Words and hemifields: do the hemispheres enjoy equal opportunity?

A common technique in research into cerebral asymmetry in both normal and clinical populations involves the use of lateralized visual displays. The validity of this approach depends on several generally implicit assumptions about the character of the cognitive processes involved. For example, when words are used as stimuli, cognitive processing is assumed to involve either "whole-word" or "ends-in" analysis. In this way, both hemispheres are assumed to have equal opportunities to recognize the word. These assumptions are critical, because if they are wrong, explanations based on established perceptual principles may provide a sufficient and more parsimonious explanation for hemifield asymmetries than hemispheric specialization theories. This point is developed and illustrated with particular reference to word recognition and classification. From a purely perceptual viewpoint, the right visual field advantage observed in tasks using word stimuli is to be expected given the presence of systematic biases in favor of initial characters or features of words and the relationship between retinal eccentricity and visual acuity. In other words, there is no need nor justification for a hemispheric account of visual field differences in such tasks. Some of the limiting conditions and theoretical implications of this argument are identified and discussed.     

Response stereotypy without automaticity: Not quite involuntary attention in the pigeon

Previous research has shown that when pigeons are required to peck each of two keys four times in any order for reinforcement, stereotyped response sequences develop, though they are not required by the task. However, despite this stereotypy, sequences are not automatized. They require sufficient attention that sequence performance is disrupted by a concurrent, delayed matching-to-sample task. In the present experiments, pigeons were required to execute response sequences and delayed matching-to-sample concurrently. Experiment 1 showed that the matching task disrupts sequence performance even when the matching sample stimuli do not have to be processed concurrently with sequence execution. The presence of sample stimuli during sequence execution seems to command attention even if the sample stimuli are also available for processing when sequences are not being executed. Experiment 2 used the directed forgetting technique to show that pigeons do seem able to ignore sample stimuli if they are given information that tells them they will not be required to remember those stimuli later. Together, the experiments suggest attentional mechanisms in the pigeon that are not quite involuntary.     

Against Substitutive Harm

Frances Kamm's Principle of Secondary Permissibility (PSP) specifies a class of exceptions to the general rule not to kill as a means. The principle allows us to harm as a means some of those who would have been otherwise harmed as side effects. ‘For example, suppose it is impermissible to paralyze A's legs as a means to a greater good. It would still be permissible to do this as the alternative to permissibly killing A as a mere indirect side effect.’ I argue that, despite of its great appeal, PSP is incorrect; it is simply not true that the victims of substitutive harm are not worse off than they would otherwise permissibly have been. In fact, there is no moral difference between the purportedly substitutive harm licensed by PSP (and its extension) and the standard sort of harming as means repudiated by nonconsequentialists.     

COVID-19, precarity and loneliness

In this paper I discuss Jungian psychological work of the trauma and loss experienced in reaction to COVID-19 with a man who represents a clinical composite. The issues of precarity, a concept used by the philosopher Judith Butler, are combined with the notions of lack and absence of French psychoanalyst André Green. The psychological and societal situation of precarity aroused the man’s childhood issues that were long repressed. The loneliness, isolation and death from COVID-19 mirrored his personal and the collective responses to the disaster from this global pandemic. He felt on the edge of collapse as what he knew of his world crashed and he found himself unable to cope. The subsequent Jungian work taking place through the virtual computer screen was taxing and restorative simultaneously for both analyst and analysand.     

The Importance of Construct Validity in Consumer Research

Vosgerau, Scopelliti, and Huh (2020) question the construct validity of the most commonly used measures of self‐control and argue that many studies that claim to be examining self‐control may in fact be examining something else. In this comment, we generalize this argument and propose that this criticism could be leveraged against many other areas of consumer research. Indeed, many studies fail to properly establish the construct validity of their measures. Consequently, they may not be examining the construct they purport to be studying, which can lead to unreliable and conflicting findings.     

Fetal androgens in the early treated adrenogenital syndrome of 46 XX hermaphroditism: Influence on assertive and aggressive types of behavior

Fifteen hermaphroditic females with the adrenogenital syndrome received corrective, androgen-suppressing therapy with cortisone from birth onward. They were studied psychologically in late adolescence and adulthood, with particular attention to a possible long-term effect of fetal androgenization on aggressive manifestations. No such effect was evident. The girls were tomboyish in the manner previously reported for the adrenogenital syndrome.     

Some adrenal correlates of aggression in isolated female mice

Forty-six female mice (CFW) were isolated for a period of 23 weeks. The effect of isolation on fighting behavior was tested weekly by introducing a naive brown female mouse into the subject's home cage. Total leucocyte counts were obtained at 8 and 14 weeks of isolation. The appearance of leucopenia was used as an index of elevated adrenocortical activity. After 23 weeks of isolation all animals were sacrificed by decapitation. Plasma was collected for corticosterone assay, and paired adrenals were used to assay catecholamine levels. On the basis of the frequency and/or the absence of fighting, the mice were segregated into fighters (n = 22) and non-fighters (n = 17). Analysis of the data by Pearson's product moment correlation and Student's t-test showed that elevated sympathetic-adrenal activity was positively correlated with aggression and that elevated adrenocortical activity was negatively correlated with aggression.     

The Integration of Personal Identity,Religious Identity,and Moral Identity in Emerging Adulthood

The present study investigated the relative roles of identity structure (i.e., personal identity) and identity contents (i.e., religious identity and moral identity) in predicting emerging adults’ prosocial and antisocial behaviors. The sample included 9,495 college students. A variable-centered analysis (path analysis) used personal identity, religious identity, and moral identity as predictors of prosocial and antisocial behavior and tested interactions of personal identity with religious identity and moral identity. Moral identity was the strongest predictor of both behaviors, and religious identity and moral identity both interacted with personal identity in predicting antisocial behavior. A person-centered analysis (latent profile analysis) found three classes: integrated, moral identity–focused, and religious identity–focused, with integrated being most adaptive on both outcomes.