Simultaneous and independent acquisition of multisensory and unisensory associations

Although humans are almost constantly exposed to stimuli from multiple sensory modalities during daily life, the processes by which we learn to integrate information from multiple senses to acquire knowledge of multisensory objects are not well understood. Here, we present results of a novel audio-visual statistical learning procedure where participants are passively exposed to a rapid serial presentation of arbitrary audio-visual pairings (comprised of artificial/ synthetic audio and visual stimuli). Following this exposure, participants were tested with a two-interval forced-choice procedure in which their degree of familiarity with the experienced audio-visual pairings was evaluated against novel audio-visual combinations drawn from the same stimulus set. Our results show that subjects acquire knowledge of visual-visual, audio-audio, and audio-visual stimulus associations and that the learning of these types of associations occurs in an independent manner.     

Absence makes the adaptations grow fonder: proportion of time apart from partner, male sexual psychology, and sperm competition in humans (Homo sapiens)

Sperm competition occurs when the sperm of multiple males concurrently occupy the reproductive tract of a female and compete to fertilize an egg. We used a questionnaire to investigate psychological responses to the risk of sperm competition for 237 men in committed, sexual relationships. As predicted, a man who spends a greater (relative to a man who spends a lesser) proportion of time apart from his partner since the couple's last copulation reported (a) greater sexual interest in his partner, (b) greater distress in response to his partner's sexual rejection, and (c) greater sexual persistence in response to his partner's sexual rejection. All effects were independent of total time since the couple's last copulation and the man's relationship satisfaction. Discussion addresses limitations of the current research and situates the current results within the broader comparative literature on adaptation to sperm competition.     

Christology and Anti‐Humanism

This article engages the current anti‐humanist or post‐human ethos from the point of view of Christology. Invoking Alain Badiou's claim that “the man of humanism has not survived the twentieth century”, it argues that the death of “the man of humanism” ushers in a situation in which the Christian proposal can be clarified in two crucial ways: (1) Christology is the core of Christian anthropology, and therefore must be the first and last word of the Church's formulation of her answer to the question that is every human life; (2) there is no neutral “human” ground in which the Church can carry on a discourse about “humanism” or “natural law”. The current situation thus forces a theological decision: either the death of man or the God‐Man.