Testing Hypotheses on Risk Factors for Scientific Misconduct via Matched-Control Analysis of Papers Containing Problematic Image Duplications

Science and Engineering Ethics - It is commonly hypothesized that scientists are more likely to engage in data falsification and fabrication when they are subject to pressures to publish, when they...     

Being the agent: memory for action events

Whoever paid the bill at the restaurant last night, will clearly remember doing it. Independently from the type of action, it is a common experience that being the agent provides a special strength to our memories. Even if it is generally agreed that personal memories (episodic memory) rely on separate neural substrates with respect to general knowledge (semantic memory), little is known on the nature of the link between memory and the sense of agency. In the present paper, we review results from two experiments investigating the effects of agency on both explicit and implicit memory traces. Performance of normal subjects is compared to that of schizophrenic patients in order to explore the role of awareness of action on memory. It is proposed that reliable first-person information is necessary to create a stable and coherent motor memory trace.     

Anecdotal Pluralism,Total Evidence and Religious Diversity

Philosophia - My main claim is that, contrary to the assumptions of mainstream literature, epistemic religious diversity is not a matter of an abstract comparison among the belief systems of...     

“Metaphysische Ergebnisse”: Phenomenology and Metaphysics in Edmund Husserl’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Cartesianische Meditationen</Emphasis> (§60). Attempt at Commentary

The main goal of the present paper is to offer a preliminary study of the relations between phenomenology and metaphysics in Husserl. After a brief presentation of what Husserl means by the term “metaphysics”, the rest of our research will consist of a detailed commentary on §60 of the Cartesian Meditations (Metaphysische Ergebnisse unserer Auslegung der Fremderfahrung). Our aim is to explain in what sense, according to Husserl, the “outcomes” of the phenomenological constitution of monadological intersubjectivity entail the solution to a traditional metaphysical problem, i.e., that of the existence of just one real world. The present investigation does not pretend to be more than an introduction. Besides shedding some light on a specific text, it will pave the way for a future inquiry into the relations between phenomenology and metaphysics in Husserl.     

Divided attention enhances the recognition of emotional stimuli: evidence from the attentional boost effect

The present study examined predictions of the early-phase-elevated-attention hypothesis of the attentional boost effect (ABE), which suggests that transient increases in attention at encoding, as instantiated in the ABE paradigm, should enhance the recognition of neutral and positive items (whose encoding is mostly based on controlled processes), while having small or null effects on the recognition of negative items (whose encoding is primarily based on automatic processes). Participants were presented a sequence of negative, neutral and positive stimuli (pictures in Experiment 1, words in Experiment 2) associated to target (red) squares, distractor (green) squares or no squares (baseline condition). They were told to attend to the pictures/words and simultaneously press the spacebar of the computer when a red square appeared. In a later recognition task, stimuli associated to target squares were recognised better than stimuli associated to distractor squares, replicating the standard ABE. More importantly, we also found that: (a) the memory enhancement following target detection occurred with all types of stimuli (neutral, negative and positive) and (b) the advantage of negative stimuli over neutral stimuli was intact in the DA condition. These findings suggest that the encoding of negative stimuli depends on both controlled (attention-dependent) and automatic (attention-independent) processes.     

Familicide: The killing of spouse and children

A familicide is a multiple-victim homicide incident in which the killer's spouse and one or more children are slain. National archives of Canadian and British homicides, containing 109 familicide incidents, permit some elucidation of the characteristic and epidemiology of this crime. Familicides were almost exclusively perpetrated by men, unlike other spouse-killings and other filicides. Half the familicidal men killed themselves as well, a much higher rate of suicide than among other uxoricidal or filicidal men. De facto unions were overrepresented, compared to their prevalence in the populations-at-large, but to a much lesser extent in familicides than in other uxoricides. Stepchildren were overrepresented as familicide victims, compared to their numbers in the populations-at-large, but to a much lesser extent than in other filicides; unlike killers of their genetic offspring, men who killed their stepchildren were rarely suicidal. An initial binary categorization of familicides as accusatory versus despondent is tentatively proposed. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Trait gambling cognitions predict near-miss experiences and persistence in laboratory slot machine gambling

'Near-miss' outcomes (i.e., unsuccessful outcomes close to the jackpot) have been shown to promote gambling persistence. Although there have been recent advances in understanding the neurobiological responses to gambling near-misses, the psychological mechanisms involved in these events remain unclear. The goal of this study was to explore whether trait-related gambling cognitions (e.g., beliefs that certain skills or rituals may help to win in games of chance) influence behavioural and subjective responses during laboratory gambling. Eighty-four individuals, who gambled at least monthly, performed a simplified slot machine task that delivered win, near-miss, and full-miss outcomes across 30 mandatory trials followed by a persistence phase in extinction. Participants completed the Gambling-Related Cognitions Scale (GRCS; Raylu & Oei, 2004), as well as measures of disordered gambling (South Oaks Gambling Screen [SOGS]; Lesieur & Blume, 1987) and social desirability bias (DS-36; Tournois, Mesnil, & Kop, 2000). Skill-oriented gambling cognitions (illusion of control, fostered by internal factors such as reappraisal of losses, or perceived outcome sequences), but not ritual-oriented gambling cognitions (illusion of control fostered by external factors such as luck or superstitions), predicted higher subjective ratings of desire to play after near-miss outcomes. In contrast, perceived lack of self-control predicted persistence on the slot machine task. These data indicate that the motivational impact of near-miss outcomes is related to specific gambling cognitions pertaining to skill acquisition, supporting the idea that gambling near-misses foster the illusion of control.