The attribute priming effect in patients with Alzheimer's disease

Experiments with semantic priming (SP) paradigms have documented early hypopriming in patients with AD when concepts are used as primes and attribute concept features as targets, suggesting that concept attributes are vulnerable to damage very early in the disease course. The aims of this study were to confirm early priming reduction in the attribute condition in patients with AD and to determine which of several semantic indexes (such as the level of distinctiveness, correlation or feature dominance of concept features) best predicts the priming effect size in AD. We administered an SP attribute condition paradigm to 20 mildly demented patients with AD and to 10 NCs. We used concept–attribute pairs for which normative data of semantic indexes relative to both concept primes (i.e., number, type, mean level of dominance, distinctiveness and correlation of features constituting the concepts) and target features (i.e., level of feature dominance, correlation and distinctiveness) were available. Results showed that compared to NCs, the AD group obtained very reduced priming facilitation. Furthermore, the item regression analyses showed that the priming decrement in the AD group was predicted by the feature dominance of the target in the related pairs; that is, the lower the target feature dominance, the lower the priming effect elicited. These results confirmed hypopriming in the attribute condition from the very early phase of AD and support the view that attributes which are more salient for the identification of a given concept are also those most resistant to semantic memory degradation in AD pathology.     

New Perspectives on Analytic Pragmatism

Analytic pragmatism is a framework of analysis elaborated by Robert Brandom, whose goal is to explain the relations between meaning and use according to a systematic and general method of inquiry. In April 2009, a workshop was organized to discuss the recent developments of this new theoretical approach. Brandom delivered three lectures, where he explored some aspects of analytic pragmatism and addressed the motivating themes of this enterprise, while the contribution from the other speakers ranged over specific aspects of the theory. This special issue is the outcome of that workshop. In this introduction we briefly outline the context of the debate and present the contribution to this issue selected from a much wider range of papers, using the reviewing process of Philosophia.     

Neuroscientific Measures of Covert Behavior

In radical behaviorism, the difference between overt and covert responses does not depend on properties of the behavior but on the sensitivity of the measurement tools employed by the experimenter. Current neuroscientific research utilizes technologies that allow measurement of variables that are undetected by the tools typically used by behavior analysts. Data from a specific neuroscientific technique, event-related potential (ERP), suggest that emission of otherwise covert responses can be indexed and that such covert responses are sensitive to stimulus control and selection by consequences. The P3 ERP effect is proposed as indicative of emission. Moreover, ERP results in semantic priming experiments suggest that operants are sensitive to changes in stimulus control even when they are not emitted (latent responses). Changes in response strength of latent responses as a function of stimulus control can in fact be measured by reaction time data and an ERP dependent variable called the N400 effect. If the interpretations provided in this paper are accurate, an index of covertly emitted operants (P3 effect) constitutes experimental evidence suggesting the validity of a Skinnerian radical behaviorist perspective on behavior. Moreover, in a Skinnerian paradigm, measured fluctuations in the response strength of latent operants as a function of environmental changes (N400 effect) would validate Palmer's (2009) concept of the repertoire.     

Systematic review of instruments measuring homophobia and related constructs

Since its conceptualization, the construct of homophobia has been the subject of many speculations about its specificity, reach, and possibility of empirical assessment. Several instruments have been created aiming to measure the prejudice against homosexuals. Peer‐reviewed articles of studies using measures to assess homophobia and related constructs were systematically reviewed in 4 databases (Medline, PsycINFO, ERIC, JSTOR). The articles were classified as they displayed evidence of the instrument's validity, reliability, or both. Finally, the instruments were rated according to that evidence. Out of 1076 results, 115 studies between 1993 and 2010 were identified as relevant. Those studies used 47 different instruments. This review focused in 5 instruments that concentrated the majority of the citations. Psychometric properties were acceptable.     

The Impact of Phantom Decoys on Choices and Perceptions

Phantoms are dominating, attractive alternatives that are unavailable at the time of choice. They occupy different positions in the attribute space, and their unavailability can be either known or unknown to individuals. Although different theories have offered explanations for the influence that phantoms exert on individual choices, they have largely overlooked phantom knowledge. Contradictory predictions can be drawn from these theories, and none provides a good account of the pattern of effects that emerges from our data. We suggest that these contradictions appear because the different theories do not address phantom location and knowledge jointly. When considering phantom knowledge together with location, we observe a consistent overall pattern of effects that encompasses all predictions that could be made on the basis of each theory. We find that known phantoms are stronger when close, and favor the target product, whereas unknown phantoms are stronger when far, and favor the competitor. Finally, we look beyond shifts in choice shares and find that phantom decoys can also affect individuals' post‐choice evaluations and reactions in terms of perceived justice, decision satisfaction, and repatronage intention. Our results show that post‐choice evaluations are driven by phantom knowledge, not phantom location. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Alessandro Piccolomini and the certitude of mathematics

This paper offers a reconstruction of Alessandro Piccolomini's philosophy of mathematics, and reconstructs the role of Themistius and Averroes in the Renaissance debate on Aristotle's theory of proof. It also describes the interpretative context within which Piccolomini was working in order to show that he was not an isolated figure, but rather that he was fully involved in the debate on mathematics and physics of Italian Aristotelians of his time. The ideas of Lodovico Boccadiferro and Sperone Speroni will be analysed. This paper demonstrates that Piccolomini's attack on the certitude of mathematics was a product of discussions between Aristotelians.     

Bridging music and speech rhythm: Rhythmic priming and audio–motor training affect speech perception

Following findings that musical rhythmic priming enhances subsequent speech perception, we investigated whether rhythmic priming for spoken sentences can enhance phonological processing – the building blocks of speech – and whether audio–motor training enhances this effect. Participants heard a metrical prime followed by a sentence (with a matching/mismatching prosodic structure), for which they performed a phoneme detection task. Behavioural (RT) data was collected from two groups: one who received audio–motor training, and one who did not. We hypothesised that 1) phonological processing would be enhanced in matching conditions, and 2) audio–motor training with the musical rhythms would enhance this effect. Indeed, providing a matching rhythmic prime context resulted in faster phoneme detection, thus revealing a cross-domain effect of musical rhythm on phonological processing. In addition, our results indicate that rhythmic audio–motor training enhances this priming effect. These results have important implications for rhythm-based speech therapies, and suggest that metrical rhythm in music and speech may rely on shared temporal processing brain resources.     

Emotional prosody: sex differences in sensitivity to speech melody

Emotional prosody is defined as the ability to express emotions through variations of different parameters of the human speech, such as pitch contour, intensity and duration. A recent study has discovered clear differences between men and women in the time course of emotional prosodic processing. There are several interpretations of these intriguing results that hold promise for future studies on language comprehension.     

Reasoning in moral conflicts

Following the assumptions of the mental model theory and its account of moral judgements, we argue for a main role of reasoning in moral judgements, especially in dealing with moral conflicts. In four experiments, we invited adult participants to evaluate scenarios describing moral or immoral actions. Our results confirm the predictions deriving from our assumptions: Given a moral or immoral scenario, the manipulation of the propositions which refer to norms and values results in a scenario eliciting a moral conflict (Experiment 1); when invited to create conflict versions from no-conflict versions of moral or immoral scenarios, individuals manipulate the propositions in the scenario which describe norms and values rather than emotional factors (Experiment 2); the evaluation of conflict scenarios takes longer than the evaluation of no-conflict scenarios (Experiment 3), and this is because conflict scenarios involve more deliberative reasoning (Experiment 4). We discuss our results in relation to competing theories of moral judgements.     

Homophobia or sexism? A systematic review of prejudice against nonheterosexual orientation in Brazil

Since it was coined in the 1970s, in the United States, the term “homophobia” has been invoked to define the prejudice against nonheterosexual orientation. Besides the US, the phenomenon has been detected in many contemporary societies, including Brazil. Prejudice against nonheterosexual orientation is strongly associated with the historical and social contexts in which it is embedded, which means that the term should not be used without a clear definition of its local specificities. This applies to the recent debate around homophobia in the Brazilian context. In an attempt to identify existing studies of prejudice against nonheterosexual orientations in Brazil, a systematic review was conducted in SciELO indexes, PubMed, PsycINFO, SCOPUS, and Web of Science. The articles were collected using the keyword “homophobia” and related terms, and “Brazil”, in the languages ??of the databases. The search returned 355 articles. Of these, 247 were removed because they were duplicates. The abstracts of 109 studies published between 1973 and 2011were analyzed. Thirty‐one articles were identified as relevant. The reviewed studies indicate that prejudice against nonheterosexual orientations is an evident and widespread phenomenon that is prevalent in various populations and contexts. Nevertheless, prejudice in Brazil is not homogeneous, and particular attention is necessary to the inequality of gender relations (sexism) and prejudice against gender nonconformity, which seem to explain, if not cause, most of the prejudice against nonheterosexual orientations. Although theoretically there is a clear distinction between sexual orientation and gender expression, from the standpoint of manifestation of prejudice that distinction seems to be more tenuous.