Charles Darwin,Paul MacLean,and the lost origins of “the moral sense”: Some implications for general evolution theory

This paper reports the discovery of a lost part of Charles Darwin's theory of the origins of “the moral sense,” its apparent corroboration by what are in effect lost findings by brain researcher Paul MacLean, and the implications of these findings for the advancement of General Evolution Theory and humanity.     

The choreography of everyday life—a missing brick in the general evolution theory

The “choreography of everyday life refers to the existence of rules of daily life, correspondingly to those of dances: the rules impose order upon individual behavior beyond the level of pure improvisation. The fact that acts of everyday life repeat themselves supports the idea that there exist some mechanisms generating order to daily practices. The replicative model of evolution is a candidate to explain this process of routinization. At the beginning of a replicative cycle behavioral patterns might change radically. In the course of time integrative and competitive selective forces start working. Finally some established rules, choreography, determining daily practices will emerge. In this mature phase identical replication takes place.     

Did the Chinese Have a Change of Heart?

In their "The Prevalence of Mind-Body Dualism in Early China," Slingerland and Chudek use a statistical analysis of the early Chinese corpus to argue for Weak Folk Dualism (WFD). We raise three methodological objections to their analysis. First, the change over time that they find is largely driven by genre. Second, the operationalization of WFD is potentially misleading. And, third, dating the texts they use is extremely controversial. We conclude with some positive remarks.     

Did she mean to do it? Acquiring a folk theory of intentionality

The ability to both identify and explain others’ intentional acts is fundamental for successful social interaction. In two cross-sectional studies, we investigated 3- to 9-year-olds’ (n = 148) understanding of the folk concept of intentionality, using three types of intentionality measures. The relationship between this type of reasoning and false belief and interpretive mind understanding was also examined. Judgment of the appropriateness of an explanation was based on adult responses (n = 20). Overall, the results indicated that the ability to both identify and appropriately explain a range of intentional acts does not fully emerge until 7 years of age or later. The pattern of explanations revealed the gradual development of a folk concept of intentionality. Preschool- and early school-age children focused on the protagonists’ desires and actions, whereas 8- and 9-year-olds and adults were more likely to reference the protagonists’ awareness and skills.     

Darwin Puzzled? A Computer-assisted Analysis of Language in the Origin of Species

The aesthetically optimistic view of life in the last paragraph of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species contrasts with the evidence in his autobiography of a supposed perceptive colour blindness to the magnificence of nature. Accepting the theory of evolution as one of the scientific theories that has contributed to disenchantment, my aim is to delve into the Darwinian perception of natural beauty and solve this contrast of perceptions within the framework of the Weberian concept of “disenchantment of the world.” To do this, I have carried out a computer-assisted study of Darwin’s language focusing on the frequency of aesthetic-emotional and religious adjectives and adverbs in the six editions of the Origin. A semantic analysis of the lexicon shows that, although disenchanted, Darwin perceives nature as aesthetically enhanced. I arrive at the conclusion that Darwin’s alleged colour blindness does not come from a loss of his capacity to aesthetically perceive nature, but from his loss of religious belief.

     

What's in a word? A parametric study of semantic influences on visual word recognition

To what extent does semantic information play a functional role in visual word recognition? Theories of word recognition vary in the importance assigned to semantic information in visual lexical decision, with past research suggesting that the nature of the foils is a crucial determinant of semantic reliance. Here, we explored the conditions under which semantic variables influence lexical decision. Normal readers performed visual lexical decision tasks in which imageability and semantic priming were manipulated, with nonword foils varying systematically in their orthographic and phonological similarity to the real words. The effects of imageability and semantic priming increased in magnitude as nonword foils became progressively more wordlike. These findings provide a clear illustration of the flexible use of semantic information to support normal visual word recognition.     

Do infants have a sense of fairness?

Two experiments examined infants' expectations about how an experimenter should distribute resources and rewards to other individuals. In Experiment 1, 19-month-olds expected an experimenter to divide two items equally, as opposed to unequally, between two individuals. The infants held no particular expectation when the individuals were replaced with inanimate objects, or when the experimenter simply removed covers in front of the individuals to reveal the items (instead of distributing them). In Experiment 2, 21-month-olds expected an experimenter to give a reward to each of two individuals when both had worked to complete an assigned chore, but not when one of the individuals had done all the work while the other played. The infants held this expectation only when the experimenter could determine through visual inspection who had worked and who had not. Together, these results provide converging evidence that infants in the 2nd year of life already possess context-sensitive expectations relevant to fairness.     

Is spoken duration a sufficient explanation of the word length effect?

The word length effect is one of the cornerstones of trace decay plus rehearsal models (TDR) of memory. Words of long spoken duration take longer to rehearse than words of short spoken duration and as such suffer more decay and are thus less well recalled. The current experiment manipulates both syllable length and spoken duration within words of fixed syllable length in an aim to test the assumptions of the TDR model. Our procedures produced robust effects of both syllable length and spoken duration in four measures of the time it takes to pronounce the different types of words. Serial recall for the same materials produced robust syllable effects, but no duration effects.     

Is spoken duration a sufficient explanation of the word length effect?

The word length effect is one of the cornerstones of trace decay plus rehearsal models (TDR) of memory. Words of long spoken duration take longer to rehearse than words of short spoken duration and as such suffer more decay and are thus less well recalled. The current experiment manipulates both syllable length and spoken duration within words of fixed syllable length in an aim to test the assumptions of the TDR model. Our procedures produced robust effects of both syllable length and spoken duration in four measures of the time it takes to pronounce the different types of words. Serial recall for the same materials produced robust syllable effects, but no duration effects.     

Did the Market Depress Happiness in the US?

Robert Lane is a seasoned critic of American consumer society. His latest book summarizes many of the arguments brought up earlier and contributes new data about developments in income, companionship and happiness in the USA between 1972 and 1994. Lane notes a considerable rise in incomes over these years and claims that companionship and happiness have declined. He attributes this decline to market forces that emphasize money at the expense of intimate bonds, resulting in a weakened capacity to deal with stress.This review challenges two of the book's hypotheses. First, it shows that happiness did not decline in the USA in these years, but was actually quite stable. Second, it mitigates the assertion that companionship has dwindled and notes that money making and companionship are not necessarily antithetical.Still, Lane could be right. Possibly market forces did depress happiness and possibly that loss was offset by improvements in other fields, like increased freedom or better health care, such as better treatment for mental problems. If so, Lane's message is that Americans could have been happier than they ultimately were.     

How early does morpholexical reading develop in readers of a shallow orthography?

In this research, lexical and morpholexical reading in Italian children ages 8 to 10 years were investigated. Children and control adults were administered two tasks on words and pseudowords: visual lexical decision and naming. Word frequency effects in both lexical decision and naming were found in both children and adults. For all age groups pseudowords made up of roots and derivational suffixes were decided more frequently as possible words and were named more quickly and accurately than matched pseudowords with no morphological constituency. These results show that morpholexical reading is available and efficient in young readers of a shallow orthography, with similar patterns in children and adults.     

Relating familiarity-based recognition and the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: Detecting a word’s recency in the absence of access to the word

After viewing a list of single-word answers to general knowledge questions, participants received a test list containing general knowledge questions, some of whose answers were studied, and some of whose were not. Regardless of whether participants could provide the answer to a test question, they rated the likelihood that the answer had been studied. Across three experiments,participants consistently gave higher ratings to unanswerable questions whose answers were studied than to those whose answers were not studied. This discrimination ability persisted in the absence of reported tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states and when no information about the answer could be articulated. Studying a question's answer did not increase the likelihood of a later TOT state for that question, yet participants gave higher recognition ratings when in a TOT state than when not in a TOT state. A possible theoretical mechanism for the present pattern is discussed, as are relevant theories of familiarity-based recognition and of the TOT phenomenon.     

Is age kinder to the initially more able?: differential ageing of a verbal ability in the Healthy Old People in Edinburgh study

Studies that examine whether there is differential age-related decline in intelligence test scores according to initial cognitive status, social class and education are reviewed. We tested the differential ageing hypothesis which states that decline in ability scores over time will be lower in those with superior mental ability, more education and higher social class at the time of original testing. 387 healthy old people were tested at baseline and followed up 4 years later. The National Adult Reading Test (NART) was administered on both occasions. NART-estimated IQ fell by a mean of 2.1 points over 4 years (p<0.001). Subjects in higher social class categories had higher NART scores overall (p<0.001), and had smaller NART decrements over 4 years. Ex-professional and -secretarial groups fell by a mean of 1.4 points in this period, versus 3.2 points for skilled manual, semi-skilled and unskilled groups. In addition, those who fell more in NART were older (p=0.001), were less educated (p<0.001), and had lower NART (p<0.001) scores at baseline. In summary, those with higher baseline ability, in higher social class groups, with more education and who are younger are relatively protected from decline in this verbal ability with age. Possible mechanisms of differential decline in this verbal intelligence with age are discussed.