Grasp-Based Functional Coupling Between Reach- and Grasp-Related Components of Forelimb Muscle Activity

How are appropriate combinations of forelimb muscles selected during reach-to-grasp movements in the presence of neuromotor redundancy and important task-related constraints? The authors tested whether grasp type or target location preferentially influence the selection and synergistic coupling between forelimb muscles during reach-to-grasp movements. Factor analysis applied to 14–20 forelimb electromyograms recorded from monkeys performing reach-to-grasp tasks revealed 4–6 muscle components that showed transport/preshape- or grasp-related features. Weighting coefficients of transport/preshape-related components demonstrated strongest similarities for reaches that shared the same grasp type rather than the same target location. Scaling coefficients of transport/preshape- and grasp-related components showed invariant temporal coupling. Thus, grasp type influenced strongly both transport/preshape- and grasp-related muscle components, giving rise to grasp-based functional coupling between forelimb muscles.     

Facing a Disruptive Face: Embodiment in the Everyday Experiences of “Disfigured” Individuals

In recent years, facial difference is increasingly on the public and academic agenda. This is evidenced by the growing public presence of individuals with an atypical face, and the simultaneous emergence of research investigating the issues associated with facial variance. The scholarship on facial difference approaches this topic either through a medical and rehabilitation perspective, or a psycho-social one. However, having a different face also encompasses an embodied dimension. In this paper, we explore this embodied dimension by interpreting the stories of individuals with facial limb absence against the background of phenomenological theories of the body, illness and disability. Our findings suggest that the atypical face disrupts these individuals’ engagement with everyday projects when it gives rise to disruptive perceptions, sensations, and observations. The face then ceases to be the absent background to perception, and becomes foregrounded in awareness. The disruptions evoked by facial difference call for adjustments: as they come to terms with their altered face, the participants in our study gradually develop various new bodily habits that re-establish their face’s absence, or relate to its disruptive presence. It is through these emergent habits that facial difference comes to be embodied. By analyzing the everyday experiences of individuals with facial limb absence, this article provides a much-needed exploration of the embodied aspects of facial difference. It also exemplifies how a phenomenological account of illness and disability can do justice both to the impairments and appearance issues associated with atypical embodiment.     

The Influence of Control on Belief in Conspiracy Theories: Conceptual and Applied Extensions

Threats to control have been found to increase belief in conspiracy theories. We argue, however, that previous research observing this effect was limited in two ways. First, previous research did not exclude the possibility that affirming control might reduce conspiracy beliefs. Second, because of artificial lab procedures, previous findings provide little information about the external validity of the control threat–conspiracy belief relationship. In Study 1, we address the first limitation and find that affirming control indeed reduces belief in conspiracy theories as compared with a neutral baseline condition. In Study 2, we address the second limitation of the literature. In a large‐scale US sample, we find that a societal threat to control, that citizens actually experienced, predicts belief in a range of common conspiracy theories. Taken together, these findings increase insight in the fundamental relationship between the human need for control and the tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interference Control in Children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

The view that Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is associated with a diminished ability to control interfference is controversial and based exclusively on results of (verbal)-visual interference tasks, primarily the Stroop Color Word task. The present study compares medication-naïve children with ADHD (n?=?35 and n?=?51 in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively) with normal controls (n?=?26 and n?=?32, respectively) on two interference tasks to assess interference control in both the auditory and the visual modality: an Auditory Stroop task and a Simon task. Both groups showed reliable but equal degrees of interference on both tasks, suggesting that children with ADHD do not differ from normal controls in their ability to control interference in either modality.     

Motivated information processing and group decision-making: Effects of process accountability on information processing and decision quality

Integrating dual-process models [Chaiken, S., & Trope, Y. (Eds.). (1999). Dual-process theories in social psychology. NewYork: Guilford Press] with work on information sharing and group decision-making [Stasser, G., & Titus, W. (1985). Pooling of unshared information in group decision making: biased information sampling during discussion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 1467-1478.], we predicted that groups with high epistemic motivation engage in more information-driven and less preference-driven interaction, and achieve better decisions. An experiment manipulating process accountability showed that groups under process accountability experienced greater need for more information, repeated unshared information more often, and more often chose the correct decision alternative. Mediation analysis established that epistemic motivation produced high quality decisions because it stimulated systematic information processing. Results also revealed that preference heterogeneity stimulated information-driven interaction and led to higher decision quality.     

Utility and Language Generation: The Case of Vagueness

This paper asks why information should ever be expressed vaguely, re-assessing some previously proposed answers to this question and suggesting some new ones. Particular attention is paid to the benefits that vague expressions can have in situations where agreement over the meaning of an expression cannot be taken for granted. A distinction between two different versions of the above-mentioned question is advocated. The first asks why human languages contain vague expressions, the second question asks when and why a speaker should choose a vague expression when communicating with a hearer. While the former question is purely theoretical, the latter has practical implications for the computational generation of utterances in Natural Language Generation (NLG).     

De Kategorieënleer der Hindhu-wijsbegeerte in vergelijking met die van Plato,Aristoteles en Kant

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Earman on the causal theory of time

Conclusion I have so far ignored Earman's Section IV in which spatiotemporal coincidence is discussed. The answer will be clear from the preceding: the exact definitions and principles of the exact theories we have displayed are to be discussed with reference to the special and not the general theory of relativity. But moreover, Earman's transition from (C) to (1) assumes what we do not grant: that events are causally connectible exactly if the points in the mathematical space-time at which they are located are linked by a causal curve.This captures in a nutshell my own conclusions. The first is that the causal theory, after its success vis-à-vis the STR, must now provide a detailed analysis of spatiotemporal concepts in the GTR. The second is that the points raised by Earman do not provide substantive reasons for doubting the adequacy of the causal theory to this task, because Earman insists in his extrapolations on a much closer relation between the empirical structure of events and the mathematical structures that model it than ought to be assumed.I wish to acknowledge gratefully my debt to Dr. A. Grünbaum, University of Pittsburgh, to Dr. C. Glymour, Princeton University, and to the support of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.     

The Freedom-based Account of Solidarity and Basic Income

Real-libertarianism, as it is expressed in Philippe Van Parijs' recent monograph Real Freedom for All is characteristically committed to both self-ownership and 'solidarity’ with the infirm or handicapped. In this article it is argued that the conception of (real) freedom that is used to endorse self-ownership is inconsistent with the conception of (social) freedom or opportunity that is used to justify transfer payments to those with no or low earning capacity. The problem turns around the question whether one's freedom consists in the access one has to a share of the social product or in the measure of economic self-sufficiency one enjoys. Accordingly the role of private property in external resources as a condition for freedom is unclear: is it the basis of people's capacity for self-determination or is it the basis of people's bargaining power? Van Parijs' commitment to self-ownership suggests the former, his commitment to solidarity suggests the latter. A similar ambivalence is pointed out in his argument for a universal basic income, for which Real Freedom for All is so well-known.