Author Correction: Supervaluation-Style Truth Without Supervaluations

Journal of Philosophical Logic - The original version of the article unfortunately contained a mistake. In the Acknowledgments section of the original version of the article, the grant number of...     

The Ideological Foundations of Economic Protectionism: Authoritarianism,Social Dominance Orientation,and the Moderating Role of Political Involvement

Even though economic globalization and foreign trade are major topics in the political discourse of most societies and negative attitudes toward international trade are prevalent, there is a lack of research investigating the ideological roots of protectionist preferences from a psychological perspective. In the present research, we examined the implications of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) for trade attitudes. Using data from two nationally representative samples from the United States (Study 1) and Germany (Study 2), we found that RWA predicted protectionist attitudes above and beyond economic self-interest. Furthermore, we found that the relationship between RWA and opposition to international trade was moderated by political involvement. The association of SDO with protectionist attitudes was inconsistent across the two studies and was not moderated by political involvement. Taken together, these results emphasize the importance of basic ideological orientations and the psychological dispositions they reflect in explaining public attitudes toward international trade.     

Precise Worlds for Certain Minds: An Ecological Perspective on the Relational Self in Autism

Topoi - Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) presents a challenge to social and relational accounts of the self, precisely because it is broadly seen as a disorder impacting social relationships. Many...     

Priming visual face-processing mechanisms: electrophysiological evidence

Accumulated evidence from electrophysiology and neuroimaging suggests that face perception involves extrastriate visual mechanisms specialized in processing physiognomic features and building a perceptual representation that is categorically distinct and can be identified by face-recognition units. In the present experiment, we recorded event-related brain potentials in order to explore possible contextual influences on the activity of this perceptual mechanism. Subjects were first exposed to pairs of small shapes, which did not elicit any face-specific brain activity. The same stimuli, however, elicited face-specific brain activity after subjects saw them embedded in schematic faces, which probably primed the subjects to interpret the shapes as schematic eyes. No face-specific activity was observed when objects rather than faces were used to form the context. We conclude that the activity of face-specific extrastriate perceptual mechanisms can be modulated by contextual constraints that determine the significance of the visual input.     

Memory characteristics of recently imagined events and real events experienced previously

In two experiments, we evaluated the memory characteristics of real and imagined events as they changed over time. Memories of real events were richer than memories of imagined events, and memories of recent events were richer than of events from a week earlier. These differences interacted such that memories of real events performed in week 1 were very similar to memories of events that were imagined in week 2. Source monitoring was tested and implications for the repressed or recovered memory debate are considered.     

Word frequency of irrelevant speech distractors affects serial recall

In this study, participants memorized frequent or rare target words in silence or while ignoring frequent or rare distractor words. Distractor words impaired recall performance, but low-frequency distractor words caused more impairment than did high-frequency distractor words. We demonstrate how to solve the identifiability problem for Schweickert's (1993) multinomial processing tree model of immediate recall, and then use this model to show that irrelevant speech affected both the probability with which intact target word representations were available for serial recall and the probability of successful reconstruction of item identities based on degraded short-term memory traces. However, the type of irrelevant speech--low-versus high-frequency words--selectively affected the probability of intact target word representations. These results are consistent with an explanation of the irrelevant speech effect within the framework proposed by Cowan (1995), and they pose problems for other explanations of the irrelevant speech effect. The analyses also confirm the validity of Schweickert's process model.     

Model inference or model selection: discussion of Klugkist, Laudy, and Hoijtink (2005)

I. Klugkist, O. Laudy, and H. Hoijtink (2005) presented a Bayesian approach to analysis of variance models with inequality constraints. Constraints may play 2 distinct roles in data analysis. They may represent prior information that allows more precise inferences regarding parameter values, or they may describe a theory to be judged against the data. In the latter case, the authors emphasized the use of Bayes factors and posterior model probabilities to select the best theory. One difficulty is that interpretation of the posterior model probabilities depends on which other theories are included in the comparison. The posterior distribution of the parameters under an unconstrained model allows one to quantify the support provided by the data for inequality constraints without requiring the model selection framework.     

Assessing the executive function deficits of patients with Parkinson's disease: utility of the Tower of London-Drexel

The aim of the study was to investigate the utility of the Tower of London-Drexel (TOLDX) in assessing the executive deficits associated with Parkinson's disease (PD). We sought to determine whether the TOLDX would differentiate between (a) patients with PD and healthy control participants (HCP), (b) demented and nondemented patients, and (c) depressed and nondepressed patients. A new TOLDX score, stimulus bound, was introduced to assess utilization behaviors. Furthermore, the convergent and divergent validity of the TOLDX was examined. The TOLDX total move, rule and time violation, and stimulus-bound scores of patients with PD significantly differed from the HCP. Demented and nondemented patients also differed significantly in their TOLDX performance, with the stimulus-bound score being the most significantly differentiating score. However, the depressed and nondepressed patients did not differ in their TOLDX performance. Support was found for the convergent and divergent validity of the TOLDX. The clinical and theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.     

The contribution of the insula to motor aspects of speech production: a review and a hypothesis

Based on clinical and functional imaging data, the left anterior insula has been assumed to support prearticulatory functions of speech motor control such as the "programming" of vocal tract gestures. In order to further elucidate this model, a recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of our group (Riecker, Ackermann, Wildgruber, Dogil, & Grodd, 200) investigated both overt (aloud) and covert (silent) production of highly overlearned word strings ("automatic speech"), based on the suggestion that "inner speech" might provide a "window" into preparatory motor activities (Jeannerod, 1994). As a control condition, subjects were asked to reproduce a nonlyrical tune. In contrast to hemodynamic responses within motor cortex and cerebellum, activation of the intrasylvian cortex turned out to be bound to overt task performance. Rather than prearticulatory processes, these findings suggest the left insula to contribute to the actual coordination of the up to 100 muscles engaged in articulation and phonation. Conceivably, the association of speech production with intrasylvian cortex might have evolved within the framework of phylogenetically older connections between the insula and limbic structures, on the one hand, and nonspeech functions of the upper midline musculature such as swallowing, on the other. Whereas (overt) speech tasks predominantly elicit activation within left anterior insula, reproduction of a nonlyrical tune yielded an opposite response pattern. Conceivably, the opposite distributional pattern of speaking and singing at the level of intrasylvian cortex reflects operation of the two hemispheres across different time domains ("double filtering by frequency theory": left hemisphere=segmental information, right hemisphere=intonation contours of verbal utterances and musical melodies; ). In line with this suggestion, a further study of our group (Ackermann et al., 2001) provided first evidence that differential hemispheric filtering might be bound to insular cortex.