The Measurement of Cognitive Complexity and Its Relationship With Political Extremism

Three studies tested the relationship between political extremism and cognitive complexity in an adult sample (N = 135), a sample of students (N = 145), and a sample of political party members (N = 47). According to value pluralism theory, advocates of extreme ideologies exhibit low levels of cognitive complexity. Context theory, in contrast, states that extremists think in a more complex and sophisticated way about politics. In accordance with context theory, significant positive correlations between cognitive complexity and extremist ideology were found in all samples. The results of these studies also revealed weak correlations among the cognitive complexity instruments used in previous research. Problems concerning the measurement of cognitive style and cognitive complexity are discussed.     

Corroborating biased indicators: Global and local agreement among objective and subjective estimates of printed word frequency

The internal validity of several types of experiments in experimental psychology and neuroscience depends in part on the possibility of controlling or manipulating critical lexical variables such as word frequency of occurrence. Two ways of estimating this variable are (1) objective frequency counts and (2) subjective ratings of word frequency. Each method produces estimates that generally agree (i.e., they are highly correlated) but that disagree substantially concerning the relative frequency of a number of words. To investigate this issue more closely, the global and local agreement of subjective frequency estimates was examined in detail for a pool of 6,202 words drawn from the OMNILEX database of French words (Desrochers, 2006; www.omnilex.uottawa .ca). The results indicated that objective and subjective frequencies are strongly correlated, subjective frequencies share a significant amount of bias variance with other lexical characteristics (e.g., imageability), and the codeterminants of subjective frequency are in an antagonistic relationship with one another. The implications of these results for the selection of lexical stimuli are discussed, and multiple variables to aid in item selection are reported. Supplemental materials for this study may be downloaded from brm.psychonomic-journals.org/ content/supplemental.     

Genetic and environmental etiology of emotional and social behaviors in 5-month-old infant twins: influence of the social context

The study investigated the genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in measures of socioemotional reactivity and emotion regulation with a sample of 115 monozygotic (MZ) and 156 dizygotic (DZ) 5-month-old twin pairs. Twins' zygosity was determined by a combination of DNA typing and physical similarity. Twins' behaviors (motor activity level, social gaze, gaze aversion, positive expression, negative expression, and self-comfort) were videotaped in a laboratory while infants were presented televised sequences of neutral and happy emotional expressions posed by their mother (familiar condition) and a female stranger (unfamiliar condition). Regardless of the social context, the findings based on model-fitting analyses indicated that nonshared environmental influences explained most of the variance of behavioral data. However, there was evidence that motor activity level (an index of emotional arousal) and the latency and frequency of gaze aversion (an index of emotional regulation) were best represented by a model incorporating both additive genetic and nonshared environmental (i.e., AE) influences when infants were exposed to the unfamiliar adult (heritability estimates ranging from 19% to 31%). The results suggest the importance of nonshared environmental influences during early infancy and stress the role of social context for revealing moderate genetic contributions to individual differences in emotional arousal and emotion regulation.     

A Comparison of Two References for Using Knowledge of Performance in a Motor Task

In the present study, the learning of a task in which the goal of the movement was not isomorphic with a specific movement pattern was examined. The subjects' (N = 48) goal in the task was to be both spatially and temporally accurate in reaching 4 targets with a right arm lever movement. After each acquisition trial, the displacement profile of the movement just produced was provided to all subjects as knowledge of performance (KP). The relative effectiveness of 2 possible references, with which subjects could compare the KP, was examined. One of the references examined was knowledge of results (KR), which was provided by reporting the total absolute timing and amplitude errors from the 4 targets. The other reference examined was a criterion template (CT), which was defined as the most efficient movement pattern for reaching the 4 targets. In the feedback display, CT was superimposed on the displacement profile of the movement just produced. A factorial design, in which 2 levels of KR (KR, no KR) were crossed with 2 levels of CT (CT, no CT), produced 4 feedback conditions. After 120 acquisition trials with feedback, immediate and delayed retention tests without feedback and a reacquisition test with KR (20 trials per test) were conducted. Acquisition results indicated that KR was a better reference than CT for per-forming the timing aspect of the movement and for producing the generalized motor program (GMP) associated with the most efficient movement pattern. Delayed retention results showed that KR was also a better reference than CT for learning the most efficient GMP. The calibration strategy undertaken by subjects who were provided with KR during acquisition explains the superiority of the KR reference. The calibration strategy is compared with the pattern-matching activity that was probably undertaken by subjects who had received CT as a reference.     

Some problems with cost-benefit analysis in health care

...Arnold's article is very ambitious. He suggests rules that could be followed in order to decide whether health care should be rationed. He notes that explicit assessments of costs and benefits using the same monetary unit are rarely used. The main reason, it seems to me, is that the method of cost-benefit analysis is relatively difficult to apply in the context of health care. Arnold does not address the difficulties that are related to his approach. Thus, my impression is that the interest of his provocative article lies more in its ability to foster a useful debate than in the methodology itself. In this brief commentary, I will merely list some of the theoretical problems that occurred to me while reading this article....     

Age-related changes in processing auditory stimuli during visual attention: evidence for deficits in inhibitory control and sensory memory.

Age-related declines in attention and cognition have been associated with a difficulty in inhibiting the processing of task-irrelevant information (i.e., the inhibitory deficit hypothesis). However, evidence supporting the inhibitory deficit hypothesis remains equivocal, in part because of complexities in examining the processing of irrelevant stimuli using purely behavioral techniques. The effects of age on the processing of task-irrelevant stimuli were examined using scalp-recorded event-related brain potentials. Participants performed a visual discrimination task while standard and deviant auditory stimuli were presented in the background. Deviant auditory stimuli generated a mismatch negativity (MMN) wave that decreased with age, in part because of an age-related enhancement in sensory-evoked responses. The age-related changes in processing task-irrelevant auditory stimuli are consistent with the inhibitory deficit hypothesis and suggest that impaired inhibitory control of sensory input may play a role in the age-related declines in performance during selective attention tasks.     

Logic or rhetoric in law?

One of the most crucial questions in the philosophy of law deals with the very nature of legal reasoning. Does this reasoning belong to logic or to rhetoric? This debate, increasingly centered on rhetoric, is not merely a question of language use; it covers and indicates a more basic choice between formal legalism — focusing on rational deduction from the law — and pragmatic judiciarism — focusing on reasonable debate in the court. Today, it is necessary to circumscribe the respective fields of logic and rhetoric in the language of law, while showing how they are sometimes complementary in the resolution of legal problems. But, even when we have acknowledged the need for a rhetoric accompanied by logic, we have to define that rhetoric cautiously. I confront a narrow rhetoric, often called argumentation, with a wider one of interrogative nature. There are two conceptions of rationality at stake. Their comparison enables us to raise the question of the foundation of law, as a locus to use arguments, as well as to solve social problems.     

Can subthreshold summation be observed with the Ehrenstein illusion?

Subthreshold summation between physical target lines and illusory contours induced by edges such as those produced in the Kanizsa illusion has been reported in previous studies. Here, we investigated the ability of line-induced illusory contours, using Ehrenstein figures, to produce similar subthreshold summation. In the first experiment, three stimulus conditions were presented. The target line was superimposed on the illusory contour of a four-arm Ehrenstein figure, or the target was presented between two dots (which replaced the arms of the Ehrenstein figure), or the target was presented on an otherwise blank screen (control). Detection of the target line was significantly worse when presented on the illusory contour (on the Ehrenstein figure) than when presented between two dots. This result was consistent for both curved and straight target lines, as well as for a 100 ms presentation duration and unlimited presentation duration. Performance was worst in the control condition. The results for the three stimulus conditions were replicated in a second experiment in which an eight-arm Ehrenstein figure was used to produce a stronger and less ambiguous illusory contour. In the third experiment, the target was either superimposed on the illusory contour, or was located across the central gap (illusory surface) of the Ehrenstein figure, collinear with two arms of the figure. As in the first two experiments, the target was either presented on the Ehrenstein figure, or between dots, or on a blank screen. Detection was better in the dot condition than in the Ehrenstein condition, regardless of whether the target was presented on the illusory contour or collinear with the arms of the Ehrenstein figure. These three experiments demonstrate the ability of reduced spatial uncertainty to facilitate the detection of a target line, but do not provide any evidence for subthreshold summation between a physical target line and the illusory contours produced by an Ehrenstein figure. The incongruence of these results with previous findings on Kanizsa figures is discussed.     

CANTAB explicit memory is less impaired in addicted schizophrenia patients

It has been suggested that in order to sustain the lifestyle of substance abuse, addicted schizophrenia patients would have less negative symptoms, better social skills, and less cognitive impairments. Mounting evidence supports the first two assumptions, but data lack regarding cognition in dual diagnosis schizophrenia. Seventy-six schizophrenia outpatients (DSM-IV) were divided into two groups: with (n = 44) and without (n = 32) a substance use disorder. Motor speed and visuo-spatial explicit memory were investigated using CANTAB. As expected, dual diagnosis patients showed a better cognitive performance. Our results suggest either that substance abuse relieves the cognitive deficits of schizophrenia or that the patients with less cognitive deficits are more prone to substance abuse.