Infants perceiving and acting on the eyes: tests of an evolutionary hypothesis

It has been hypothesized that an evolutionarily ancient mechanism underlies the ability of human infants to detect and act upon the direction of eye gaze of another human face. However, the evidence from behavioral studies with infants is also consistent with a more domain-general system responsive to the lateral motion of stimuli regardless of whether or not eyes are involved. To address this issue three experiments with 4-month-old infants are reported that utilize a standard face-cueing paradigm. In the first experiment an inverted face was used to investigate whether the motion of the pupils elicits the cueing effect regardless of the surrounding face context. In the second experiment pupil motion and eye gaze direction were opposed, allowing us to assess their relative importance. In a third experiment, a more complex gaze shift sequence allowed us to analyse the importance of beginning with a period of mutual gaze. Overall, the results were consistent with the importance of the perceived direction of motion of pupils. However, to be effective in cueing spatial locations this motion needs to be preceded by a period of direct mutual gaze (eye contact). We suggest that evolution results in information-processing biases that shape and constrain the outcome of individual development to eventually result in adult adaptive specializations.     

Non-linearity,Complexity and Limited Measurement in the Relationship Between Satisfaction with Specific Life Domains and Satisfaction with Life as a Whole

In this article we defend that the adoption of a non-linear approach, theoretically framed on complexity theories can make some contribution to the bottom-up approach, which explains the levels of satisfaction with life as a whole through the combination of the levels of satisfaction in different life domains. Two approaches have been tested: (Rojas in J Happiness Stud 7:467–497, 2006) constant elasticity of substitution model and the model with quadratic terms and interaction effects (González et al. in Soc Indic Res 80:267–295, 2006; González et al. in Qual Quant 42:1–21, 2008). In order to prevent obtaining false non-linear relationships they have been analysed twice taking into account or not limited measurement of satisfaction with life as a whole. Results show that: (a) any of the two non-linear models fits better than the linear one; (b) any of the models failing to take into account limited measurement fits worse; (c) the non-linear model with quadratic terms and interaction effects fits better than Rojas’. The implications for the study of psychological well-being are discussed.     

“So It Really Does Exist—The Sea-Serpent We’ve Never Believed in!” Ferenczi’s Influence on Freud Revisited

In the last phase of his work, Ferenczi created a new language for trauma, based on the fragmentation of mental life. In the paper on “The principles of relaxation and neocatharsis,” Ferenczi reformulated the goal of analysis by proposing that “no analysis can be regarded … as complete unless we have succeed in penetrating the traumatic material”, where the “traumatic material” was not to be sought in the neurotic reactions and adaptive solutions of the ego but in more primitive reactions, such as the psychotic turning away from reality, splitting, and fragmentation. This was exactly the material that Freud assimilated in the essay “A disturbance of memory on the Acropolis”, after the death of Ferenczi. Freud visited Athens in 1904, and the walk up to the Parthenon represented the successful coronation of his self-analysis. Actually, the hallucination turned out to be so uncanny that he never again visited Athens. In a letter to Fliess, written shortly before the meeting in Nuremberg, on January 24, 1897, Freud reported on a case history turning on a “scene about the circumcision of a girl,” who later was convincingly identified by Schur as Emma Eckstein. Did Freud have the germinal idea that Emma Eckstein’s hallucination of the penis contained the wish to overcome her trauma and the hope to have a restored genital? Is this the holy visitation, which haunted him on the Acropolis? Why did he give up the profound insight that the dreams of gigantic snakes had a traumatic origin?     

Intuitionistic Epistemic Logic,Kripke Models and Fitch’s Paradox

The present work is motivated by two questions. (1) What should an intuitionistic epistemic logic look like? (2) How should one interpret the knowledge operator in a Kripke-model for it? In what follows we outline an answer to (2) and give a model-theoretic definition of the operator K. This will shed some light also on (1), since it turns out that K, defined as we do, fulfills the properties of a necessity operator for a normal modal logic. The interest of our construction also lies in a better insight into the intuitionistic solution to Fitch’s paradox, which is discussed in the third section. In particular we examine, in the light of our definition, DeVidi and Solomon’s proposal of formulating the verification thesis as \(\phi \rightarrow \neg \neg K\phi\). We show, as our main result, that this definition excapes the paradox, though it is validated only under restrictive conditions on the models.     

A comparative analysis of global and local processing of hierarchical visual stimuli in young children (Homo sapiens) and monkeys (Cebus apella)

Results obtained with preschool children (Homo sapiens) were compared with results previously obtained from capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) in matching-to-sample tasks featuring hierarchical visual stimuli. In Experiment 1, monkeys, in contrast with children, showed an advantage in matching the stimuli on the basis of their local features. These results were replicated in a 2nd experiment in which control trials enabled the authors to rule out that children used spurious cues to solve the matching task. In a 3rd experiment featuring conditions in which the density of the stimuli was manipulated, monkeys' accuracy in the processing of the global shape of the stimuli was negatively affected by the separation of the local elements, whereas children's performance was robust across testing conditions. Children's response latencies revealed a global precedence in the 2nd and 3rd experiments. These results show differences in the processing of hierarchical stimuli by humans and monkeys that emerge early during childhood.     

Principles for Object-Linguistic Consequence: from Logical to Irreflexive

We discuss the principles for a primitive, object-linguistic notion of consequence proposed by (Beall and Murzi, Journal of Philosophy, 3 pp. 143–65 (2013)) that yield a version of Curry’s paradox. We propose and study several strategies to weaken these principles and overcome paradox: all these strategies are based on the intuition that the object-linguistic consequence predicate internalizes whichever meta-linguistic notion of consequence we accept in the first place. To these solutions will correspond different conceptions of consequence. In one possible reading of these principles, they give rise to a notion of logical consequence: we study the corresponding theory of validity (and some of its variants) by showing that it is conservative over a wide range of base theories: this result is achieved via a well-behaved form of local reduction. The theory of logical consequence is based on a restriction of the introduction rule for the consequence predicate. To unrestrictedly maintain this principle, we develop a conception of object-linguistic consequence, which we call grounded consequence, that displays a restriction of the structural rule of reflexivity. This construction is obtained by generalizing Saul Kripke’s inductive theory of truth (strong Kleene version). Grounded validity will be shown to satisfy several desirable principles for a naïve, self-applicable notion of consequence.     

Lexical and buffer effects in reading and in writing Noun-Noun compound nouns

Reading and writing Noun-Noun compound nouns was investigated in two Italian aphasic patients: one with phonological dyslexia and the other with phonological dysgraphia. The patients were required to read, write and repeat a list of Noun-Noun compounds and length-matched non-compound nouns. The dyslexic patient RF read compounds better than non-compounds, and his repetition was flawless for both categories. The dysgraphic patient DA wrote non-compounds better than compounds because of a deficit in keeping separate entries at the lemma level. Differential performance when processing compounds and non-compounds is the result of a deficit in different components within the mental lexicon architecture.     

Attention allocation modulates the processing of hierarchical visual patterns: a comparative analysis of capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and humans

Humans show a global advantage when processing hierarchical visual patterns, and they detect the global level of stimulus structure more accurately and faster than the local level in several stimulus contexts. By contrast, capuchins (Cebus apella) and other monkey species show a strong local advantage. A key factor which, if manipulated, could cause an inversion of this effect in monkeys is still to be found. In this study, we examined whether it was possible to induce attention allocation to global and local levels of perceptual analysis in capuchin monkeys and if by doing so, their local dominance could be reversed. We manipulated attentional bias using a matching-to-sample (MTS) task where the proportion of trials requiring global and local processing varied between conditions. The monkeys were compared with humans tested with the same paradigm. Monkeys showed a local advantage in the local bias condition but a global advantage in the global bias condition. The role of attention in processing was confined to the local trials in a first phase of testing but extended to both local and global trials in the course of task practice. Humans exhibited an overall global dominance and an effect of attentional bias on the speed of processing of the global and local level of the stimuli. These results indicate a role for attention in the processing of hierarchical stimuli in monkeys and are discussed in relation to the extent to which they can explain the differences between capuchin monkeys and humans observed in this and other studies.     

Disagreement behind the veil of ignorance

In this paper we argue that there is a kind of moral disagreement that survives the Rawlsian veil of ignorance. While a veil of ignorance eliminates sources of disagreement stemming from self-interest, it does not do anything to eliminate deeper sources of disagreement. These disagreements not only persist, but transform their structure once behind the veil of ignorance. We consider formal frameworks for exploring these differences in structure between interested and disinterested disagreement, and argue that consensus models offer us a solution concept for disagreements behind the veil of ignorance.