Integration of syntactic and semantic information in predictive processing: cross-linguistic evidence from German and English

Two visual-world eyetracking experiments were conducted to investigate whether, how, and when syntactic and semantic constraints are integrated and used to predict properties of subsequent input. Experiment 1 contrasted auditory German constructions such as, The hare-nominative eats ... (the cabbage-acc) versus The hare-accusative eats ... (the fox-nom), presented with a picture containing a hare, fox, cabbage, and distractor. We found that the probabilities of the eye movements to the cabbage and fox before the onset of NP2 were modulated by the case-marking of NP1, indicating that the case-marking (syntactic) information and verbs' semantic constraints are integrated rapidly enough to predict the most plausible NP2 in the scene. Using English versions of the same stimuli in active/passive voice (Experiment 2), we replicated the same effect, but at a slightly earlier position in the sentence. We discuss the discrepancies in the two Germanic languages in terms of the ease of integrating information across, or within, constituents.     

Perceptual learning in contrast detection: presence and cost of shifts in response criteria

Contemporary theoretical accounts of perceptual learning typically assume that observers are either unbiased or stably biased across the course of learning. However, standard methods for estimating thresholds, as they are typically used, do not allow this assumption to be tested. We present an approach that allows for this test specific to perceptual learning for contrast detection. We show that reliable decreases in detection thresholds and increases in hit rates are not uniformly accompanied by reliable increases in sensitivity (d′), but are regularly accompanied by reliable liberal shifts in response criteria (c). In addition, we estimate the extent to which sensitivity could have increased in the absence of these liberal shifts. The results pose a challenge to the assumption that perceptual learning has limited or no impact on response criteria.     

Sleeping beauties in psychology: comparisons of "hits" and "missed signals" in psychological journals

Scientific publications tend to be forgotten quickly. A few works, however, are still cited 100 years and more after their publication. The author used bibliometric methods to compare "hits" (works noticed by the scientific community soon after their publication) with "missed signals" (works that went unnoticed until much later) by investigating 2 psychological journals founded in the 1890s: Zeitschrift für Psychologie and Psychological Review. All articles that were published in either of these journals up to 1920 and cited more than 25 times in the Web of Science up to the year 2000 were considered for inclusion in the analysis. It emerged that hits corresponded more closely to the focus of scientific attention at the time of the publications than missed signals.     

From Games to Giving: Social Value Orientation Predicts Donations to Noble Causes

The central purpose of the present research is to examine the ability of social value orientation (i.e., prosocial, individualistic, and competitive orientation), as measured with methods rooted in game theory (i.e., decomposed games), to predict real-life prosocial behavior. Consistent with hypotheses, results revealed that individual differences in social value orientation are predictive of various donations. Relative to individualists and competitors, prosocials reported to engage in a greater number of donations, especially donations to organizations aimed at helping the poor and the ill. Results are discussed in terms of theory and methodology regarding the individual differences in social value orientation, as well as in terms of societal implications for enhancing donations to noble causes.     

Of two minds or one? A registered replication of Rydell et al. (2006)

ABSTRACT

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is proposed as a mechanism of automatic preference acquisition in dual-process theories of attitudes (Gawronski, B., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2006). Associative and propositional processes in evaluation: An integrative review of implicit and explicit attitude change. Psychological Bulletin, 132(5), 692–731. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.132.5.692). Evidence for the automaticity of EC comes from studies claiming EC effects for subliminally presented stimuli. An impression-formation study showed a selective influence of briefly presented primes on implicitly measured attitudes, whereas supraliminally presented behavioural information about the target person was reflected in explicit ratings (Rydell, R. J., McConnell, A. R., Mackie, D. M., & Strain, L. M. (2006). Of two minds forming and changing valence-inconsistent implicit and explicit attitudes. Psychological Science, 17(11), 954–958. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01811.x) This finding is considered one of the strongest pieces of evidence for dual process theories (Sweldens, S., Corneille, O., & Yzerbyt, V. (2014). The role of awareness in attitude formation through evaluative conditioning. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18(2), 187–209. doi:10.1177/1088868314527832), and it is therefore crucial to assess its reliability and robustness. The present study presents two registered replications of the Rydell et al. (2006) study. In contrast to the original findings, the implicit measures did not reflect the valence of the subliminal primes in both studies.     

Inhibition of return is unimpressed by emotional cues

Inhibition of return (IOR) is a phenomenon observed when a target unexpectedly appears in the place of a preceding cue: With long cue–target stimulus onset asynchronies, reaction times are longer than for targets that appear in an alternative location. Cognitive theories of anxiety suppose that the IOR effect diminishes with threatening, biologically relevant cues because these catch and hold attention. To test this hypothesis, we conducted three experiments, in which emotional valence of cues (animals or facial expressions) had no influence on the strength of the IOR effect, neither in an unselected sample of students nor in highly spider-fearful or socially anxious participants. Inhibition of return appears to be a robust effect, blind to cue valence.     

The Rasch Scaling of Mystical Experiences: Construct Validity and Correlates of the Mystical Experience Scale (MES)

This study evaluated the relationships that exist between the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (BMMRS) and the mental health of individuals with heterogeneous medical disorders. The participants were 168 individuals with heterogeneous medical disorders (i.e., 61 brain injury, 32 stroke, 25 spinal cord injury, 25 cancer, 25 primary care). The measures were BMMRS subscales (conceptualized as spiritual experiences, religious practices, and congregational support), Medical Outcomes Scale–Short Form 36 General Mental Health scale. Pearson correlations indicated that, in general, mental health is positively correlated with positive spiritual experiences and positive congregational support but negatively correlated with negative spiritual coping and negative congregational support. Mental health was not correlated with private religious practices (e.g., prayer). Hierarchical regressions indicated that congregational support was the only BMMRS scale to predict mental health, explaining 6% of the variance beyond the 14% explained by demographic factors. The mental health of individuals with significant medical conditions appears to be primarily related to positive spiritual beliefs and especially congregational support. Mental health does not appear to be related to religious practices such as prayer, which is likely related to the fact that many individuals with serious medical conditions increase prayer with declining mental health status. These results stress the need for active congregational support and spiritual interventions to improve the mental health of persons with serious medical conditions.     

Two-Year-Old Children's Understanding of Visual Perception and Knowledge Formation in Others

A landmark study by O'Neill (1996 O'Neill , D. K. ( 1996 ). Two-year-old children's sensitivity to a parent's knowledge state when making requests . Child Development , 67 , 659 – 677 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), in which 2-year-old children were found to be more likely to point toward a hidden object to help an adult who was unsighted during the hiding event than to point helpfully for an adult who had been sighted, seems to undermine the conventional assumption that children this young do not understand the relationship between seeing/not seeing and knowing/not knowing. Concerns remain, however, as to whether the children's success was mentalistic or behavioral. In two experiments, 2-year-old children received first-person experience with two kinds of glasses of different colors but with apparently identical opaque lenses, one of which blocked their vision and the other of which they could see through. When the parent was wearing these glasses, the children were able to use their own first-person experience of the glasses to infer whether the adult could see or not. Despite this, they did not understand the causal relationship between visual perception and knowledge formation, as demonstrated by their indiscriminate pointing behavior in response to an ignorant or a knowledgeable parent. However, in a third experiment, we examined the relationship between experience of the adult's behavioral incompetence when wearing glasses of a certain color and the children's pointing behavior. Here they tended to point appropriately. We conclude that the phenomenon reported by O'Neill (1996 O'Neill , D. K. ( 1996 ). Two-year-old children's sensitivity to a parent's knowledge state when making requests . Child Development , 67 , 659 – 677 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) yields to an account in terms of the 2-year-olds' assumptions about behavioral competence/incompetence rather than about knowledge/ignorance.     

The volitive and the executive function of intentions

Many philosophers of action, including Bratman and Mele, conceive intentions functionally, as executive states: intentions are mental states that represent an action and tend to cause this action. In the philosophical tradition (e.g. for Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz, Kant) another function of intentions, which may be called “volitive”, played a much more prominent role: intentions are mental states that represent what kind of actions we want and prefer to be realised and thus, in a possibly rational way, synthesise our motivational, desiderative, and perhaps affective as well as cognitive attitudes towards this action. This paper argues that intentions must fulfil both functions and then develops a concept of ‘intention’ that integrates both functions. One reason for including the volitive function in the definition of ‘intention’ is that only via this function the value of actions as such is realised, namely to enable the person, the kernel of the self to express herself and to control the world. Various forms of dissociation of the two functions are discussed and a proposal how to deal with such cases in the definition of ‘intention’ is developed.