Addressing moral problems through practical reasoning

In this paper, following the work of Hare, we consider moral reasoning not as the application of moral norms and principles, but as reasoning about what ought to be done in a particular situation, with moral norms perhaps emerging from this reasoning. We model this situated reasoning drawing on our previous work on argumentation schemes, here set in the context of Action-Based Alternating Transition Systems. We distinguish what prudentially ought to be done from what morally ought to be done, consider what legislation might be appropriate and characterise the differences between morally correct, morally praiseworthy and morally excusable actions. We also describe an implementation which simulates this reasoning and discuss some issues arising from the simulation.     

Children reorient using the left/right sense of coloured landmarks at 18-24 months

In previous studies, children disoriented in small enclosures used room shape, but not wall colours, to find hidden objects. Their reorientation was said to depend solely on a "geometric module" informationally encapsulated with respect to colour. We argue that previous studies did not fully evaluate children's use of colour owing to a bias in the enclosures' design. In this study, disoriented 18-24 month olds searched for toys in small square enclosures with two blue and two white walls. Children successfully reoriented using wall colour. This shows that they can make location judgments based on the left/right sense of the colours of adjoining landmarks. Performance was no different when symmetric colourful shapes were added to walls, but improved with asymmetric shapes which could be used without left/right judgments. The relatively poor use of colour in previous studies may be explained partly by a bias in their design, and partly by children's limited ability to discriminate the left/right sense of nongeometric features.     

Developmental trajectories for spatial frames of reference in Williams syndrome

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder associated with severe visuocognitive impairment. Individuals with WS also report difficulties with everyday wayfinding. To study the development of body-, environment-, and object-based spatial frames of reference in WS, we tested 45 children and adults with WS on a search task in which the participant and a spatial array are moved with respect to each other. Although individuals with WS showed a marked delay, like young controls they demonstrated independent, additive use of body- and environment-based frames of reference. Crucially, object-based (intrinsic) representations based on local landmarks within the array were only marginally used even by adults with WS, whereas in typical development these emerge at 5 years. Deficits in landmark use are consistent with wayfinding difficulties in WS, and may also contribute to problems with basic localization, since in typical development landmark-based representations supplement those based on the body and on self-motion. Difficulties with inhibition or mental rotation may be further components in the impaired ability to use the correct reference frame in WS.     

Semantic interference and associative facilitation from words presented in rapid serial visual presentation

Semantic interference in picture naming is readily obtained when categorically related distractor words are displayed with picture targets; however, this is not typically the case when both primes and targets are words. Researchers have argued that to obtain semantic interference for word primes and targets, the prime must be shown for a sufficient duration, prime processing must be made difficult, and participants must attend to the primes. In this article, we used a novel procedure for prime presentation to investigate semantic interference in word naming. Primes were presented as the last word of a rapid serial visual presentation stream, with the target following 600-1,200 msec later. Semantic interference was observed for categorically related targets, whereas facilitation was found for associatively related targets.     

Emotion perception from dynamic and static body expressions in point-light and full-light displays

Research on emotion recognition has been dominated by studies of photographs of facial expressions. A full understanding of emotion perception and its neural substrate will require investigations that employ dynamic displays and means of expression other than the face. Our aims were: (i) to develop a set of dynamic and static whole-body expressions of basic emotions for systematic investigations of clinical populations, and for use in functional-imaging studies; (ii) to assess forced-choice emotion-classification performance with these stimuli relative to the results of previous studies; and (iii) to test the hypotheses that more exaggerated whole-body movements would produce (a) more accurate emotion classification and (b) higher ratings of emotional intensity. Ten actors portrayed 5 emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness) at 3 levels of exaggeration, with their faces covered. Two identical sets of 150 emotion portrayals (full-light and point-light) were created from the same digital footage, along with corresponding static images of the 'peak' of each emotion portrayal. Recognition tasks confirmed previous findings that basic emotions are readily identifiable from body movements, even when static form information is minimised by use of point-light displays, and that full-light and even point-light displays can convey identifiable emotions, though rather less efficiently than dynamic displays. Recognition success differed for individual emotions, corroborating earlier results about the importance of distinguishing differences in movement characteristics for different emotional expressions. The patterns of misclassifications were in keeping with earlier findings on emotional clustering. Exaggeration of body movement (a) enhanced recognition accuracy, especially for the dynamic point-light displays, but notably not for sadness, and (b) produced higher emotional-intensity ratings, regardless of lighting condition, for movies but to a lesser extent for stills, indicating that intensity judgments of body gestures rely more on movement (or form-from-movement) than static form information.     

The development of reaching and looking preferences in infants to objects of different sizes.

Reaching and looking preferences and movement kinematics were recorded in 5-15-month-old infants, who were divided into 3 age groups. Infants were presented with pairs of cylinders of 3 different diameters: small (1-cm diameter), medium (2.5-cm diameter), and large (6-cm diameter). Whereas infants between 5 and 12 months of age showed a preference for looking first at the large object, a significant preference for reaching to smaller (graspable) objects was observed in 81/2-12-month-old infants. Kinematic measures suggest that the onset of object-oriented action requires a slowing down of the reach and an extended "homing-in" phase. The divergent looking and reaching preferences in infants at different ages may reflect a dissociation during development of visual processing streams subserving object-related action from those related to visual orienting.     

Emotion regulation through execution,observation, and imagery of emotional movements

According to Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis, emotions are generated by conveying the current state of the body to the brain through interoceptive and proprioceptive afferent input. The resulting brain activation patterns represent unconscious emotions and correlate with subjective feelings. This proposition implies a corollary that the deliberate control of motor behavior could regulate feelings. We tested this possibility, hypothesizing that engaging in movements associated with a certain emotion would enhance that emotion and/or the corresponding valence. Furthermore, because motor imagery and observation are thought to activate the same mirror-neuron network engaged during motor execution, they might also activate the same emotional processing circuits, leading to similar emotional effects. Therefore, we measured the effects of motor execution, motor imagery and observation of whole-body dynamic expressions of emotions (happiness, sadness, fear) on affective state. All three tasks enhanced the corresponding affective state, indicating their potential to regulate emotions.     

The Need for Justification

Some series can go on indefinitely, others cannot, and epistemologists want to know in which class to place epistemic chains. Is it sensible or nonsensical to speak of a proposition or belief that is justified by another proposition or belief, ad infinitum? In large part the answer depends on what we mean by “justification.” Epistemologists have failed to find a definition on which everybody agrees, and some have even advised us to stop looking altogether. In spite of this, the present essay submits a few candidate definitions. It argues that, although not giving the final word, these candidates tell us something about the possibility of infinite epistemic chains. And it shows that they can short‐circuit a debate about doxastic justification.     

Understanding Change in Recycling and Littering Behavior Across a School Social Network

Understanding how communities change requires examining how individuals’ beliefs and behaviors are shaped by those around them. This paper investigates behavior change across a large social network following a recycling intervention in a New Zealand high school community. We used a mixed methods design, combining focus group data with social network analysis from two waves of a questionnaire that measured friendship networks; recycling and littering behaviors; perceived behavioral norms; and teacher, friend, and parent encouragement for these behaviors. Recycling behavior increased significantly over the course of our study. Supporting the importance of social networks in this context, both littering and recycling behavior showed clear social clustering. Further, the degree of change in an individuals’ littering and recycling behavior across time was predicted by friends’ prior behavior. Focus group data provided insight into students’ perceptions of social interactions and how these contributed to littering and recycling behavior.