Cerebellar ataxia: quantitative assessment and cybernetic interpretation

To assess neuromotor disorders clinicians often rely on rating scales. Unfortunately, these scales lack the sensitivity and accuracy needed to detect the small changes in motor coordination that reflect the clinical progression of the disease on the basis of which treatment programmes can be adjusted. As a contribution to this topic, the present paper proposes a straightforward kinematic and kinetic analysis of reaching movements of patients with cerebellar ataxia in conjunction with a cybernetic interpretation of the data. The aim of the approach is to capture key deficits in the underlying motor control processes. We suggest that cerebellar ataxia may be characterized by defective feedforward control.     

Personality Profiles and Political Parties

This paper explores relationships between basic personality profiles of voters and their political party preferences. The Italian political system has moved recently from previously extreme, ideologically distinctive parties to form complex coalitions varying around more centrist orientations. Significant evidence was found for the utility of the Five-Factor Model of Personality in distinguishing between voters' expressed preferences, even given this greater subtlety in proposed values and agendas. More than 2,000 Italian voters who self-identified as having voted for new center-left or center-right political coalitions differed systematically in predicted directions on several personality dimensions measured by the Big Five Questionnaire. In the context of the model, center-right voters displayed more Energy and slightly more Conscientiousness than center-left voters, whose dominant personality characteristics were Agreeableness (Friendliness) and Openness; Emotional Stability was unrelated to either group. This relationship between individual differences in personality and political preferences was not influenced by the demographic variables of voters' gender, age, or education. Thus, personality dimensions proved to be stronger predictors of political preference than any of these standard predictor variables. Implications are discussed regarding links among personality, persuasion, power, and politics.     

Self-efficacy pathways to childhood depression

This prospective research analyzed how different facets of perceived self-efficacy operate in concert within a network of sociocognitive influences in childhood depression. Perceived social and academic inefficacy contributed to concurrent and subsequent depression both directly and through their impact on academic achievement, prosocialness, and problem behaviors. In the shorter run, children were depressed over beliefs in their academic inefficacy rather than over their actual academic performances. In the longer run, the impact of a low sense of academic efficacy on depression was mediated through academic achievement, problem behavior, and prior depression. Perceived social inefficacy had a heavier impact on depression in girls than in boys in the longer term. Depression was also more strongly linked over time for girls than for boys.     

Decidability by filtrations for graded normal logics (graded modalities V)

We prove decidability for all of the main graded normal logics, by a notion of filtration suitably conceived for this environment.Presented byJan Zygmunt     

On the relation provable equivalence and on partitions in effectively inseparable sets

We generalize a well-knownSmullyan's result, by showing that any two sets of the kindC _a = {x/ xa} andC _b = {x/ xb} are effectively inseparable (if I b). Then we investigate logical and recursive consequences of this fact (see Introduction).     

Understanding the Complexity of Human Aggression: Affective,Cognitive, and Social Dimensions of Individual Differences in Propensity Toward Aggression

Human aggression is a complex phenomenon operating at multiple levels. Converging evidence distinguishes ‘hot’ aggression, impulsive and emotionally-centered, from ‘cool’ aggression, cognitively based and instrumental. The correspondence of these aggressive response patterns with individual differences in Propensity toward Aggression was investigated. Our data (from 477 Italian adults) map ten of these aggression indicators into the personality space defined by the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality. The quadrant containing most of these variables is defined by Emotional Instability (the negative pole of Emotional Stability) and Hostility (the negative pole of Friendliness). Factor analysis uncovered two factors that accounted for nearly 60 percent of the variance in Propensity toward Aggression: Emotional Responsivity and Positive Evaluation of Violence. Practical implications for issues of health and disease, violence, and interventions for different forms of adults' and children's aggression are outlined.     

Priority monism,dependence and fundamentality

Philosophical Studies - Priority monism (PM) is roughly the view that the universe is the only fundamental object, that is, a concrete object that does not depend on any other concrete object....     

Neighborhood effects in reading aloud: new findings and new challenges for computational models

A word from a dense neighborhood is often read aloud faster than a word from a sparse neighborhood. This advantage is usually attributed to orthography, but orthographic and phonological neighbors are typically confounded. Two experiments investigated the effect of neighborhood density on reading aloud when phonological density was varied while orthographic density was held constant, and vice versa. A phonological neighborhood effect was observed, but not an orthographic one. These results are inconsistent with the predominant role ascribed to orthographic neighbors in accounts of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Consistent with this interpretation, 6 different computational models of reading aloud failed to simulate this pattern of results. The results of the present experiments thus provide a new understanding of some of the processes underlying reading aloud, and new challenges for computational models.     

Verb-noun double dissociation in aphasic lexical impairments: the role of word frequency and imageability

Neurolinguistic studies have provided important evidence regarding the organization of lexical representations and the structure of underlying conceptual knowledge; in particular, it has been shown that the retrieval of verbs and nouns can be damaged selectively. Dissociated lexical damage is proof of an independent mental organization of lexical representations and/or of the underlying processes. The aim of the present study is to estimate the rate of dissociated impairments for nouns and verbs on a large sample of mild to moderate aphasic patients and to investigate the mechanisms underlying such phenomena. In addition, the authors wished to verify to what degree the impairment for nouns and verbs is related to a specific type of language disorder. A confrontation naming task for verbs and nouns was administered to 58 aphasic patients. The major lexical (word frequency and age of acquisition) and semantic variables (familiarity and imageability of the underlying concept) were considered for each noun and verb used in the task. Verbs were distinguished by major functional classes (transitive, intransitive, and ergative verbs). The data collected from this task were analyzed twice: (i) as a group study comparison of major aphasic subgroups and (ii) as a multiple single case study to evaluate the differences on the naming of verbs and nouns and the effect of the lexical semantic variables on each individual patient. The results confirm the existence of dissociated naming impairments of verbs and nouns. Selective impairment of verbs is more frequent (34%) than that of nouns (10%). In many cases, the dissociated pattern of naming impairment disappeared when the effect of the concomitant variables (word frequency and imageability) was removed, but in approximately one-fifth of the cases the noun or verb superiority was preserved. Noun superiority emerged in five of six agrammatic patients. Both the naming of verbs (n = 9) or of nouns (n = 6) could be impaired selectively in fluent aphasic patients. The results lend support to the hypothesis of an independent mental organization of nouns and verbs, but a substantial effect of imageability and word frequency suggests an interaction of the naming impairment with underlying lexical and semantic aspects.     

Sociocognitive self-regulatory mechanisms governing transgressive behavior

This longitudinal research examined a structural model of the self-regulatory mechanisms governing transgressive conduct. Perceived academic and self-regulatory efficacy concurrently and longitudinally deterred transgressiveness both directly and by fostering prosocialness and adherence to moral self-sanctions for harmful conduct. The impact of perceived social self-efficacy was mediated through prosocialness. Moral disengagement and prosocialness affected transgressiveness through the mediating influence of irascible affectivity and hostile rumination. Ruminative affectivity, in turn, both concurrently and longitudinally affected transgressiveness. Moral disengagement also contributed independently to variance in transgressiveness over time. This pattern of relations was obtained after controlling for prior transgressiveness. The structural model was replicated across gender and provided a better fit to the data than did several alternative models.