Semantic sensitivity for prose in patients with probable alzheimer's disease

This study examined the sensitivity of patients with probable Alzheimer's Disease (AD) to the inherent semantic structure of prose. Patients and normal controls listened to prose passages and recalled the stories under immediate and delayed conditions. Subjects were also tested with a recognition format. Unlike controls and patients with mild AD, patients with severe AD were unable to differentiate high importance ideas from ideas of lower importance on free recall and recognition. These results suggest relative impairment of semantic processing at the encoding and consolidation process of memory in more advanced AD.     

The Epicurean View of Death

The Epicurean view is that there is nothing bad about death, and we are wrong to loathe it. This paper distinguishes several different such views, and shows that while some of them really would undermine our loathing of death, others would not. It then argues that any version that did so could be at best vacuously true: If there is nothing bad about death, that can only be because there is nothing bad about anything.     

Positive Gaze Preferences in Older Adults: Assessing the Role of Cognitive Effort with Pupil Dilation

ABSTRACT

Older adults display positive preferences in their gaze, consistent with their prioritization of emotion regulation goals. While some research has argued that substantial amounts of cognitive effort are necessary for these information-processing preferences to occur, other work suggests that these attentional patterns unfold with minimal cognitive exertion. The current study used an implicit regulatory context (i.e., viewing facial stimuli of varying emotions) to assess how much cognitive effort was required for positive attentional preferences to occur. Effortful cognitive processing was assessed with a direct measure of change in pupil dilation. Results indicated that minimal cognitive effort was expended when older adults engaged in positive gaze preferences. This finding suggests that gaze acts as a rather effortless and economical regulatory tool for individuals to shape their affective experience.     

Polkinghorne and Cartwright on Pluralism and Metaphysics

Abstract

This paper reviews the natural philosophies of John Polkinghorne and Nancy Cartwright, with particular emphasis on the role of pluralism in their respective writings. While often motivated by distinct projects, their philosophies display some interesting and perhaps unexpected similarities. It is suggested that Polkinghorne's views are not far away from some of Cartwright's proposals, and further that certain debates about God's providential action could be helpfully reoriented if the insistence on natural laws as a centerpiece of scientific explanation were relinquished.     

Automatic identification of familiar faces

Much research has suggested that facial identification has some characteristics of automaticity, in that it is rapid, nonconscious, and mandatory. However, little research has tested whether it can occur even if attention is already devoted to the demanding central processes of another task. In the present study, we addressed this type of automaticity using the psychological refractory period paradigm. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants successfully identified familiar faces, even while they were engaged with another task, indicating the automaticity of familiar-face identification. In Experiments 3 and 4, however, participants could not identify unfamiliar faces as automatically as they could identify the familiar faces. We concluded that automatic face identification is possible, but dependent on prior familiarity.     

Regulatory Focus and Individual Sales Performance of Field Marketers: A Constructive Replication

abstract

We tested whether field marketers’ regulatory focus predicted their performance. Promotion focus spurs eagerness (acting on opportunity, to advance), whereas prevention focus spurs vigilance (not acting, to maintain security). When sales work involves approaching as many new buyers as possible for single transactions (and little else), promotion focus is well suited for sales performance, and prevention focus is counterproductive. Accordingly, prior research found that promotion focus positively, and prevention focus negatively, predicts performance in such a context. We attempt constructive replication of these findings using stronger methodology. Our study (N?=?156) showed that promotion focus positively, and prevention focus negatively, predicted performance. The study replicated previous findings and showed similar, though in most cases slightly smaller, effect sizes than the original study.     

The rise of information in an evolutionary universe

This paper outlines the grand scenario of cosmic evolution by examining the ongoing changes among radiation, matter and life in standard, big‐bang cosmology. Using aspects of non‐equilibrium thermodynamics and information science, we argue that it is the contrasting temporal behavior of various energy densities that have given rise to the environments needed for the emergence of galaxies, stars, planets, and life forms. We furthermore argue that a necessary (though perhaps not sufficient) condition—a veritable prime mover—for the emergence of such ordered structures of growing complexity is the expansion of the Universe itself. Neither demon‐strably new science nor appeals to non‐science are needed to explain the impressive hierarchy of developmental change, from quark to quasar, from microbe to mind.     

The psychological costs of knowledge specialization in groups: Unique expertise leaves you out of the loop

Knowledge specialization, such as that present in cross-functional teams, produces both positive and negative outcomes. Our research investigated how unique expertise can lead to feelings of ostracism in the form of being out of the loop. Compared to group members with shared expertise, members with unique expertise felt out of the loop and experienced decreased fulfillment of fundamental needs, particularly when their expertise was to be given less weight in the group’s decision. Possessing unique expertise did not inhibit leadership emergence, even when that expertise should not have been used in the decision-making process. So, although knowledge specialization can have positive consequences for teams and task performance, it also has some negative psychological consequences that need to be understood.