Aristotle’s Notion of ‘Place’ in the Context of Present-day Physics

The article deals with Aristotle’s conception of ‘place’, which is of cruсial importance for his theory of motion. It is shown that in the physics of Aristotle there is no concept of spасe; instead, there is the notion of ‘place’ of a body (topos). Aristotle considered ‘place’ as the first boundary of a body embracing (containing) the body in question. The author shows the incommensurability between the spatial ideas of the Stagirite and the similar ideas of Newtonian physics. The article states that in order to give an adequate reconstruction of Aristotle’s concept of ‘place’ we need to take into account two different levels of consideration: local and global. Places locally separable (from bodies) cannot be separated on the global level. In Newtonian physics, bodies are separable from places on both levels. The nature of parallelism of ideas between Aristotle’s conception of ‘place’ and the notions of space in present-day physics is analysed.     

Attention Skills and Risk of Developing Learning Difficulties

Attention is a heterogeneous function, composed of different components involved in acquiring and developing all cognitive and behavioural skills. Attentive difficulties, such as insufficient or inadequate control of the stream of occurring stimuli, have been linked to impairment in executive functions, impulsive behavioral style, academic failure, and difficulties in basic scholastic skills, such as reading and writing. Moreover, specific Learning Disabilities often occur along with and/or complicated by problems in attention. Considering that prerequisites of school learning evolve early in childhood, the overall goal of this study is to investigate the relationships between attention skills and the risk of developing learning difficulties. Specifically, this study attempts to contribute to better identification of the role of the attention measures in the early detection of risk signs of developing learning difficulties. Research has been conducted through a computerized battery to assess attention and an observational questionnaire aimed at identifying the risk of developing learning difficulties. The study examined a sample of preschoolers. The results showed that different components of attention, such as visual selectivity and reaction times, are diversely involved in the risk of developing learning difficulties and in the prerequisite of school learning.     

Personality, person, subject in Russian legal philosophy at the turn of the twentieth century

The problem of the legal person is a central issue in legal philosophy and the theory of law. In this article I examine the semantic meaning of the concept of the person in Russian philosophy at the turn of the twentieth century, considered to be the “Golden Age” of Russian legal thought. This provides an overview of the conception of the personality in the context of different legal approaches (theory of natural law, legal positivism, the psychological legal doctrine, and the sociological school of law). I indicate a polemic among the theories of the person and attempts to create an integral concept of the legal subject. In addition I present an analysis of the relation between the concepts of the legal subject and the moral person, which personify fundamental features of law and morality. In order to demarcate the notions of individual and the legal subject, I focus on doctrines of the artificial person or the juridical person.     

The effects of age and professional expertise on working memory performance

Differences in professional choice and experience may explain age differences in working memory performance of elderly people. The aim of this study was to examine whether expertise and prolonged practice in verbal and visuo‐spatial abilities reduce age differences in laboratory working memory tasks. The effects of age and expertise on working memory performance were examined in three age groups in two different experiments. Firstly, the role of visuo‐spatial expertise was analysed by examining age differences in architects. Secondly, people with extensive experience in verbal abilities (literary people) were tested in order to evaluate the effect of professional verbal experience. Architects and literary people outperformed a group of unselected age peers on tasks related to professional expertise only, but not on general working memory tests. There was no interaction between age and experience, suggesting that professional experience does not increase differences between experts and non experts and cannot modulate age‐related effects. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do French–English Bilingual Children Gesture More Than Monolingual Children?

Previous studies have shown that bilingual adults use more gestures than English monolinguals. Because no study has compared the gestures of bilinguals and monolinguals in both languages, the high gesture rate could be due to transfer from a high gesture language or could result from the use of gesture to aid in linguistic access. In this study we tried to distinguish between those causes by comparing the gesture rate of 10 French–English bilingual preschoolers with both 10 French and 10 English monolinguals. All were between 4 and 6 years of age. The children were asked to watch a cartoon and tell the story back. The results showed the bilingual children gestured more than either group of monolinguals and at the same rate in both French and English. These results suggest that that the bilinguals were not gesturing because they were transferring the high gesture rate from one language to another. We argue that bilinguals might gesture more than monolinguals to help formulate their spoken message.     

Color Selectivity of the Spatial Congruency Effect: Evidence from the Focused Attention Paradigm

The multisensory response enhancement (MRE), occurring when the response to a visual target integrated with a spatially congruent sound is stronger than the response to the visual target alone, is believed to be mediated by the superior colliculus (SC) (Stein & Meredith, 1993). Here, we used a focused attention paradigm to show that the spatial congruency effect occurs with red (SC-effective) but not blue (SC-ineffective) visual stimuli, when presented with spatially congruent sounds. To isolate the chromatic component of SC-ineffective targets and to demonstrate the selectivity of the spatial congruency effect we used the random luminance modulation technique (Experiment 1) and the tritanopic technique (Experiment 2). Our results indicate that the spatial congruency effect does not require the distribution of attention over different sensory modalities and provide correlational evidence that the SC mediates the effect.     

How we interact with objects: learning from brain lesions

Motor deficits are the most common outcome of brain damage. Although a large part of such disturbances arises from loss of elementary sensorimotor functions, several syndromes cannot be explained purely on these bases. In this article, we briefly describe higher-order motor impairments, with specific attention to the characteristic ability of the human hand to interact with objects and tools. Disruption of this motor skill at several independent levels is used to outline a comprehensive model, in which various current proposals for a modular organization of hand-object interactions can be integrated. In this model, cortical mechanisms related to object interaction are independent from representations of the semantic features of objects.     

A 'quantum' of truth in a field of lies: the investigation of emotional truth in a child analysis

Following Bion’s ideas of analytical research the author intends to consider the need to pursue emotional truth between patient and psychotherapist in order to produce a psychological development. It is shown through the analysis of a child how emotional falsification can distort first of all the definition of the child identity. Successively the attention is focused on how lies, as an unconscious element that twist the research of the truth, obstruct the development of thoughts able to transform emotions.Using a quantisation physical model of space, the author hypothesises that the transformation of β elements in α elements is always in an unstable equilibrium. The distortion of emotional truth co‐produced by lies affects the oscillation β?α at a primitive level of transformation, changing the “physical” state of the analytical field from conductor to insulator. The most important consequence of the particular point of view suggested by the quantistic model is that in the third analytical space the same definition of α elements or β elements depends on the analyst’s point of view. This change of perspective can vitalise the analytical thinking of patient and analyst during an impasse.     

The representation of abstract words: why emotion matters

Although much is known about the representation and processing of concrete concepts, knowledge of what abstract semantics might be is severely limited. In this article we first address the adequacy of the 2 dominant accounts (dual coding theory and the context availability model) put forward in order to explain representation and processing differences between concrete and abstract words. We find that neither proposal can account for experimental findings and that this is, at least partly, because abstract words are considered to be unrelated to experiential information in both of these accounts. We then address a particular type of experiential information, emotional content, and demonstrate that it plays a crucial role in the processing and representation of abstract concepts: Statistically, abstract words are more emotionally valenced than are concrete words, and this accounts for a residual latency advantage for abstract words, when variables such as imageability (a construct derived from dual coding theory) and rated context availability are held constant. We conclude with a discussion of our novel hypothesis for embodied abstract semantics.     

Diagnosis and Assessment of Depression and Suicidality Using the NIMH Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC-2.3)

The Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC-2.3) was studied in a sample of 265 adolescent inpatients to determine type and concurrent validity of depressive symptoms and depressive disorder diagnoses for different DISC-2.3 informants (parent, adolescent, both). The Children's Depression Rating Scale — Revised, Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale (RADS), Suicide Ideation Questionnaire — Junior, Spectrum of Suicide Behavior Scale, and clinical consensus diagnoses were used to assess concurrent validity. Results indicated that (1) parents, compared to adolescents, reported a higher prevalence of all depressive symptoms with the exception of weight change; (2) DISC-2.3 depressive and suicidality symptoms were related positively to independent validating criteria for all informant conditions, suggesting good concurrent validity; (3) the DISC-2.3 both informant condition correctly identified the most depressive disorders; and (4) the parent, but not the adolescent, DISC-2.3 Informant condition contributed to the prediction of clinical consensus diagnoses of depression after taking into account RADS scores.