Spatial cognition and perseveration by horses, donkeys and mules in a simple A-not-B detour task

We investigated perseveration and detour behaviour in 36 equids (Equus caballus, E. asinus, E. caballus × E. asinus) and compared these data to those of a previous study on domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). The animals were required to make a detour through a gap at one end of a straight barrier in order to reach a visible target. After one, two, three or four repeats (A trials), the gap was moved to the opposite end of the barrier (B trials). We recorded initial deviations from the correct solution path and the latency to crossing the barrier. In the A trials, mules crossed the barrier significantly faster than their parental species, the horses and donkeys. In the B trials, following the change of gap location, all species showed a reduction in performance. Both dogs and horses exhibited significant spatial perseveration, going initially to the previous gap location. Donkeys and mules, however, performed at chance level. Our results suggest that hybrid vigour in mules extends to spatial abilities.     

Internet Search Behaviors and Mood Alterations: A Selective Exposure Approach

The present study has been designed in an attempt to replicate and expand the parameters of D. Zillmann and J. Bryant's selective exposure approach to use of the Internet. In applying this theoretical framework to the Internet, it was expected that persons experiencing unpleasant levels of excitation would arrange their Internet environment in order to terminate their aversive states. Through experimentally manipulating levels of boredom and stress and subsequently recording Internet surfing patterns, it was found that although mood significantly predicted Internet hits, it was not associated with the hedonic valence of the site.     

What Really Happened: A Tribute to John C. Fletcher

John C. Fletcher, a pioneer in the field of bioethics and friend and mentor to many generations of bioethicists, died tragically on May 27th at the age of 72. The son of an Episcopal priest from Bryan, TX, Fletcher graduated in 1953 with a degree in English Literature from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. After completing a Masters in Divinity degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary and a stint as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Heidelberg in 1956, he was ordained in the Episcopal Church and received a doctorate in Christian ethics from the Union Theological Seminary in New York. After ordination, Fletcher worked in various Episcopal churches and founded the Interfaith Metropolitan Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. However, despite his religious faith, he was also a skeptic, and renounced his ordination in the mid-1990s due to his need for ‘intellectual honesty.’

Fletcher began his bioethics contributions in the early 1970's, when he became a founding Fellow of the Hastings Center and eventually the first Chief of the Bioethics Program at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. At the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, he was the Founding Director of the Center for Bioethics and a professor of biomedical ethics at the medical school, and became the Kornfeld Professor of Biomedical Ethics until his retirement in 1999. Fletcher was a prominent authority and voice in the national and international bioethical dialogue through his talks, his testimonies before scientific and congressional panels, his many articles, and his bioethical and religiously-orientated books, including: An Introduction to Clinical Ethics (1997), Coping with Genetic Disorders: a Guide for Clergy and Parents (1982), Ethics and Human Genetics: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (1989), which he wrote with sociologist Dorothy C. Wertz. Dr. Fletcher received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities in 2000. With the passing of Dr. John C. Fletcher, bioethics has lost one of its great voices, a dedicated teacher and mentor, and a friend and colleague to scholars in bioethics and a host of other fields. Below is a touching tribute from one of his former students.     

The Orthodox Church and Commercial Fortune-Telling and Magic in Russia

Abstract

Based on field work in St Petersburg and supplemented by a range of other sources and material, the article examines the vibrant and visible market for commercial fortune-telling and magic in postsoviet Russia and its relationship with the Moscow Patriarchate. It opens with an estimate of the relative strength of belief in the occult and in Orthodoxy, noting that though large numbers claim to be Orthodox, many do not commit to a Christian life or even to the basic tenets of the Orthodox faith. Others mix Orthodox and heterodox religious attitudes eclectically. Belief in magic and fortune-telling is strongest among members of these two large groups, which indicates a magico-religious mindset that perceives their personal troubles as externally caused. Examining the placatory attitude of magic specialists to the Russian Orthodox Church, I argue that, given the overlap with services offered by the Church (rituals to cure alcoholism and addiction, for example), magic specialists are in direct competition with the Patriarchate. Combating their influence has been hampered by a series of factors. Teaching Orthodox believers to distinguish between magic and religion is made more difficult by the Patriarchate's own promotion of wonder-working sites and shrines. Furthermore, its campaign against occultism has until recently paid scant attention to everyday magic and fortune-telling, concentrating instead on external evil in the form of cults and sects. Where it did turn its attention in this direction, it tended to brand magic and fortune-telling as demonic, a characterisation likely to be effective only with those who believe in the devil. Recently, there are indications of a change of tack, but it is unclear how successful the new campaign will be.     

The Nonhuman Environment in Normal Development and in Schizophrenia by Harold F. Searles

Abstract

Somatic psychology, the interplay of the body, the mind, the emotions, and the social context, significantly contributes to the theory and practice of group therapy. The processing of sensory experiences in the here-and-now of the therapy group helps group members to develop self-awareness, the ability to understand their relationships with others, and the capacity for empathy. When group members know what they experience, they can understand how others feel and resonate emotionally with those feelings. Neurobiology, sensory processing, and attachment theories help us to understand how the sense of self develops somatically. Principles of somatic therapies are applied to group therapy practice in working with attachment disorders, transference impasse, and trauma. The importance and implications of the group therapist’s embodied attunement are explored.     

Economic Disadvantage and Young Children’s Emotional and Behavioral Problems: Mechanisms of Risk

This study aimed to establish potential mechanisms through which economic disadvantage contributes to the development of young children’s internalizing and externalizing problems. Prospective data from fetal life to age 3 years were collected in a total of 2,169 families participating in the Generation R Study. The observed physical home environment, the provision of learning materials in the home, maternal depressive symptoms, parenting stress, and harsh disciplining practices were all analyzed as potential mediators of the association between economic disadvantage and children’s internalizing and externalizing problem scores. Findings from structural equation modeling showed that for both internalizing and externalizing problems, the mechanisms underlying the effect of economic disadvantage included maternal depressive symptoms, along with parenting stress and harsh disciplining. For internalizing but not for externalizing problem scores, the lack of provision of learning materials in the home was an additional mechanism explaining the effect of economic disadvantage. The current results suggest that interventions that focus solely on raising income levels may not adequately address problems in the family processes that emerge as a result of economic disadvantage. Policies to improve the mental health of mothers with young children but also their home environments are needed to change the economic gradient in child behavior.     

Word knowledge in the crowd: Measuring vocabulary size and word prevalence in a massive online experiment

We use the results of a large online experiment on word knowledge in Dutch to investigate variables influencing vocabulary size in a large population and to examine the effect of word prevalence—the percentage of a population knowing a word—as a measure of word occurrence. Nearly 300,000 participants were presented with about 70 word stimuli (selected from a list of 53,000 words) in an adapted lexical decision task. We identify age, education, and multilingualism as the most important factors influencing vocabulary size. The results suggest that the accumulation of vocabulary throughout life and in multiple languages mirrors the logarithmic growth of number of types with number of tokens observed in text corpora (Herdan's law). Moreover, the vocabulary that multilinguals acquire in related languages seems to increase their first language (L1) vocabulary size and outweighs the loss caused by decreased exposure to L1. In addition, we show that corpus word frequency and prevalence are complementary measures of word occurrence covering a broad range of language experiences. Prevalence is shown to be the strongest independent predictor of word processing times in the Dutch Lexicon Project, making it an important variable for psycholinguistic research.     

Why be nice? Psychological constraints on the evolution of cooperation

Animals often aid others without gaining any immediate benefits. Although these acts seem to reduce the donor's fitness, they are only apparently altruistic. Donors typically help because they or their kin receive future benefits or avoid costly punishment. Reciprocal altruism--alternating the roles of donor and recipient--has been a well-studied form of cooperation among non-kin because of its intuitive appeal in explaining human cooperation. Despite immense theoretical interest, little empirical evidence substantiates the biological importance of reciprocal altruism in non-human animals. We propose that this is because psychological mechanisms constrain its application in cooperative contexts. In particular, we contend that cognitive limitations such as temporal discounting, numerical discrimination and memory make reciprocity difficult for animals.