Attribute coding at different levels of processing

Schoolchildren, aged 16 years showed poorer incidental learning for nouns if the orienting task was one of finding rhymes for the items compared to assigning each word to a semantic category. On a recognition task including homophone and synonym foils, rhyming subjects made significantly more phonemic errors, whereas categorizing subjects produced a significantly greater number of semantic confusions. Subjects instructed to construct images for each of the nouns showed a performance pattern similar to the categorizing group. The results are interpreted in terms of Herriot's (1974) view that different levels of processing are associated with the coding of different clusters of stimulus attributes.     

Jesuit Sensuality and Feminist Bodies

The stated goal of Donna Haraway's "Cyborg feminism" is to liberate sensuality from violence. In examining her book alongside that of Jesuit Toletus it becomes clear that both argue that sensuality is a place of metaphysical violence. The first two sections of the essay demonstrate this, and, in addition that Toletus' commentary on Aquinas is hardly accurate. This fact will help justify the claim that the Jesuit tradition includes a rather particular theory of sensuality, the origin of which is perhaps Giles of Rome. A third section shows how the Jesuit Gaston Fessard rediscovered Aquinas' own theory of sensuality through a thoroughgoing critique of Hegelian and Marxist dialectic. The essay concludes that Haraway would do well to adopt Aquinas' non-violent theory of sensuality as her own.     

Closed Structure

Journal of Philosophical Logic - According to the structured theory of propositions, if two sentences express the same proposition, then they have the same syntactic structure, with corresponding...     

Pathways to prejudice and outgroup hostility: Group alignment and intergroup conflict among football fans

How do different forms of group alignment influence our attitudes toward outgroups? To answer this, the current fieldwork study explored how identification and identity fusion differentially impact outgroup anxiety, prejudice, and hostility toward rival football fan supporter groups in Australia. The community participants (N = 100) were members of two active fan groups who had experienced a history of intergroup tensions. The findings from the full path model confirmed that the predictor group alignment variables of identification and fusion were correlated, and the two outcome variables of outgroup prejudice and hostility were correlated, as predicted. The findings also revealed that fusion with one's club predicted outgroup hostility, but not prejudice, whereas identification with one's club predicted outgroup prejudice, but not hostility. Additionally, outgroup anxiety was found to significantly mediate the relationship between ingroup identification and outgroup prejudice, whereas a similar relationship was not found for fusion. These findings highlight the differential impact of group alignment (i.e., identification and identity fusion) on social constructs of outgroup anxiety, prejudice, and hostility. Empirically, this is the first study to demonstrate the workings of these distinct group alignment pathways in an applied setting involving hard-core football fans. We discuss the broader implications of these findings for a fuller understanding of the drivers of intergroup tensions and conflict.     

Back to Basics: Application of the Principles of Bioethics to Heritable Genome Interventions

Science and Engineering Ethics - Prior to their announcement of the birth of gene-edited twins in China, Dr. He Jiankui and colleagues published a set of draft ethical principles for discussing the...     

Are Resource Fluctuations Anticipated in Resource Allocation Tasks?

Resource-allocation behavior has recently received increasing attention in the decision-theory literature partially because individuals and societies are facing hard decisions about the allocation of constrained resources. We observed in two previous studies that resource allocators do not plan for probable losses in loss situations, but instead react to losses after they occur. In this paper, we determine if a similar failure to anticipate changes in resources occurs in a gain situation. The data suggest that subjects do not allocate their resources in anticipation of probable gains or losses, thus considerably increasing the generality of our previous findings.     

A cognitive model of insomnia

Insomnia is one of the most prevalent psychological disorders, causing sufferers severe distress as well as social, interpersonal, and occupational impairment. Drawing on well-validated cognitive models of the anxiety disorders as well as on theoretical and empirical work highlighting the contribution of cognitive processes to insomnia, this paper presents a new cognitive model of the maintenance of insomnia. It is suggested that individuals who suffer from insomnia tend to be overly worried about their sleep and about the daytime consequences of not getting enough sleep. This excessive negatively toned cognitive activity triggers both autonomic arousal and emotional distress. It is proposed that this anxious state triggers selective attention towards and monitoring of internal and external sleep-related threat cues. Together, the anxious state and the attentional processes triggered by it tricks the individual into overestimating the extent of the perceived deficit in sleep and daytime performance. It is suggested that the excessive negatively toned cognitive activity will be fuelled if a sleep-related threat is detected or a deficit perceived. Counterproductive safety behaviours (including thought control, imagery control, emotional inhibition, and difficulty problem solving) and erroneous beliefs about sleep and the benefits of worry are highlighted as exacerbating factors. The unfortunate consequence of this sequence of events is that the excessive and escalating anxiety may culminate in a real deficit in sleep and daytime functioning. The literature providing preliminary support for the model is reviewed and the clinical implications and limitations discussed.     

Volume Contents

Volume Contents

Volume Contents