On historical consciousness: A pilot investigation

Philosophers of history posit a class of concepts known as colligatory concepts that contribute to historical consciousness and that refer specifically to historical events. Although analysis has identified colligatory concepts in historical discourse, these concepts have not yet been investigated empirically. We present a new methodology for studying these concepts and historical consciousness more broadly, as well as pilot data supporting the methodology. Our aim in the pilot study was to establish whether colligatory concepts are processed differently from control concepts when subjects are asked to judge historical statements. We compared judgments of colligatory concepts in healthy participants and in a patient group with impaired working memory cognitive processing capacity. Forty healthy, college-educated participants and 25 patients with Parkinson's disease were asked to rate narrative sentences containing historical content and an equal number of identically constructed narrative sentences of equal length but devoid of historical content. All participants rated their pre-test interest in history as relatively low (mean 5 out of 7). Though no group differences emerged, historical sentences were judged by both groups (total N = 65) to be significantly different from non-historical sentences across dimensions of interestingness, meaningfulness, likeability, complexity, thought provoking-ness, and truth content. Interestingly, historical sentences were judged to be truer than control sentences even though participants were not interested in and presumably knew little about history. The neurocognitive system appears to process sentences with historical content separately from sentences without historical content. The methodology described here appears to be a valid approach for study of processing of historical content of sentences.     

Self‐Efficacy Among Adults in Substance Abuse Treatment: The Role of Religious Coping

In substance abuse treatment, general self‐efficacy and religiousness are factors that may support positive outcomes. The authors surveyed clients receiving substance abuse treatment (N = 121) and found that religious coping predicted general self‐efficacy scores. Clinical implications are discussed.     

Testimony and the Constitutive Norm of Assertion

Abstract

I can, given the right conditions, transmit my knowledge to you by telling you some information. If I know the time, and if all goes well, I can bring it about that you know it too. If conditions are right, all I have to do is assert to you what time it is. Paradigmatically, speakers use assertions to transmit what they know to their hearers. Clearly, assertion and testimony are tightly connected. The nature of this connection, however, is not so clear. According to many accounts, assertion has an epistemic constitutive norm. This norm appears to be able to account for some important features of testimony: first, testimonial knowledge transmission, second, the reliability of testimony, and third, the epistemic rights exchanged in cases of testimony. In this paper, however, I argue against this apparent ability. The constitutive norm of assertion, I argue, plays no role in accounts of testimonial knowledge transmission, or of the epistemic rights that testimony confers. This is especially clear when we consider the general norms to which we’re held. Epistemological accounts of testimony can and should, therefore, avoid the difficult debate over the constitutive norm of assertion.     

An electrophysiological study of school-aged children with a history of failure to thrive during infancy

Sixty-five subjects, ages 8 to 12, participated in a visual electrophysiological study. Twenty-two of the subjects had received a diagnosis of nonorganic failure-to-thrive (FTT) before the age of three. The remaining 43 subjects had no history of FTT and served as Controls. IQs were obtained with the abbreviated WISC-III, and the Controls were split into two groups, LO IQ and HI IQ, to provide a LO IQ Control group with an average IQ equivalent to the FTT group. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from five scalp locations during a cued continuous performance task (CPT). Subjects had to press a button every time they saw the letter “X” following the letter “A” (50 targets out of 400 stimuli). During the CPT, the FTT subjects made marginally more errors of omission to targets than the LO IQ Control group and significantly more errors of omission than the HI IQ Control subjects. The groups did not differ significantly on errors of commission (false alarms) or reaction times to targets. ERP averages revealed a group difference in amplitude in a late slow wave for the 50 non-X stimuli (false targets) that followed the letter A. This difference was greatest over frontal sites, where the FTT group had a more negative going slow wave than each control group. Late frontal negativity to No Go stimuli has been linked with post-decisional processing, notably in young children. Thus, the FTT subjects may have less efficient inhibitory processes, reflected by additional late frontal activation. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A31BB040 00006     

Gender and sex-role attributes as predictors of utilization of natural support systems during personal stress events

This study was an empirical investigation of gender and sex-role attributes as they relate to the utilization of natural support systems during personal stress events. Compared to male subjects, female subjects reported significantly higher levels of requested assistance and perceived more help as being available from their natural support systems during the most stressful event encountered during the previous year. Subjects' scores on the femininity dimension of the Extended Personal Attributes Questionnaire were significantly correlated with amount of support asked for during stress events. Along with the variable of perceived level of stress, gender and femininity score accounted for 36% of the variance of natural support system utilization during a personal crisis. The results of the study are discussed in the context of current research on (a) the utilization of natural support systems and (b) the relationship between person variables and psychophysiological disease.     

Post-trial injection of atropine into the caudate nucleus interferes with long-term but not with short-term retention of passive avoidance

One-trial passive avoidance training was given to Wistar rats and retention of the task was measured 30 min and 24 h later. Atropine (60 micrograms) was injected into the anterior caudate nucleus 2 min after training. Excellent retention was evident 30 min after training, whereas a significant deficit in memory was found when retention was tested 24 h after training. These results suggest that blockade of cholinergic activity of the caudate nucleus induced shortly after training interferes with the consolidation of long-term memory but not with short-term memory processes.     

The Importance of Context in the US Preexposure Effect in CTA: Novel versus Latently Inhibited Contextual Stimuli

Three experiments were conducted to examine the role of novel contextual stimuli in producing the unconditioned stimulus (US) preexposure effect. Experiment 1 demonstrated that novel contextual stimuli produce a significantly stronger US preexposure effect than familiar or “latently inhibited” contextual stimuli. Moreover, subjects preexposed in the presence of latently inhibited contextual cues failed to show a significant US preexposure effect. Experiments 2 and 3 attempted to provide evidence that the addition of a single novel stimulus to the latently inhibited context would result in a significantly stronger US preexposure effect than when no such novel cue was present. Experiment 3 was able to demonstrate this effect. Results are consistent with the Rescorla–Wagner (1972) model of conditioning.