorsal PPC in goal-directed attention and ventral PPC in reflexive attention. We then discuss the pattern of dorsal and ventral PPC activation during episodic retrieval, and conclude with consideration of the degree of anatomical convergence across the two domains. This assessment revealed that predominantly divergent subregions of lateral PPC are engaged during acts of episodic retrieval and during goal-directed and reflexive attention, suggesting that PPC retrieval effects reflect functionally distinct mechanisms from these forms of attention. Although attention must play a role in aspects of retrieval, the data reviewed here suggest that further investigation into the relationship between processes of attention and memory, as well as alternative accounts of PPC contributions to retrieval, is warranted.Episodic memory—declarative memory for events—has long been known to depend on the medial temporal lobe and, to a lesser extent, the prefrontal cortex (Squire 1992; Shimamura 1995; Wheeler et al. 1995; Gabrieli 1998; Eichenbaum and Cohen 2001; Squire et al. 2004). Recently, an explosion of functional neuroimaging studies has revealed that episodic retrieval is also consistently associated with activity in lateral posterior parietal cortex (PPC), including in the intraparietal sulcus and inferior parietal lobule (Figs. 1, ​,2;2; for detailed review, see Wagner et al. 2005; Cabeza 2008; Cabeza et al. 2008; Ciaramelli et al. 2008; Vilberg and Rugg 2008b; Olson and Berryhill 2009). This unexpected finding raises the possibility that parietal mechanisms may be more central to episodic retrieval than previously thought.Open in a separate windowFigure 1.Anatomy of posterior parietal cortex (PPC). A posterior-lateral view of human PPC is depicted, with PPC separated into dorsal and ventral portions by the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). Dorsal PPC includes the superior parietal lobule (SPL) and IPS. Ventral PPC includes inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and its subregions: supramarginal gyrus (SMG), temporoparietal junction (TPJ), and angular gyrus (AnG).Open in a separate windowFigure 2.Left lateral PPC activity during episodic retrieval. (A) A comparison of hits relative to correct rejections reported by Kahn et al. (2004) revealed “old/new” effects in dorsal PPC, inclusive of IPS. Average signal change within IPS was greater for items perceived as old (hits and false alarms) vs. those believed to be new (misses and correct rejections). (B) A comparison of successful, relative to unsuccessful, cued recall by Kuhl et al. (2007) revealed greater activity in AnG, compatible with the broader literature on recollection success effects (see Fig. 4). In addition, effects were observed in more anterior aspects of ventral PPC (SMG), as well as in dorsal PPC (principally SPL) (see Discussion). (C) Orienting to memory in attempts to recollect, independent of recollection success, is often associated with activity in dorsal PPC. For example, comparison of temporal recency judgments to novelty-based decisions elicited greater IPS activity (Dudukovic and Wagner 2007).At the neuropsychological level, human lesion evidence regarding the necessity of lateral PPC mechanisms for episodic retrieval is limited and mixed (Berryhill et al. 2007; Davidson et al. 2008; Haramati et al. 2008; Simons et al. 2008). By contrast, other neuropsychological data indicate that lateral PPC is unambiguously associated with another cognitive domain—attention (Posner et al. 1984; Mesulam 1999; Parton et al. 2004). This latter lesion literature is further complemented by rich functional neuroimaging evidence implicating dorsal and ventral PPC in goal-directed and reflexive attention, respectively (for review, see Corbetta and Shulman 2002; Corbetta et al. 2008).Drawing from the rich literature linking attention to lateral PPC, memory researchers have recently proposed that lateral PPC activity during episodic retrieval tasks reflects the engagement of attention mechanisms during remembering (Cabeza 2008; Cabeza et al. 2008; Ciaramelli et al. 2008; Olson and Berryhill 2009). Specifically, it has been hypothesized that: (1) Dorsal PPC activity during retrieval may reflect the recruitment of goal-directed attention in service of performing retrieval tasks and (2) ventral PPC engagement during retrieval may mark the reflexive capture of attention by mnemonic representations. While prior comprehensive reviews of the neuroimaging literature on parietal correlates of episodic retrieval have documented functional dissociations along the dorsal/ventral axis of lateral PPC, which qualitatively parallel those seen in the attention literature, evaluation of the hypothesis that PPC retrieval activity reflects attention mechanisms further requires an assessment of the degree to which attention and retrieval effects co-localize. Here we review lateral PPC correlates of both episodic retrieval and attention, with the goal of directly assessing to the degree of anatomic overlap.It should be noted from the outset that the aim of the present review is to evaluate the hypothesis that lateral PPC episodic retrieval effects can be explained in terms of goal-directed and reflexive attention mechanisms. As such, we a priori imposed three constraints that served to focus our treatment of these two substantial literatures. First, while both the dual-attention and memory retrieval literatures focus on effects on the lateral parietal surface, retrieval effects are predominantly left lateralized. Thus, we constrained our analysis of attention and retrieval findings to left lateral PPC.⁵ Second, because prior retrieval reviews focused theoretical discussion on dual-attention accounts, here we similarly constrained our treatment of the extensive attention literature to include only those effects relevant to dual-attention theory. Finally, because the preponderance of evidence offered in support of dual-attention theory''s proposed dorsal attention network derives from studies of visual attention, the present review of the dorsal network is also confined to visual attention. As such, the present review should not be viewed as a comprehensive review of the entire attention literature.We first survey the functional neuroimaging literature on parietal correlates of goal-directed and reflexive attention, and then discuss how these correlates converge and diverge with the patterns of lateral PPC activity present during episodic retrieval. We conclude by considering theoretical frameworks that focus on the role of attention in episodic retrieval, as well as nonattention-based accounts of PPC activity during retrieval, and we highlight open questions that await further investigation.     

Still no evidence for visual discrimination learning: A reply to Lett

Neither of the points made by Lett (1977) regarding the data from my experiments (Roberts, 1976) can be taken as evidence of visual discrimination learning with a 1-min delay of reward. If it is concluded that the Lett Group of my second experiment improved over blocks of trials but the other three groups tested in my experiments did not, this can lead only to the conclusion that rats in my Lett Group and in Lett's original experiment (Lett, 1974) improved on the basis of odor cues and not associations between chamber brightness and reward. The significantly higher frequency of initial choices of the black chamber found for black-rewarded animals over white-rewarded animals is shown to result from differential rates of stimulus satiation for animals whose initial chamber preferences agree or disagree with their designated S+.     

Treating connectionism properly: Reflections on Smolensky

Summary In this essay, I undertake to examine the principal theses of Paul Smolensky's 1988Behavioral and Brain Sciences target article, On the proper treatment of connectionism, from the point of view of the methodology and epistemology of science, that is, the philosophical theory of theories in general. After exploring the instrumentalist and realist views of the relationships between micro- and macrotheories on their home ground in the natural sciences, the procedures by which a phenomenally described cognitive task is prepared for symbolic or subsymbolic modeling, and the contrast between the deliberate conscious reasoning processes of a novice and intuitive behavior of an expert in solving a given family of cognitive problems, I argue that although Smolensky is right about what it would take for connectionist subsymbolic models to relate to symbolic models as micro- to macrotheories, he is wrong in concluding that they do. On the contrary, it would be something of a miracle if the idealized nomological structure of the behavior of stochastic patterns of activity over large numbers of subsymbolic units in a connectionist machine corresponded even approximately to the nomological structure of the conceptual level behavior of a Von Neumann computer running off a program whose syntax had been explicitly designed to structurally operationalize a determinate fragment of intentional semantics — unless, of course, the connectionist machine had been deliberately constructed to implement the symbol processor in the first place.I conclude that the proper treatment of connectionism is to be found among the blandly ecumenical proposals for irenic cooperation and division of labor that Smolensky considers and rejects.     

Effects of divided attention at encoding and retrieval: Further data

Division of attention (DA) at the time of learning has large detrimental effects on subsequent memory performance, but DA at retrieval has much smaller effects (Baddeley, Lewis, Eldridge, & Thomson, 1984, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, 518–540; Craik, Govoni, Naveh-Benjamin, & Anderson, 1996, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 125, 159–180). Experiment 1 confirmed the relatively small effects of DA on retrieval and also showed that retrieval operations do consume processing resources. The experiment also found that the effect is not attributable to a trade-off in performance with the concurrent task or to recognition decisions made on the basis of familiarity judgments. Participants made levels-of-processing (LOP) judgments during encoding to check whether deeper semantic judgments were differentially vulnerable to the effects of DA. In fact DA did not interact with LOP. Experiment 2 explored reports that the comparatively slight effect of DA on recognition accuracy is accompanied by a compensatory increase in recognition latency (Baddeley et al., 1984). The experiment replicated findings that neither DA nor differential emphasis between recognition and a concurrent continuous reaction time (CRT) task affected recognition accuracy, but also found evidence for a lawful trade-off in decision latencies between recognition and CRT performance. Further analysis showed that the relationship between response rates on the two tasks was well described by a linear function, and that this function was demonstrated by the majority of individual participants. It is concluded that the small effect of DA on recognition performance is attributable to a trade-off within the recognition task itself; accuracy is maintained by a compensatory increase in decision latency.     

Development of Mathematical Knowledge in Young Children: Attentional Skill and the Use of Inversion

The principle of inversion, that a + b ? b must equal a, is a fundamental property of arithmetic, but many children fail to apply it in symbolic contexts through 10 years of age. We explore three hypotheses relating to the use of inversion that stem from a model proposed by Siegler and Araya (2005 Siegler , R. S. , &; Araya , R. ( 2005 ). A computational model of conscious and unconscious strategy discovery . In R. V. Kail (Ed.), Advances in child development and behavior (pp. 1 – 42 ). New York , NY : Elsevier .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Hypothesis 1 is that greater calculational skill is related to greater use of inversion. Hypothesis 2 is that greater attentional skill is related to greater use of inversion. Hypothesis 3 is that the relation between attentional skill and the use of inversion is particularly strong among children with high skill in calculation. We found suggestive evidence for Hypothesis 2 and clear evidence for Hypothesis 3, indicating that for children who are strong at calculation, attentional flexibility is related to use of inversion.     

Bindings in working memory: The role of object-based attention

Over the past decade, it has been debated whether retaining bindings in working memory (WM) requires more attention than retaining constituent features, focusing on domain-general attention and space-based attention. Recently, we proposed that retaining bindings in WM needs more object-based attention than retaining constituent features (Shen, Huang, & Gao, 2015, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, doi: 10.1037/xhp0000018). However, only unitized visual bindings were examined; to establish the role of object-based attention in retaining bindings in WM, more emperical evidence is required. We tested 4 new bindings that had been suggested requiring no more attention than the constituent features in the WM maintenance phase: The two constituent features of binding were stored in different WM modules (cross-module binding, Experiment 1), from auditory and visual modalities (cross-modal binding, Experiment 2), or temporally (cross-time binding, Experiments 3) or spatially (cross-space binding, Experiments 4–6) separated. In the critical condition, we added a secondary object feature-report task during the delay interval of the change-detection task, such that the secondary task competed for object-based attention with the to-be-memorized stimuli. If more object-based attention is required for retaining bindings than for retaining constituent features, the secondary task should impair the binding performance to a larger degree relative to the performance of constituent features. Indeed, Experiments 1–6 consistently revealed a significantly larger impairment for bindings than for the constituent features, suggesting that object-based attention plays a pivotal role in retaining bindings in WM.     

Predictive visual search: Role of environmental regularities in the learning of context cues

Repeatedly searching through invariant spatial arrangements in visual search displays leads to the buildup of memory about these displays (contextual-cueing effect). In the present study, we investigate (1) whether contextual cueing is influenced by global statistical properties of the task and, if so, (2) whether these properties increase the overall strength (asymptotic level) or the temporal development (speed) of learning. Experiment 1a served as baseline against which we tested the effects of increased or decreased proportions of repeated relative to nonrepeated displays (Experiments 1b and 1c, respectively), thus manipulating the global statistical properties of search environments. Importantly, probability variations were achieved by manipulating the number of nonrepeated (baseline) displays so as to equate the total number of repeated displays across experiments. In Experiment 1d, repeated and nonrepeated displays were presented in longer streaks of trials, thus establishing a stable environment of sequences of repeated displays. Our results showed that the buildup of contextual cueing was expedited in the statistically rich Experiments 1b and 1d, relative to the baseline Experiment 1a. Further, contextual cueing was entirely absent when repeated displays occurred in the minority of trials (Experiment 1c). Together, these findings suggest that contextual cueing is modulated by observers’ assumptions about the reliability of search environments.     

Death anxiety: A hidden factor in countertransference hate

We suggest that when diffucult patients attack our grandiosity and sense of self, we are vulnerable to countertransference anxieties similar, if not identical, to the kind existentialists refer to as ontological. The latter refers specifically to a threat to our psychological equilibrium and is meant to describe the utter ambivalence we associate with death anxiety. In this paper, we are proposing the presence, in certain therapeutic situations, of just such counter-transference reactions to so-called aversive patients. We believe that terms like aversive, obnoxious, or impossible are professional euphemisms used to mask the degree of anxiety we often feel, and that there is a collusion present both within and without our profession, especially in psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic centers, which keeps us from exploring death-related issues within ourselves as well as in our patients.He is Director of Psychological Services at the Parkside Weight Loss Clinic, an interdisciplinary eating disorders program affiliated with the Lutheran General Health Care System.     

Phenomenological constraints: a problem for radical enactivism

This paper does two things. Firstly, it clarifies the way that phenomenological data is meant to constrain cognitive science according to enactivist thinkers. Secondly, it points to inconsistencies in the ‘Radical Enactivist’ handling of this issue, so as to explicate the commitments that enactivists need to make in order to tackle the explanatory gap. I begin by sketching the basic features of enactivism in sections 1–2, focusing upon enactive accounts of perception. I suggest that enactivist ideas here rely heavily upon the endorsement of a particular explanatory constraint that I call the structural resemblance constraint (SRC), according to which the structure of our phenomenology ought to be mirrored in our cognitive science. Sections 3–5 delineate the nature of, and commitment to, SRC amongst enactivists, showing SRC’s warrant and implications. The paper then turns to Hutto and Myin’s (2013) handling of SRC in sections 6–7, highlighting irregularities within their programme for Radical Enactivism on this issue. Despite seeming to favour SRC, I argue that Radical Enactivism’s purported compatibility with the narrow (brain-bound) supervenience of perceptual experience is in fact inconsistent with SRC, given Hutto and Myin’s phenomenological commitments. I argue that enactivists more broadly ought to resist such a concessionary position if they wish to tackle the explanatory gap, for it is primarily the abidance to SRC that ensures progress is made here. Section 8 then concludes the paper with a series of open questions to enactivists, inviting further justification of the manner in which they apply SRC.     

Calling the beautiful game ugly: A response to Davis

In a previous article (Kretchmar 2005 Kretchmar, S. 2005. Game flaws. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, XXXII(1): 36–48.  [Google Scholar]), I identified problems in a certain species of games and traced these harms to something I called a ‘game flaw’. Unfortunately, ‘the beautiful game’ is a member of that species. I say it is unfortunate because Paul Davis (2006 Davis, P. 2006. Game strengths. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, XXXIII(1): 50–66.  [Google Scholar]), when taking me to task for providing an argument that, in his terms, was ‘not especially compelling’, focused on the game of soccer (hereafter, football). The issue over which we contended is one of ‘time management’– that is, how game initiation, duration and closure are structured. I suggest that two basic methods for managing such requirements are available. Games take place during a stipulated amount of time or for a specified number of events. In my original article, I identified four fundamental problems that may accompany time-regulated games. In this essay, I attempt to fortify those claims against Davis's criticisms.     

Imagining the near and far future: The role of location familiarity

Plausible personal events envisioned as occurring in the near future tend to be reported as more vivid than those set in the far future. Why is this? The present set of three experiments identified one’s familiarity with the location in which the event is placed as critical in this regard. Specifically, Experiment 1 demonstrated that amongst a wide range of phenomenological characteristics, clarity of location appears to drive the overall difference in vividness between events imagined to take place in the near and the far future. Experiments 2 and 3 were designed to further elucidate this finding. Experiment 2 demonstrated that near future events are more likely than far future events to be imagined in familiar locations. Experiment 3 showed that future events set in familiar locations tend to be imagined with greater clarity than those set in unfamiliar locations. The results of all three experiments converge on the conclusion that the difference in vividness of events imagined as occurring in the near and far future is mediated by one’s familiarity with the location in which the event is imagined to occur.