Ranking judgments in Arrow’s setting

In this paper, I investigate the relationship between preference and judgment aggregation, using the notion of ranking judgment introduced in List and Pettit (Synthese 140(1–2):207–235, 2004). Ranking judgments were introduced in order to state the logical connections between the impossibility theorem of aggregating sets of judgments proved in List and Pettit (Economics and Philosophy 18:89–110, 2002) and Arrow’s theorem (Arrow, Social choice and individual values, 1963). I present a proof of the theorem concerning ranking judgments as a corollary of Arrow’s theorem, extending the translation between preferences and judgments defined in List and Pettit (Synthese 140(1–2):207–235, 2004) to the conditions on the aggregation procedure.     

TRoPICALS: a computational embodied neuroscience model of compatibility effects

Perceiving objects activates the representation of their affordances. For example, experiments on compatibility effects showed that categorizing objects by producing certain handgrips (power or precision) is faster if the requested responses are compatible with the affordance elicited by the size of objects (e.g., small or large). The article presents a neural-network architecture that provides a general framework to account for compatibility effects. The model was designed with a methodological approach (computational embodied neuroscience) that aims to provide increasingly general accounts of brain and behavior (4 sources of constraints are used: neuroscientific data, behavioral data, embodied systems, reproduction of learning processes). The model is based on 4 principles of brain organization that we claim underlie most compatibility effects. First, visual perception and action are organized in the brain along a dorsal neural pathway encoding affordances and a ventral pathway encoding goals. Second, the prefrontal cortex within the ventral pathway gives a top-down bias to action selection by integrating information on stimuli, context, and goals. Third, reaction times depend on dynamic neural competitions for action selection that integrate bottom-up and top-down information. The congruence or incongruence between affordances and goals explains the different reaction times found in the experiments. Fourth, as words trigger internal simulations of their referents, they can cause compatibility effects as objects do. We validated the model by reproducing and explaining 3 types of compatibility effects and showed its heuristic power by producing 2 testable predictions. We also assessed the explicative power of the model by comparing it with related models and showed how it can be extended to account for other compatibility effects.     

Powers,Probabilities, and Tendencies

Philosophia - In this article, I aim at showing how powers may ground different types of probability in the universe. In Section 1 I single out several dimensions along which the probability of...     

Doing the Right Thing: A Qualitative Investigation of Retractions Due to Unintentional Error

Retractions solicited by authors following the discovery of an unintentional error—what we henceforth call a “self-retraction”—are a new phenomenon of growing importance, about which very little is known. Here we present results of a small qualitative study aimed at gaining preliminary insights about circumstances, motivations and beliefs that accompanied the experience of a self-retraction. We identified retraction notes that unambiguously reported an honest error and that had been published between the years 2010 and 2015. We limited our sample to retractions with at least one co-author based in the Netherlands, Belgium, United Kingdom, Germany or a Scandinavian country, and we invited these authors to a semi-structured interview. Fourteen authors accepted our invitation. Contrary to our initial assumptions, most of our interviewees had not originally intended to retract their paper. They had contacted the journal to request a correction and the decision to retract had been made by journal editors. All interviewees reported that having to retract their own publication made them concerned for their scientific reputation and career, often causing considerable stress and anxiety. Interviewees also encountered difficulties in communicating with the journal and recalled other procedural issues that had unnecessarily slowed down the process of self-retraction. Intriguingly, however, all interviewees reported how, contrary to their own expectations, the self-retraction had brought no damage to their reputation and in some cases had actually improved it. We also examined the ethical motivations that interviewees ascribed, retrospectively, to their actions and found that such motivations included a combination of moral and prudential (i.e. pragmatic) considerations. These preliminary results suggest that scientists would welcome innovations to facilitate the process of self-retraction.     

The handedness of imagined bodies in action and the role of perspective taking

Past research at the nexus of motor control and perception investigated the role of perspective taking in many behavioral and neuroimaging studies. Some investigators addressed the issue of one's own vs. others' action imagination, but the possible effects of a front or a back view in imagining others' actions have so far been neglected. We report two 'single trial' experiments in which a total of 640 participants were asked to imagine a person performing a manual action - either in a front or in a back view - and then to indicate the hand used by the imagined person during movement execution. In such a task, we assume the existence of two distinct biases: a perceptual-mnemonic bias due to subjects' visual experience of others' actions, encouraging them to imagine right-handed movements, and a motor bias due to subjects' experience of self-made actions, encouraging them to imagine movements performed with the same hand as their dominant hand. We hypothesized that a greater involvement of motor representations in the back view compared to the front view could result in an increased correspondence between one's own manual preference and the hand used by the imagined agent in the former condition. The results of both experiments were consistent with this hypothesis, suggesting that while imagining others' actions we employ motor simulations in different degrees according to the perspective adopted.     

The relationship between multisensory integration and IQ in children

It is well accepted that multisensory integration has a facilitative effect on perceptual and motor processes, evolutionarily enhancing the chance of survival of many species, including humans. Yet, there is limited understanding of the relationship between multisensory processes, environmental noise, and children's cognitive abilities. Thus, this study investigated the relationship between multisensory integration, auditory background noise, and the general intellectual abilities of school-age children (N = 88, mean age = 9 years, 7 months) using a simple audiovisual detection paradigm. We provide evidence that children with enhanced multisensory integration in quiet and noisy conditions are likely to score above average on the Full-Scale IQ of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fourth Edition (WISC-IV). Conversely, approximately 45% of tested children, with relatively low verbal and nonverbal intellectual abilities, showed reduced multisensory integration in either quiet or noise. Interestingly, approximately 20% of children showed improved multisensory integration abilities in the presence of auditory background noise. The findings of the present study suggest that stable and consistent multisensory integration in quiet and noisy environments is associated with the development of optimal general intellectual abilities. Further theoretical implications are discussed.     

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.