Virtual/real transfer of spatial knowledge: benefit from visual fidelity provided in a virtual environment and impact of active navigation

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect the visual fidelity of a virtual environment (VE) (undetailed vs. detailed) has on the transfer of spatial knowledge based on the navigation mode (passive vs. active) for three different spatial recall tasks (wayfinding, sketch mapping, and picture sorting). Sixty-four subjects (32 men and 32 women) participated in the experiment. Spatial learning was evaluated by these three tasks in the context of the Bordeaux district. In the wayfinding task, the results indicated that the detailed VE helped subjects to transfer their spatial knowledge from the VE to the real world, irrespective of the navigation mode. In the sketch-mapping task, the detailed VE increased performances compared to the undetailed VE condition, and allowed subjects to benefit from the active navigation. In the sorting task, performances were better in the detailed VE; however, in the undetailed version of the VE, active learning either did not help the subjects or it even deteriorated their performances. These results are discussed in terms of appropriate perceptive-motor and/or spatial representations for each spatial recall task.     

On the influence of causal beliefs on the feeling of agency

The sense of agency is the experience of being the origin of a sensory consequence. This study investigates whether contextual beliefs modulate low-level sensorimotor processes which contribute to the emergence of the sense of agency. We looked at the influence of causal beliefs on ‘intentional binding’, a phenomenon which accompanies self-agency. Participants judged the onset-time of either an action or a sound which followed the action. They were induced to believe that the tone was either triggered by themselves or by somebody else, although, in reality, the sound was always triggered by the participants. We found that intentional binding was stronger when participants believed that they triggered the tone, compared to when they believed that another person triggered the tone. These results suggest that high-level contextual information influences sensorimotor processes responsible for generating intentional binding.     

Re-examining selective adaptation: Fatiguing feature detectors,or distributional learning?

When a listener hears many good examples of a /b/ in a row, they are less likely to classify other sounds on, e.g., a /b/-to-/d/ continuum as /b/. This phenomenon is known as selective adaptation and is a well-studied property of speech perception. Traditionally, selective adaptation is seen as a mechanistic property of the speech perception system, and attributed to fatigue in acoustic-phonetic feature detectors. However, recent developments in our understanding of non-linguistic sensory adaptation and higher-level adaptive plasticity in speech perception and language comprehension suggest that it is time to re-visit the phenomenon of selective adaptation. We argue that selective adaptation is better thought of as a computational property of the speech perception system. Drawing on a common thread in recent work on both non-linguistic sensory adaptation and plasticity in language comprehension, we furthermore propose that selective adaptation can be seen as a consequence of distributional learning across multiple levels of representation. This proposal opens up new questions for research on selective adaptation itself, and also suggests that selective adaptation can be an important bridge between work on adaptation in low-level sensory systems and the complicated plasticity of the adult language comprehension system.     

How Tolerant Can You Be? Carnap on Rationality

In this paper I examine a neglected question concerning the centerpiece of Carnap's philosophy: the principle of tolerance. The principle of tolerance states that we are free to devise and adopt any well‐defined form of language or linguistic framework we please. A linguistic framework defines framework‐internal standards of correct reasoning that guide us in our first‐order scientific pursuits. The choice of a linguistic framework, on the other hand, is an ‘external’ question to be settled on pragmatic grounds and so not itself constrained by these (framework‐internal) standards. However, even if choosing a framework is a practical matter, we would nevertheless expect the process of framework selection to be subject to rational norms. But which norms might those be? And where do they come from? I begin by showing that these questions are crucial to the success of Carnap's entire philosophical project. I then offer a response on behalf of the Carnapian which guarantees the rationality of the process of framework selection, while remaining true to Carnap's firm commitment to tolerance.     

Interaction of task readiness and automatic retrieval in task switching: Negative priming and competitor priming

When subjects switch between tasks, performance is slower after a task switch than after a task repetition, even when preparation time is long. We report two experiments that support the idea that a large part of these residual task shift costs can be due to stimulus-cued retrieval of previous task episodes. We demonstrate that there are two different factors at work: (1) facilitation of response to the current distractor stimulus, appropriate to the previously relevant, competing task (competitor priming), and (2) impaired processing of previously suppressed responses (negative priming). Negative priming was contingent on the size of the stimulus set, suggesting that distractor suppression comes into effect only if the distractors are highly activated. Importantly, both types of interference interacted with task readiness: Whereas in the nondominant task (picture naming), switch and nonswitch trials were equally affected, the dominant task (word reading) showed priming effects on switch trials only. Thus, the retrieval of previous processing episodes has a selective impact on situations in which task competition is high.     

Intrusive memories and rumination in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder: a phenomenological comparison

The aim of the study was to investigate the phenomenological differences between intrusive memories and rumination in PTSD. The study population consisted of 31 patients with PTSD referred for cognitive behavioural therapy to specialist services. A semi-structured interview was used to examine the characteristics of the most prominent intrusive memory and rumination. Intrusive memories were predominantly sensory experiences of short duration, whereas rumination was predominantly a thought process of longer duration. Shame was associated more with rumination than with intrusive memories. Anxiety, helplessness, numbness, and threat were greater at the time of the trauma than when experiencing the intrusive memory. In contrast, feelings like anger and sadness were greater when experiencing intrusive memories than at the time of the event. The distinction between intrusive memories and rumination is of clinical importance as intrusive memories usually decrease with imaginal reliving of the trauma, whereas rumination may require different therapeutic strategies, such as rumination-focused or mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.     

THE EFFECT OF CULTURE AND GENDER ON SELF-REPORTED ASSERTIVE BEHAVIOR

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between cultural affiliation, gender and assertive behavior in two distinct socio-cultural groups. Ninety-seven Israeli Arab students and 97 Israeli Jewish students, of both sexes, filled out the Assertion Inventory (Gambrill and Richey 1975) during a class meeting. Analysis of the results indicated differences between the two cultural groups. In general, Arab participants showed a lower level of assertiveness than their Jewish counterparts. Differences between gender and interaction of culture x gender were found in certain factors related to behavior in specific social situations. These findings were discussed on the basis of accepted social behavior within various cultural contexts.     

Cross-talk of instructed and applied arbitrary visuomotor mappings

Humans are able to perform any voluntary motor response to any environmental stimulus. This cornerstone of the flexibility of human behaviour has been investigated under the label of arbitrary visuomotor mapping. The focus of research has been the question as to how these mappings are executed once the subjects have been instructed appropriately. However, one question has been rather neglected thus far: what, in the first place, enables humans to instantaneously implement any arbitrary S-R mapping by mere instruction! We report an experiment assessing the cross-talk of arbitrary S-R mappings as a part of the instructed task representation, on the one hand, and the cross-talk of repetitively applied mappings, on the other hand. The results show a behavioural dissociation of the cross-talk elicited by instructed and applied mappings, suggesting that the first occurs on the level of task-set, whereas the latter occurs on the level of specific S-R associations.     

Frankfurt-Style Cases User Manual: Why Frankfurt-Style Enabling Cases Do Not Necessitate Tech Support

‘Frankfurt-style cases’ (FSCs) are widely considered as having refuted the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP) by presenting cases in which an agent is morally responsible even if he could not have done otherwise. However, Neil Levy (J Philos 105:223–239, 2008) has recently argued that FSCs fail because we are not entitled to suppose that the agent is morally responsible, given that the mere presence of a counterfactual intervener is enough to make an agent lose responsibility-grounding abilities. Here, I distinguish two kinds of Frankfurt counter-arguments against the PAP: the direct and the indirect counter-arguments. I then argue that Levy’s argument, if valid, can shed doubt on the indirect argument but leaves the direct argument untouched. I conclude that FSCs can still do their job, even if we grant that the mere presence of a counterfactual intervener can modify an agent’s abilities.