Grammatical pattern learning by human infants and cotton-top tamarin monkeys

There is a surprising degree of overlapping structure evident across the languages of the world. One factor leading to cross-linguistic similarities may be constraints on human learning abilities. Linguistic structures that are easier for infants to learn should predominate in human languages. If correct, then (a) human infants should more readily acquire structures that are consistent with the form of natural language, whereas (b) non-human primates' patterns of learning should be less tightly linked to the structure of human languages. Prior experiments have not directly compared laboratory-based learning of grammatical structures by human infants and non-human primates, especially under comparable testing conditions and with similar materials. Five experiments with 12-month-old human infants and adult cotton-top tamarin monkeys addressed these predictions, employing comparable methods (familiarization-discrimination) and materials. Infants rapidly acquired complex grammatical structures by using statistically predictive patterns, failing to learn structures that lacked such patterns. In contrast, the tamarins only exploited predictive patterns when learning relatively simple grammatical structures. Infant learning abilities may serve both to facilitate natural language acquisition and to impose constraints on the structure of human languages.     

Moral appraisals affect doing/allowing judgments

An extensive body of research suggests that the distinction between doing and allowing plays a critical role in shaping moral appraisals. Here, we report evidence from a pair of experiments suggesting that the converse is also true: moral appraisals affect doing/allowing judgments. Specifically, morally bad behavior is more likely to be construed as actively ‘doing’ than as passively ‘allowing’. This finding adds to a growing list of folk concepts influenced by moral appraisal, including causation and intentional action. We therefore suggest that the present finding favors the view that moral appraisal plays a pervasive role in shaping diverse cognitive representations across multiple domains.     

The Effect of Cognitive Load on Intent-Based Moral Judgment

When making a moral judgment, people largely care about two factors: Who did it (causal responsibility), and did they intend to (intention)? Since Piaget's seminal studies, we have known that as children mature, they gradually place greater emphasis on intention, and less on mere bad outcomes, when making moral judgments. Today, we know that this developmental shift has several signature properties. Recently, it has been shown that when adults make moral judgments under cognitive load, they exhibit a pattern similar to young children; that is, their judgments become notably more outcome based. Here, we show that all of the same signature properties that accompany the outcome-to-intent shift in childhood characterize the “intent-to-outcome” shift obtained under cognitive load in adults. These findings hold important implications for current theories of moral judgment.     

Aversive for Me,Wrong for You: First‐person Behavioral Aversions Underlie the Moral Condemnation of Harm

Many studies attest to the critical role of affect in the condemnation of harmful actions, but few attempt to identify the precise representations underlying this affective response. We propose a distinction between two potential sources of affect: an aversion to the negative outcomes of an action versus an aversion grounded in the action itself. Whereas previous models have focused on outcome‐oriented processes (e.g. empathy and victim perspective‐taking), we argue that moral judgment is also strongly influenced by action‐based aversions. Specifically, we propose that individuals engage in a process of ‘evaluative simulation’ when judging others, imagining how much it would bother them to perform the same action. Furthermore, we present evidence that this aversion can be based in superficial sensory or motor properties of the action. We consider how such ‘action aversions’ might be acquired, and we highlight important areas for future research.     

Empathy—What One Hand Giveth,the Other Taketh Away: Commentary on Paper by Lynne Layton

In this commentary I support Layton's vision of psychotherapy as an unavoidably political practice. However, I caution against a belief in empathy as a primary means of motivating political activity. By sketching a brief history of the concept of empathy, I argue that it is a problematic concept that ultimately will not lead the profession to the type of progressive political practice Layton encourages it to undertake. Empathy preoccupies therapists and patients with inwardness, self-absorption, a modified but sometimes still present objectivism, and an apolitical vision trapped in the Cartesianism from which it originated. I suggest alternative terms to describe what therapists do when they believe they are acting empathically; offer philosophical, political, and socioeconomic reasons why therapists are reluctant to think in alternative terms; and make a link between those terms and a more effective, hermeneutic way of attending to the social realm. I conclude that empathy is not a natural, instinctive process that produces an automatic result and that what therapists mean by empathy is much more a culturally formed moral virtue than a technical skill; it is not a natural, instinctive process that produces an automatic result. Therapists, patients, and the society would be better served if we came to understand and appreciate the difference between virtues and skills, and confront the implications of that difference for both the politics of therapy and a therapeutic politics.     

Age-of-acquisition effects in pure alexia

Pure alexia is an acquired reading disorder in which previously literate adults adopt a letter-by-letter processing strategy. Though these individuals display impaired reading, research shows that they are still able to use certain lexical information in order to facilitate visual word processing. The current experiment investigates the role that a word's age of acquisition (AoA) plays in the reading processes of an individual with pure alexia (G.J.) when other lexical variables have been controlled. Results from a sentence reading task in which eye movement patterns were recorded indicated that G.J. shows a strong effect of AoA, where late-acquired words are more difficult to process than early-acquired words. Furthermore, it was observed that the AoA effect is much greater for G.J. than for age-matched control participants. This indicates that patients with pure alexia rely heavily on intact top-down information, supporting the interactive activation model of reading.     

Preventing Contagion With Avian Influenza: Disease Salience,Attitudes Toward Foreigners,and Avoidance Beliefs1

Building on an evolutionary approach to out‐group avoidance, this study showed relations between perceived disease salience and beliefs in the efficacy of avoiding foreigners as protective measures in the context of a real‐life pandemic risk; i.e., avian influenza. People for whom avian influenza was salient and who held unfavorable attitudes toward foreigners were more likely to believe that avoiding contact with foreigners protects against infection. This finding suggests that individual differences in social attitudes moderate evolved mechanisms relating threat of disease to out‐group avoidance.