Rejecting Beliefs,or Rejecting Believers? On the Importance and Exclusion of Women in Philosophy

Why has gender equality progressed so much more slowly in philosophy than in other academic disciplines? Here, I address both factual and theoretical matters relating to the causes, effects, and potential redress of the lack of women in philosophy. First, I debunk extant claims that women are more likely than men to disagree with their philosophy professors and male peers; that women are more sensitive to disagreements in the philosophy classroom than men are; and that the gender imbalance in philosophy is no worse than in many cognate disciplines. Second, I discuss ways in which the nature of philosophical inquiry and debate may provide uniquely strong opportunities for person‐perception to hinder progress toward egalitarian treatment of interlocutors. And third, I argue that a diversity of perspectives in philosophy is essential not only for reasons of social justice, but also for philosophical progress. Efforts to improve philosophy should therefore countenance the role of person‐perception in the practice of philosophical debate. For philosophy to become more diverse, the steps the profession takes to achieve that goal will have to go beyond—and not merely match—the steps taken to increase the numbers of women and otherwise underrepresented individuals in other fields.     

Overshadowing and latent inhibition in nausea-based context conditioning in humans: Theoretical and practical implications

Volunteer participants underwent nausea-inducing body rotation in a distinctive context, and the acquired ability of the contextual cues to evoke nausea was subsequently assessed by a symptom rating scale. One group received prior exposure to the context (a latent inhibition procedure); a second consumed a novel flavour prior to rotation (an overshadowing procedure); a third group experienced both procedures; and a control group received neither. When tested in the context in the absence of rotation, all groups reported an increase in nausea-related symptoms at the time when rotation had previously occurred, an outcome consistent with the occurrence of conditioned nausea. The magnitude of this increase did not differ across the groups, but the overall level of responsiveness (the degree to which nausea-related symptoms were reported) was enhanced in the latent inhibition and reduced in the overshadowing condition. Cortisol levels showed the same pattern. The implications of these findings for the proposal that overshadowing and latent inhibition procedures might be used to control the development of anticipatory nausea in patients undergoing chemotherapy is considered.     

Decay theory of immediate memory: From Brown (1958) to today (2014)

This work takes a historical approach to discussing Brown's (1958) paper, “Some Tests of the Decay Theory of Immediate Memory”. This work was and continues to be extremely influential in the field of forgetting over the short term. Its primary importance is in establishing a theoretical basis to consider a process of fundamental importance: memory decay. Brown (1958) established that time-based explanations of forgetting can account for both memory capacity and forgetting of information over short periods of time. We discuss this view both in the context of the intellectual climate at the time of the paper's publication and in the context of the modern intellectual climate. The overarching theme we observe is that decay is as controversial now as it was in the 1950s and 1960s.     

Remembering the message: the use of a reminder cue to increase condom use following a safer sex intervention.

Condom use interventions may be more powerful if they provide cues to recall safe-sex messages when sexual activity occurs. The authors tested this notion by assigning sexually active introductory psychology students (N = 196) to a standard safe-sex intervention, a safe-sex with reminder intervention, or a control (drinking and driving) intervention. Participants assigned to the reminder intervention were given a "friendship bracelet" to wear and were instructed to have the bracelet remind them of the intervention. In a follow-up session (5-7 weeks later), they were asked questions pertaining to condom use. Of the 125 participants who had engaged in sexual intercourse, condom use at last intercourse was higher in the bracelet condition (55%) than in the standard (27%) or control (36%) conditions. The authors also found that the bracelet remained effective, even when participants were under the influence of alcohol. These findings therefore imply that health intervention programs may be more efficacious if they include strategies such as reminder cues to increase the salience of health information in the appropriate contexts.     

Prior cocaine exposure disrupts extinction of fear conditioning

Psychostimulant exposure has been shown to cause molecular and cellular changes in prefrontal cortex. It has been hypothesized that these drug-induced changes might affect the operation of prefrontal-limbic circuits, disrupting their normal role in controlling behavior and thereby leading to compulsive drug-seeking. To test this hypothesis, we tested cocaine-treated rats in a fear conditioning, inflation, and extinction task, known to depend on medial prefrontal cortex and amygdala. Cocaine-treated rats conditioned and inflated similar to saline controls but displayed slower extinction learning. These results support the hypothesis that control processes in the medial prefrontal cortex are impaired by cocaine exposure.     

Visual working memory depends on attentional filtering

Working memory holds information actively being used in cognitive performance. Two important aspects of working memory are how many items it can hold, and how efficiently it can be used. Recently, Vogel and colleagues used event-related brain potentials to show that these two things are related. People who could remember more objects from a spatial array also more efficiently excluded irrelevant objects. The results raise important questions about what aspect of working memory is most fundamental.     

An open letter to institutional review boards considering Northfield Laboratories' PolyHeme trial

At the time of this writing, a widely publicized, waived-consent trial is underway. Sponsored by Northfield Laboratories, Inc. (Evanston, IL) the trial is intended to evaluate the emergency use of PolyHeme, an oxygen-carrying resuscitative fluid that might prevent deaths from uncontrolled bleeding. The protocol allows patients in hemorrhagic shock to be randomized between PolyHeme and saline in the field and, still without consent, randomized between PolyHeme and blood after arrival at an emergency department. The Federal regulations that govern the waiver of consent restrict its applicability to circumstances where proven, satisfactory treatments are unavailable. Blood-the standard treatment for hemorrhagic shock-is not available in ambulances but is available in hospitals. The authors argue that the in-hospital stage of the study fails to meet ethical and regulatory standards.     

Interrater reliability of scores derived from two methods for scoring the clock drawing test

Scores on the Clock Drawing Test have long been considered a useful screening tool for neuropsychological dysfunction, and a number of scoring methods have been developed to evaluate various aspects of performance. This study compared quantitative and qualitative scoring by briefly trained students on 145 clock drawings produced by patients in a geriatric psychiatry outpatient clinic to estimate the interrater reliability of the methods, user's acceptance of the methods, and whether the methods provide differential diagnosis. Both systems showed acceptable interrater reliability. Using the quantitative method, raters scored drawings by patients with organic mental disease as more impaired than those patients diagnosed as depressed or schizophrenic. Results suggest that the Clock Drawing Test is a reliable screening tool for cognitive impairment in a geropsychiatric population, but the scoring methods examined do not yet appear psychometrically sound enough to provide a differential diagnosis.     

What do children want to know about animals and artifacts? Domain-specific requests for information

Children's questions may reveal a great deal about the characteristics of objects they consider to be conceptually important. Thirty-two preschool children were given opportunities to ask questions about unfamiliar artifacts and animals. The children asked ambiguous questions such as "What is it?" about artifacts and animals alike. However, they were more likely to ask about the functions of artifacts, but about category membership, food choices, and typical locations of animals. They never asked questions about either artifacts or animals that would be considered inappropriate by adults. The results indicate that children hold different expectations about the types of information important for categorizing living and artifact kinds. Young children conceive of artifacts in terms of functions, but conceive of animals in terms of biologically appropriate characteristics. Such results speak to debates about the role of function in children's biological reasoning and to accounts of children's artifact concepts.     

An empirical investigation of psychopathy in a noninstitutionalized and noncriminal sample

This study examined the construct of psychopathy using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) in 54 participants from the general population. To obtain a sample of community participants with psychopathic characteristics, participants were recruited using advertisements for a "personality study" that incorporated the characteristics of psychopathy in a nonpejorative manner. The methodology successfully recruited community participants with moderately elevated PCL-R scores. Participants exhibited the personality features of psychopathy (Factor 1) to a greater extent than the behavioral features (Factor 2), which is consistent with the results obtained with the PCL-R normative samples. Roughly 40% of the sample reported no history of involvement with the criminal justice system, yet these participants exhibited moderately elevated PCL-R scores. Moreover, a sizeable portion of the noncriminal participants reported a substantial history of violent behavior. Comparisons of PCL-R scores between participants with and without a criminal history suggest that these two groups differ in ways unrelated to criminal justice system involvement.