Mapping the Connections between Politics and Morality: The Multiple Sociopolitical Orientations Involved in Moral Intuition

According to moral foundations theory (Haidt & Joseph, 2004), five foundations are central to moral intuition. The two individualizing foundations—harm/care and fairness/reciprocity—hinge on the rights of the individual, whereas the three binding foundations—in‐group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity—focus on communal bonds. Recent work suggests that reliance on the various foundations varies as a function of sociopolitical orientation: liberals consistently rely on the individualizing foundations, whereas conservatives rely on both the individualizing and binding foundations. In an effort to further explore the relationship between sociopolitical orientation and morality, we argue that only certain types of sociopolitical attitudes and beliefs should relate to each cluster of foundations. Drawing on dual‐process models of social and political attitudes, we demonstrate that the individualizing foundations are aligned with attitudes and beliefs relevant to preferences for equality versus inequality (i.e., SDO and competitive‐jungle beliefs), whereas the binding foundations are aligned with attitudes and beliefs relevant to preferences for openness versus social conformity (i.e., RWA and dangerous‐world beliefs). We conclude by discussing the consequences of these findings for our understanding of the relationship between sociopolitical and moral orientations.     

Route and survey processing of topographical memory during navigation

We investigated the characteristics of route and survey processing of a unique complex virtual environment both at the behavioral and brain levels. Prior to fMRI scanning, participants were trained to follow a route and to learn the spatial relationships between several places, acquiring both route and survey knowledge from a ground-level perspective. During scanning, snapshots of the environment were presented, and participants were required to either indicate the direction to take to follow the route (route task), or to locate unseen targets (survey task). Data suggest that route and survey processing are mainly supported by a common occipito-fronto-parieto-temporal neural network. Our results are consistent with those gathered in studies concerning the neural bases of route versus survey knowledge acquired either from different perspectives or in different environments. However, rather than arguing for a clear distinction between route and survey processing, “mixed” strategies are likely to be involved when both types of encoding take place in the same environment.     

Hypnotic susceptibility, baseline attentional functioning, and the Stroop task

According to the theoretical framework relating hypnosis to attention, baseline attentional functioning in highly hypnotizable individuals should be more efficient than in low hypnotizable individuals. However, previous studies did not find differences in Stroop-like tasks in which the measure indicative of the Stroop interference effect was based on response latencies. This study was designed to determine whether subjects with different levels of hypnotic susceptibility show differences in baseline attentional functioning. To assess this hypothesis, high, medium, and low hypnotizable subjects performed a Stroop task designed to evaluate accuracy performance, before being subjected to hypnotic induction. Results showed that the Stroop interference effect was smaller in high hypnotizable subjects than in low hypnotizable subjects, whereas it was not different between high, and medium hypnotizable subjects. This outcome supports the notion that baseline attentional functioning is related to hypnotic susceptibility.     

Co‐Hyperintensionality

Co‐hyperintensionality, or hyperintensional equivalence, is a relation holding between two or more contents that can be substituted in a hyperintensional context salva veritate. I argue that two strategies used to provide criteria for co‐hyperintensionality (appeal to some form of impossible worlds, or to structural or procedural equivalence of propositions) fail. I argue that there is no generalized notion of co‐hyperintensionality that meets plausible desiderata, by showing that the opposite thesis leads to falsity. As a conclusion, I suggest to take co‐hyperintensionality as a primitive and I provide a general criterion of co‐hyperintensionality whose content depends on each hyperintensional notion we aim to formalize.     

The role of long-term-memory and short-term-memory links in the Simon effect

In Experiment 1, children performed a Simon task after a spatially compatible or incompatible task. Results showed a Simon effect after the spatially compatible task and a reversed Simon effect after the spatially incompatible task. In Experiments 2-5, an identical procedure was adopted with adult participants, who performed the Simon task immediately after, a day after, or a week after the spatial compatibility task. Experiment 6 established a baseline for the Simon effect. Results showed a Simon effect after the spatially compatible task and no Simon effect or a reversed Simon effect after the spatially incompatible task. A modified version of the computational model of M. Zorzi and C. Umiltà (1995) was used to compare possible accounts of the findings. The best account exploits 2 types of short-term-memory links between stimulus and response and their interaction with long-term-memory links.     

Cholinergic dependence of taste memory formation: evidence of two distinct processes

Learning the aversive or positive consequences associated with novel taste solutions has a strong significance for an animal's survival. A lack of recognition of a taste's consequences could prevent ingestion of potential edibles or encounter death. We used conditioned taste aversion (CTA) and attenuation of neophobia (AN) to study aversive and safe taste memory formation. To determine if muscarinic receptors in the insular cortex participate differentially in both tasks, we infused the muscarinic antagonists scopolamine at distinct times before or after the presentation of a strong concentration of saccharin, followed by either an i.p. injection of a malaise-inducing agent or no injection. Our results showed that blockade of muscarinic receptors before taste presentation disrupts both learning tasks. However, the same treatment after the taste prevents AN but not CTA. These results clearly demonstrate that cortical cholinergic activity participates in the acquisition of both safe and aversive memory formation, and that cortical muscarinic receptors seem to be necessary for safe but not for aversive taste memory consolidation. These results suggest that the taste memory trace is processed in the insular cortex simultaneously by at least two independent mechanisms, and that their interaction would determine the degree of aversion or preference learned to a novel taste.     

Do current connectionist learning models account for reading development in different languages?

Learning to read a relatively irregular orthography, such as English, is harder and takes longer than learning to read a relatively regular orthography, such as German. At the end of grade 1, the difference in reading performance on a simple set of words and nonwords is quite dramatic. Whereas children using regular orthographies are already close to ceiling, English children read only about 40% of the words and nonwords correctly. It takes almost 4 years for English children to come close to the reading level of their German peers. In the present study, we investigated to what extent recent connectionist learning models are capable of simulating this cross-language learning rate effect as measured by nonword decoding accuracy. We implemented German and English versions of two major connectionist reading models, Plaut et al.'s (Plaut, D. C., McClelland, J. L., Seidenberg, M. S., & Patterson, K. (1996). Understanding normal and impaired word reading: computational principles in quasi-regular domains. Psychological Review, 103, 56-115) parallel distributed model and Zorzi et al.'s (Zorzi, M., Houghton, G., & Butterworth, B. (1998a). Two routes or one in reading aloud? A connectionist dual-process model. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 1131-1161); two-layer associative network. While both models predicted an overall advantage for the more regular orthography (i.e. German over English), they failed to predict that the difference between children learning to read regular versus irregular orthographies is larger earlier on. Further investigations showed that the two-layer network could be brought to simulate the cross-language learning rate effect when cross-language differences in teaching methods (phonics versus whole-word approach) were taken into account. The present work thus shows that in order to adequately capture the pattern of reading acquisition displayed by children, current connectionist models must not only be sensitive to the statistical structure of spelling-to-sound relations but also to the way reading is taught in different countries.     

The evil eye: Eye gaze and competitiveness in social decision making

We demonstrate that a person's eye gaze and his/her competitiveness are closely intertwined in social decision making. In an exploratory examination of this relationship, Study 1 uses field data from a high‐stakes TV game show to demonstrate that the frequency by which contestants gaze at their opponent's eyes predicts their defection in a variant on the prisoner's dilemma. Studies 2 and 3 use experiments to examine the underlying causality and demonstrate that the relationship between gazing and competitive behavior is bi‐directional. In Study 2, fixation on the eyes, compared to the face, increases competitive behavior toward the target in an ultimatum game. In Study 3, we manipulate the framing of a negotiation (cooperative vs. competitive) and use an eye tracker to measure fixation number and time spent fixating on the counterpart's eyes. We find that a competitive negotiation elicits more gazing, which in turn leads to more competitive behavior.