Philosophies of Life and Painful Experiences

The article discusses whether the philosophy of the modern era may be traced back to the thought of Martin Luther. This position has been advocated by French political philosopher Reiner Schürmann in his book Broken Hegemonies, on the history of Western thought from a phenomenological point of view. The author finds Schürmann's position remarkable in three respects: (i) It suggests a philosophical influence from Luther which is in accordance with his own criticism of Aristotelian metaphysics; (ii) it makes plausible that there is a transcendental turn at the heart of Luther's approach; but (iii) it nevertheless points out important differences between Kant's autonomy and Luther's heteronomy which have substantial consequences for their anthropology, epistemology, and theory of interpretation. The author finds that Schürmann argues convincingly for his point of view, in spite of some critical objections, and he concludes with a discussion of how such a genealogy may influence the present discussion on self and other in the philosophical debate.     

Computer‐mediated communication: synchronicity and compensatory effort

Groups might perform compensatory communicative actions if media characteristics impede a particular communication process. The present study examined this hypothesis for the process of information integration, which is a sub‐task in collaborative problem‐solving. Synchronous media characteristics support the information integration process, while asynchronous media characteristics impede it. The synchronicity of the medium was varied by manipulating parallelism and the immediacy of feedback within real‐time, text‐based computer‐mediated communication. A Conversational Games Analysis (CGA) was performed in order to investigate the functional purposes of the task‐oriented contributions. All groups successfully solved the problem. However, groups interacting in the asynchronous communication mode produced significantly more functional contributions for the purpose of mutual task‐oriented understanding and clarification, compared to the synchronous groups. Moreover, members of asynchronous groups repeated unshared pieces of information more often. These differences are interpreted as communicative efforts that balance the hindering influence of asynchronous media characteristics on the process of information integration. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A comparison of AME and CR100 for scaling perceived exertion

In psychophysical studies of the relation between perceived magnitude and physical stimulus, interest has focused on the preciseness of growth functions. Very little interest has been devoted to natural levels of an "absolute" character and to the validity of direct measurements. In this article, the Category (C)-Ratio (R) (CR) scaling methodology, developed by Borg (1973, 1977, 1982) is presented together with a new CR scale: the CR100 scale. In an experiment on perceived exertion, CR100 was compared with Absolute Magnitude Estimation (AME). Perceived exertion has the advantage of having easily measured physiological variables that can function as validity criteria. 32 persons (16 men and 16 women) participated as subjects on two different occasions, and the presentation order was counterbalanced. Results from CR100 and AME could be described equally well with psychophysical functions. The exponents obtained with CR100 were n = 1.60 for women and n = 1.69 for men, and the corresponding exponents for AME were n = 1.60 for women and n = 1.46 for men (with a "noise" constant included in the function). ANOVA showed that CR100 could make the predicted differentiation between sexes, whereas AME could not. This drawback with AME was also found when using the methods to predict working capacity.     

A Generalized Proof-Theoretic Approach to Logical Argumentation Based on Hypersequents

Studia Logica - In this paper we introduce hypersequent-based frameworks for the modelling of defeasible reasoning by means of logic-based argumentation and the induced entailment relations. These...     

Is disgust sensitive to classical conditioning as indexed by facial electromyography and behavioural responses?

Earlier studies provided preliminary support for the role of classical conditioning as a pathway of disgust learning, yet this evidence has been limited to self-report. This study included facial electromyographical (EMG) measurements (corrugator and levator muscles) and a behavioural approach task to assess participants’ motivation-to-eat the actual food items (conditioned stimuli, CS). Food items served as CS and film excerpts of a woman vomiting served as unconditioned stimuli (US). Following acquisition the CS+ (neutral CS paired with US disgust) was rated as more disgusting and less positive. Notably, the conditioned response was transferred to the actual food items as evidenced by participants’ reported lowered willingness-to-eat. Participants also showed heightened EMG activity in response to the CS+ which seemed driven by the corrugator indexing a global negative affect. These findings suggest that classical conditioning as a pathway of disgust learning can be reliably observed in subjective but not in disgust-specific physiological responding.     

Distinct neuronal patterns of positive and negative moral processing in psychopathy

Psychopathy is a disorder characterized by severe and frequent moral violations in multiple domains of life. Numerous studies have shown psychopathy-related limbic brain abnormalities during moral processing; however, these studies only examined negatively valenced moral stimuli. Here, we aimed to replicate prior psychopathy research on negative moral judgments and to extend this work by examining psychopathy-related abnormalities in the processing of controversial moral stimuli and positive moral processing. Incarcerated adult males (N = 245) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging protocol on a mobile imaging system stationed at the prison. Psychopathy was assessed using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL-R). Participants were then shown words describing three types of moral stimuli: wrong (e.g., stealing), not wrong (e.g., charity), and controversial (e.g., euthanasia). Participants rated each stimulus as either wrong or not wrong. PCL-R total scores were correlated with not wrong behavioral responses to wrong moral stimuli, and were inversely related to hemodynamic activity in the anterior cingulate cortex in the contrast of wrong > not wrong. In the controversial > noncontroversial comparison, psychopathy was inversely associated with activity in the temporal parietal junction and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These results indicate that psychopathy-related abnormalities are observed during the processing of complex, negative, and positive moral stimuli.     

Development of a Health Related Quality of Life Measure for Adolescents and Young Adults Following Invasive Meningococcal Disease

This study describes the key areas that matter to adolescent survivors of Invasive Meningococcal Disease (IMD). Satisfaction with Life After Meningitis is a brief multidimensional measure of health related quality of life that is reliable and correlates with criterion variables in a theoretically meaningful way. To develop a Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) measure for adolescent and young adult survivors of (IMD) we used a cross-sectional study and focus groups. The study was conducted in two phases. In Phase 1 a pool of potential items were generated based on the following: a review of existing measures, focus groups with IMD survivors, and an expert group consultation. Phase 2 involved administration of the questionnaire to a sample of adolescent and young adult IMD survivors. Factor analysis suggested a correlated four factor solution: Wellbeing, Positive about Future, Social Support, and Confidence. These factors were significantly correlated in a theoretically predictable way with scores from the Beck Depression Inventory (correlations ranged from ?0.77 to ?0.81) and the eight domains of the SF-36 Health Survey (correlations ranged from 0.32 to 0.79). The reliability of all subscales was high ranging from 0.85 to 0.92. The Satisfaction with Life After Meningitis (SLAM) questionnaire is a HRQoL self-report measure that produces reliable scores and is appropriate for use with young survivors of IMD. There is also evidence of concurrent validity with existing measures of physical and psychological well-being.     

Modes of executive control in sequence learning: from stimulus-based to plan-based control

The authors argue that human sequential learning is often but not always characterized by a shift from stimulus- to plan-based action control. To diagnose this shift, they manipulated the frequency of 1st-order transitions in a repeated manual left-right sequence, assuming that performance is sensitive to frequency-induced biases under stimulus- but not plan-based control. Indeed, frequency biases tended to disappear with practice, but only for explicit learners. This tendency was facilitated by visual-verbal target stimuli, response-contingent sounds, and intentional instructions and hampered by auditory (but not visual) noise. Findings are interpreted within an event-coding model of action control, which holds that plans for sequences of discrete actions are coded phonetically, integrating order and relative timing. The model distinguishes between plan acquisition, linked to explicit knowledge, and plan execution, linked to the action control mode.     

Life Satisfaction and Associated Factors Among People Aged 60 Years and Above in Six European Countries

Life satisfaction is a concept frequently used to measure wellbeing of older people. However, there is still a lack of cross-national comparative research investigating factors associated with life satisfaction. There may be unique and common factors associated with life satisfaction across European countries. This study aimed to investigate life satisfaction among people aged 60–89 years in six European countries in relation to health problems, ADL capacity, self-esteem, social and financial resources. A cross-sectional study was performed, including 7,699 people aged 60–89 years, in Sweden, the UK, The Netherlands, Luxemburg, Austria and Italy, participating in the European Study of Adult Wellbeing, using questions from the Older Americans Resources and Services schedule, Multidimensional Functional Assessment Questionnaire, Life Satisfaction Index Z and Rosenberg’s Self-esteem scale. Logistic regression analysis was performed to determine factors associated with life satisfaction in the six national samples. In cases where people were less satisfied with their life it was fairly satisfactory and unsatisfactory social contacts (Odds Ratio (OR) 1.5–13.8), poor financial resources (OR 1.7–15.1), feeling greatly hindered by health problems (OR 2.2–5.4) and self-esteem (OR 2.1–5.1) rather than the ability to perform activities of daily living and the extent of social contacts that gave the greatest risk of low life satisfaction in all the six European countries. There were both common and country-specific factors important for life satisfaction in the six European countries. However, the importance of satisfactory social contacts, financial resources, self-esteem and feeling hindered by health problems seems universal in the six included countries and thus important to target in preventive interventions.     

Contributions of weight perceptions to weight loss attempts: Differences by body mass index and gender

Previous studies have consistently observed that women are more likely to perceive themselves as overweight compared to men. Similarly, women are more likely than men to report trying to lose weight. Less is known about the impact that self-perceived weight has on weight loss behaviors of adults and whether this association differs by gender. We conducted a cross-sectional analysis among an employee sample (n = 899) to determine the association of self-perceived weight on evidence-based weight loss behaviors across genders, accounting for body mass index (BMI) and demographic characteristics. Women were more likely than men to consider themselves to be overweight across each BMI category, and were more likely to report attempting to lose weight. However, perceiving oneself to be overweight was a strong correlate for weight loss attempts across both genders. The effect of targeting accuracy of self-perceived weight status in weight loss interventions deserves research attention.