Test of the violation of local realism in quantum mechanics with no use of Bell's inequalities

A novel and versatile polarization-entanglement scheme is adopted to investigate the violation of the EPR local realism for a non-maximally entangled two-photon system according to the recent nonlocality proof by Lucien Hardy. In this context the adoption of a sophisticated detection method allows direct determination of any element of physical reality (viz., determined with probability equal to unity in the words of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen) for the pair system within complete measurements that are largely insensitive to the detector quantum-efficiencies and noise.     

Category-specific naming impairments? Yes

Recently, Stewart, Parkin, and Hunkin (1992) have questioned previously reported cases of selective damage in processing items from categories of animate objects, arguing that there has been a lack of adequate control for visual familiarity, visual complexity, and name frequency of the stimuli employed. When re-testing Michelangelo (see Sartori & Job, 1988), one of the patients cited by Stewart et al. (1992), with a set of materials matched on all three factors, the asymmetry in naming animal and artefact items still remains. An analogous pattern is obtained when--in addition to such factors--the visual similarity within the sub-sets of animals and artefacts is taken into account. These results constitute empirical evidence for category-specific impairments and cannot be interpreted as being due to isolated or conjoint effects of visual familiarity, visual complexity, or name frequency.     

Phonological short-term store and the nature of the recency effect: Evidence from neuropsychology

The recency effect in immediate recall of lists of unrelated words was investigated in P.V., a left hemisphere-damaged patient, who had a grossly reduced auditory verbal span, attributed to a selective impairment of a phonological short-term store. No recency effect was evident in free recall of auditorily presented material. When the patient was instructed to recall the final items of the list first, the recency performance remained defective, even though P.V. was able to adopt a recall from end order. In the case of visual presentation, P.V.'s free recall performance was within the normal range and a clear recency occurred in the recall from end condition. These results are consistent with the view that the standard recency effect in immediate free recall of auditorily presented material represents the output of a phonological short-term store to which ordinal retrieval strategies, in P.V.'s case unimpaired, are applied. Finally, the contributions of the phonological short-term store and the process of rehearsal to the recency effect and to immediate memory span performance are discussed.     

Use of the ten-point clock test to compare executive functioning across 24 months in patients with subcortical vascular dementia

The Ten-point Clock Test can be used to identify early forms of Alzheimer's disease because it is reliable, well accepted, and easily administered at the bedside. Nevertheless, its clinical role in the detection of early dementia and its correlations with other cognitive processes is still under investigation. Vascular dementia is an uncertain nosological entity, in which unevenly distributed patterns of cognitive deficits comprising slowing of cognitive processing and impairment of executive function occur. The present study assessed how the Clock Test scores correlated with a number of other neuropsychological and functional tests in a sample of 144 patients with vascular dementia, who were followed for a period of 24 mo. At baseline, at 12 mo. and at 24 mo. subjects were administered a battery of tests, including the Mini-Mental State Examination, word fluency, visuospatial skills, an evaluation of hetero- and autotopognosia (knowledge of self), the Proverbs Test, and the Ten-point Clock Test. For these patients scores on the Clock Test correlated significantly with semantic abilities, with abstract reasoning capacities, visuospatial perception, and with right and left recognition.     

Relationships at risk: How the perceived risk of ending a romantic relationship influences the intensity of romantic affect and relationship commitment

Drawing on emotional intensity theory (EIT: Brehm in Personality and Social Psychology Review 3:2–22, 1999; Brehm and Miron in Motivation and Emotion 30:13–30, 2006), this experiment (N?=?104) shows how the manipulated risk of ending a romantic relationship influences the intensity of romantic affect and commitment. As predicted by EIT, the intensity of both romantic feelings varied as a cubic function of increasing levels of manipulated risk of relationship breakup (risk not mentioned vs. low vs. moderate vs. high). Data additionally showed that the effects of manipulated risk on romantic commitment were fully mediated by feelings of romantic affect. These findings complement and extend prior research on romantic feelings (Miron et al. in Motivation and Emotion 33:261–276, 2009; Miron et al. in Journal of Relationships Research 3:67–80, 2012) (a) by highlighting the barrier-like properties of manipulated risk of relationship breakup and its causal role in shaping romantic feelings, and (b) by suggesting that any obstacle can systematically control—thus, either reduce or enhance—the intensity of romantic feelings to the extent that such obstacles are perceived as ‘risky’ for the fate of the relationship.     

Awe Enhances Creative Thinking: An Experimental Study

Awe is a complex emotion characterized by feelings of vastness and a need for accommodation. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the experience of awe impacts on peculiar dimensions of creative potential in terms of creative thinking. Fifty-two university students were exposed both to an awe-inducing 3D-video and to a neutral one in a within-subject design. After each video, participants reported the intensity and type of perceived emotion and completed two verbal tasks of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT; Torrance, 1974). A direct causal relationship between awe and creative thinking was tested using generalized linear model. Results showed that awe affected key creative thinking components—fluency, flexibility and elaboration measured by the product improvement test—compared to the neutral stimulus. Implications of these findings for future research and limitations are discussed.     

The persistence of spiritual experience among churchgoing and non-churchgoing Italians: sociological and psychological perspectives

ABSTRACT

The study presented in this article draws on theories and methods developed within the psychology of religion to examine, from a fresh perspective, a problem established within the sociology of religion: the ‘oddity of the Italian situation’. The study employs the notion of openness to mystical experience as an indicator of the level of spiritual awareness among a sample of 1,155 Italians ranging in age from 14 to 80 years. The data demonstrated that, while levels of openness to mystical experience remain quite high among non-churchgoing Italians, these levels are significantly associated with sex, age, religious attendance, and personal prayer. Moreover, the differences between attenders and non-attenders are sensitive to the ways in which aspects of mystical experience are expressed. The dialogue between the psychology of religion and the sociology of religion generates fresh insight into the religious and spiritual landscape of Italy today.