Hippocampal structure and human cognition: Key role of spatial processing and evidence supporting the efficiency hypothesis in females

Here we apply a method for automated segmentation of the hippocampus in 3D high-resolution structural brain MRI scans. One hundred and four healthy young adults completed twenty one tasks measuring abstract, verbal, and spatial intelligence, along with working memory, executive control, attention, and processing speed. After permutation tests corrected for multiple comparisons across vertices (p < .05), significant relationships were found for spatial intelligence, spatial working memory, and spatial executive control. Interactions with sex revealed significant relationships with the general factor of intelligence (g), along with abstract and spatial intelligence. These correlations were mainly positive for males but negative for females, which might support the efficiency hypothesis in women. Verbal intelligence, attention, and processing speed were not related to hippocampal structural differences.     

The Gettier Intuition from South America to Asia

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - This article examines whether people share the Gettier intuition (viz. that someone who has a true justified belief that p may nonetheless fail...     

Tolerance and Perception of Abuse in Youth Dating Relationships

A cross-sectional study of pre-university and university students of both genders was carried out in Spain (N = 4,919) to determine the levels of tolerance of partner violence per gender and the perception of abuse. Of the students, 26.3% were in a situation of unperceived abuse, especially the males (29.6%), but the level of tolerance of abusive behavior was significantly lower in females. The group of youths who did not perceive themselves as abused had higher levels of tolerance. In contrast, non-abused students presented low tolerance of violent behavior. Tolerance of dating violence is more strongly determined by gender than by the perception of abuse in young people.     

DOES THE SUPERVENIENCE ARGUMENT GENERALIZE?

We evaluate the scope of Jaegwon Kim's “supervenience argument” for reduction. Does its conclusion apply only to psychology, or does it generalize to all the special sciences? The claim that the supervenience argument generalizes to all the special sciences if it goes through for psychology is often raised as an objection to the supervenience argument. We argue that this objection is ambiguous. We distinguish three readings of it and suggest that some of them make it a plausible claim, whereas other readings make it implausible. We suggest that this ambiguity is the result of picturing the world as being hierarchically organized in levels, with the domain of physics at the bottom and the domains of the social sciences at the top. The plausibility of the objection depends on how we think of this picture. This popular picture, we suggest, involves three different dimensions along which reduction may occur.     

Derived control by compound and single stimuli in a matching-to-sample task in children

A matching-to-sample procedure was used to investigate whether 9-year-old children would demonstrate the emergence of a derived compound-sample conditional discrimination following training in four interrelated single-sample conditional discriminations and vice versa, as adults did in previous studies. In Experiment 1, three out of three children demonstrated the emergence of a compound-sample conditional discrimination following training in four single-sample conditional discriminations. In Experiment 2, two out of three children acquired a compound-sample conditional discrimination and they demonstrated the emergence of four single-sample conditional discriminations; one of them did so only after being exposed to a remediation training and testing procedure. Training variables that facilitated discrimination emergence in both directions are discussed. In general, results showed that the sophisticated learning skills that are supposedly possessed by adults are not required to demonstrate the two types of derived control under study.     

Productivity of doctoral programs in Psychology with Quality Mention in journal articles included in Journal Citation Reports

The main objective of the present study was to classify doctoral programs with Quality Mention in Psychology based on their scientific productivity. For this purpose, articles in the Web of Science published by professors teaching in these doctoral programs were analyzed. In addition, we analyzed scientific journals in which these professors tend to publish more papers and the evolution in the number of papers published until 2009. Results showed that the most productive doctoral program was the Neurosciences program at the University of Oviedo. This program showed a ratio of 40 articles--published in journals included in Journal Citation Reports--by each professor. In contrast, other programs did not reach a ratio of 10 articles per professor. Regarding journals, results showed that 9 out of the 20 most popular journals are Hispanic and a gradual increase in the number of published papers was also observed. Lastly, results and implications for quality assessment are discussed.     

Approaching countertransference in psychoanalytical supervision: A qualitative investigation1

A recent examination of the literature concerning countertransference and its developments reveals its clinical usefulness in different psychoanalytical cultures. Nevertheless, a shortage of publications is apparent with respect to its approach in supervision. The authors aim in this study was to examine the concepts of transference and countertransference and how countertransference is approached in supervision, in the training of candidates, at an institute of psychoanalysis belonging to a society affiliated to the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). Qualitative research was carried out, interviewing supervisors and supervisees. Through analysis of the material acquired, the authors classifi ed the data into initial, intermediate and fi nal categories. The principal fi ndings were subdivided into three categories: the concepts of transference and countertransference, psychoanalytical listening and the complementarity of the phenomena, and the approach to countertransference. The concepts of transference and countertransference predominantly used by those interviewed are based on the totalistic outlook. Countertransference in supervision has been approached in a more direct and objective way when compared with the previous period, although great care is taken to delimit the boundaries between supervision and personal analysis. The main aim of supervision is to broaden comprehension and to deepen the interpretations directed towards the patient. These fi ndings suggest that the evolution of the concept of countertransference in different psychoanalytical cultures and developments in the analytical fi eld are contributing to this change.     

Knowledge and the permissibility of action

Synthese - I argue in favor of a certain connection between knowledge and the permissibility of action. On this approach, we do not think of the relation between those notions as reflecting a...     

Object- and feature-based priming in visual search

Two contrasting accounts for priming in visual search have been proposed. The main difference between the two is the level of perceptual processing at which the priming effects are assumed to occur, whether priming is assumed to operate through the selective facilitation of features or at the level of selection of objects for response. The aim of the experiments here was to contrast these accounts. In the first two experiments, observers performed a search for the odd diamond in the midst of two distractor diamonds. Each diamond had two colors, but the configurations of the colors within the diamonds were different for the two experiments in ways previously shown to lend themselves differently well to object formation. The results show that priming can be both feature- and object-based, depending on the topological properties of the stimuli. This was confirmed in a third experiment, in which a quite dissimilar stimulus set was used to address the same question, once again yielding similar results. We thus show that priming operates at various levels of perceptual processing, a result consistent with new findings from neuroimaging and neuropsychology.