An exploratory analysis of head-tilting in dogs

Animal Cognition - Little is known about head-tilts in dogs. Based on previous investigations on the head turning and the lateralised brain pattern of human speech processing in dogs, we...     

Review of Book: Technology,Social Change and Human Behavior Influence for Impact. (2021). Walther,C., Cham,Switzerland. Macmillan Editorial. ISBN: 978-3-030-70001-0 / ISBN: 978-3-030-70002-7 (eBook)

The huge impact of technology on people and institutions cannot be denied. More than often, this influence seems to have negative effects on them. However, the proposal of Social Change and Human Behavior Influence for impact brings some new light on this issue: What if society were to enable its members to attain their desired goals by means of the creation and use some technology that made it possible? The central argument of this book is: humankind can take a qualitative leap to nurture people’s quality of life, and thus arrive at a state of Augmented Humanity (AH), if all humans were to understand that individual well-being is the cause and consequence of collective well-being. And technology can contribute to the realization of the AH, if those who design and use it do justice to their own capacity for generosity, compassion, honesty and courage.

     

Narrative identity in schizophrenia

This study examined narrative identity in a group of 81 patients with schizophrenia and 50 healthy controls through the recall of self-defining memories. The results indicated that patients’ narratives were less coherent and elaborate than those of controls. Schizophrenia patients were severely impaired in the ability to make connections with the self and extract meaning from their memories, which significantly correlated with illness duration. In agreement with earlier research, patients exhibited an early reminiscence bump. Moreover, the period of the reminiscence bump, which is highly relevant for identity development, was characterized by fewer achievements and more life-threatening event experiences, compared with controls. A negative correlation was found between negative symptoms, number of self-event connections and specificity of narratives. Our results suggest that schizophrenia patients have difficulties to organize and extract meaning from their past experiences in order to create coherent personal narratives.     

The Endogenous Feedback Network: A new approach to the comprehensive study of consciousness

The phenomenon of consciousness has received through the centuries a profusion of interpretations, engaging researchers across many disciplines. Nevertheless, consensus still floats at large. The aim of the present work is therefore twofold. Through the review of a selected number of existing proposals, it will first be considered the extents of their reciprocal compatibility, tentatively shaping an integrated, theoretical profile of consciousness. A new theory, the Endogenous Feedback Network (EFN) will consequently be introduced which, besides being able to accommodate the main tenets of the reviewed theories, appears able to compensate for the explanatory gaps they leave behind. The EFN proposes consciousness as the phenomenon emerging from a distinct neural network broadcasting the changes associated to mental activations across the brain. It additionally argues for the need to include a 5th element to Ned Block’s taxonomy (i.e. phenomenal, monitoring, access, and self-consciousness) that is, non-cognitive consciousness.     

Distinguishing intentions from desires: Contributions of the frontal and parietal lobes

The ability to represent desires and intentions as two distinct mental states was investigated in patients with parietal (N = 8) and frontal (N = 6) lesions and in age-matched controls (N = 7). A task was used where the satisfaction of the desire and the fulfilment of the intention did not co-vary and were manipulated in a 2 × 2 set. In two experiments we show that lesions to the frontal lobe may impair the ability to deal with desires when their outcome is not congruent with that of the intention, and that parietal damage – especially if it encompasses the left temporo-parietal junction – may cause severe difficulties in the processing of both desires and intentions. The implications of the results for the neuropsychological and the developmental literature are discussed.     

Left–right coding of past and future in language: The mental timeline during sentence processing

The metaphoric mapping theory suggests that abstract concepts, like time, are represented in terms of concrete dimensions such as space. This theory receives support from several lines of research ranging from psychophysics to linguistics and cultural studies; especially strong support comes from recent response time studies. These studies have reported congruency effects between the dimensions of time and space indicating that time evokes spatial representations that may facilitate or impede responses to words with a temporal connotation. The present paper reports the results of three linguistic experiments that examined this congruency effect when participants processed past- and future-related sentences. Response time was shorter when past-related sentences required a left-hand response and future-related sentences a right-hand response than when this mapping of time onto response hand was reversed (Experiment 1). This result suggests that participants can form time–space associations during the processing of sentences and thus this result is consistent with the view that time is mentally represented from left to right. The activation of these time–space associations, however, appears to be non-automatic as shown by the results of Experiments 2 and 3 when participants were asked to perform a non-temporal meaning discrimination task.     

Accommodating a new identity: Possible selves,identity change and well‐being across two life‐transitions

We examined the role of desired, feared, and expected possible future identity structures in the restructuring of identity after two life transitions. A longitudinal study was conducted on 86 young adults during the transition from school to university and 143 adults during the transition to parenthood. In both samples, pre‐transition desires and expectations about the restructuring of identity predicted post‐transition actual identity structures. Post‐transition emotional well‐being was higher among those whose post‐transition identity structures more closely matched their initial desires and less closely matched their initial fears, and among those who reported a greater magnitude of identity change. We propose that possible future identity structures play an important role in the identity accommodation process during life‐transitions, and that they have significant implications for well‐being. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Further investigation of differential reinforcement of alternative behavior without extinction for escape‐maintained destructive behavior

Previous research indicates that manipulating dimensions of reinforcement during differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) for situations in which extinction cannot be implemented is a potential approach for treating destructive behavior. Therefore, we replicated and extended previous research by determining (a) the conditions under which DRA without extinction decreased and maintained low levels of destructive behavior and (b) whether intervention effects maintained during reinforcement schedule thinning for the alternative response (i.e., compliance). Results showed that effective treatments were developed in the absence of extinction by manipulating the quality of reinforcement for compliance for 2 participants and by combining manipulations of the magnitude and quality of reinforcement for compliance for the other 2 participants. However, maintaining treatment effects during reinforcement schedule thinning required combining the magnitude and quality of reinforcement for 3 of the 4 participants. We discuss the clinical utility of this approach, review limitations of the study, and suggest directions for future research.     

Assessing factors that influence young children's food preferences and choices

Researchers have identified an unbalanced diet as a key risk factor in the etiology of many chronic diseases (World Health Organization, 2003 ). Although researchers have found that numerous factors influence children's food choices, no assessment exists to identify these factors. In Experiment 1, we established preliminary empirical evidence of children's preferences for healthier and less‐healthy foods, and found that 16 of 21 children preferred less‐healthy foods to healthier foods. In Experiment 2, we established the utility of an analogue, competing parameters assessment designed to approximate children's food choices in the natural environment. We identified either quality or immediacy as the most influential parameters governing four of four childrens' food choices. We found that effort influenced the efficacy of these reinforcer parameters in a predictable manner for one of four children.