Notes on Contributors

Biography

Notes on Contributors     

The biological week and broader time structures (chronomes): in memory of Gunther Hildebrandt

Data illustrating the biological week and chronomes are presented in recognition of extensive work of G. Hildebrandt.     

Functionality and spatial relations in memory and language

We examined whether the functionality of spatial relations affects the construction and memory of information in situation models. A functional relationship involves the interaction of entities that is implied by either typical use or contextual demands. Previous research has shown that spatial relations are less likely to be encoded during comprehension unless there is extensive prior knowledge, explicit instructions to attend to spatial information, or a clear emphasis on spatial information. If the construction of a situation model is guided by a need to understand the functional structure of a situation, then functional spatial relations should be more likely to be encoded. The results of our study showed that sentences with functional spatial relations were read faster and remembered better in both recall and recognition tests than sentences with nonfunctional spatial relations.     

Auguste Comte on Positivism and Happiness

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) is the founder of a French school of thought that became famous for its encyclopaedic account of the sciences as well as for its exposition of what was designed as a way out of a state of intellectual and moral crisis. This essay demonstrates that there is a linkage between the diagnosis of crisis and the pursuit of happiness in Comte's foundation of positivism. It begins by distinguishing Comte's notion of positivism from that of a value-free science. In analysing Comte's peculiar usage of the term happiness, the essay shows that happiness is understood as the result of the convergence (consensus) of three components: a scientific conception of the world, the feelings of love and veneration, and a wisely ordered activity. The essay then demonstrates that the first of these components is of primary importance inasmuch as it is to frame a new horizon within which man is expected to return to a healthy state of mind, to reshape both his hopes and activities, and to discover his own participation in a supreme order acting through the laws of nature as well as through those of the civilization in which he lives. Conveying this new horizon to citizens of a lasting Republic is the sacred mission of sociology. The essay concludes by pointing out that Comte's conception of happiness can be assessed as unifying some main qualities of life as they are classified in Ruut Veenhoven's fourfold matrix.     

Nonhomogeneous resolution of images of natural scenes

The aim of this research is to model and simulate the loss of visual resolution as a function of retinal eccentricity in the perception of natural scenes. The model of visual resolution is based on a space-variant low-pass filter, having a variable convolution kernel according to retinal eccentricity. The parameters of the model are computed from psychophysical measures of visual acuity as a function of retinal eccentricity. The implementation of the model allowed us to generate images of scenes with nonhomogeneous space-variant resolution, simulating the filtering executed by the eye. These scenes are used to test and optimise the model by means of experiments in static vision (through tachistoscopic presentations) and in dynamic vision where the resolution of the scene is computed, in real-time, as a function of the location of gaze.     

When false memories do not occur: not thinking of the lure or remembering that it was not heard?

The aim of the present study was to evaluate two explanations for the non-occurrence of false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. One explanation was that a critical lure is not recalled because the list failed to evoke it in the participant's mind. Another possible explanation was that the participant would identify the critical lure and would remember, at the time of recall, that the lure was not produced by an external source. In order to explore these two possible explanations for the non-occurrence of false memories, an experimental phase was added to the usual DRM paradigm: participants were asked to recall items they thought of but did not recall because these items were not members of the list presented by the experimenter. Among participants who did not recall the critical lure during the standard recall task, those who recalled the critical lure during the additional phase outnumbered those who did not recall it. This result is more consistent with the second explanation than with the first one.     

Encoding specificity manipulations do affect retrieval from memory

In a recent article, P.A. Higham (2002) [Strong cues are not necessarily weak: Thomson and Tulving (1970) and the encoding specificity principle revisited. Memory &Cognition, 30, 67-80] proposed a new way to analyze cued recall performance in terms of three separable aspects of memory (retrieval, monitoring, and report bias) by comparing performance under both free-report and forced-report instructions. He used this method to derive estimates of these aspects of memory in an encoding specificity experiment similar to that reported by D.M. Thomson and E. Tulving (1970) [Associative encoding and retrieval: weak and strong cues. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 86, 255-262]. Under forced-report instructions, the encoding specificity manipulation did not affect performance. Higham concluded that the manipulation affected monitoring and report bias, but not retrieval. I argue that this interpretation of the results is problematic because the Thomson and Tulving paradigm is confounded, and show in three experiments using a more appropriate design that encoding specificity manipulations do affect performance in forced-report cued recall. Because in Higham's framework forced-report performance provides a measure of retrieval that is uncontaminated by monitoring and report bias it is concluded that encoding specificity manipulations do affect retrieval from memory.     

Family functioning and early onset of sexual intercourse in Latino adolescents

The purpose of this study was to identify factors associated with early onset of sexual intercourse. Within an ecological system's conceptual framework, familial factors associated with early onset of sexual activity were identified in a sample of 425 adolescents from San Juan metro area schools. Measures included questions about sexual activity, sexual permissiveness, and such familial variables as: discipline, parental supervision, and parental support. Significant relationships were observed between early onset of sexual intercourse and parental supervision, discipline, parental support, and parents' marital status. Results suggest the key role of parents and family in prevention of HIV-risk behaviors among adolescents in terms of delaying sexual onset. Overall, the study described youths who postponed sexual activity as having greater support, supervision, and parental involvement.     

Immigrant Sex: the Transport of Affection and Sensuality across Cultures

This paper outlines the ways in which an individual’s notions of sexuality are challenged by immigration. It describes four basic facets of sexuality and the ways in which each are rooted in culture. These include (1) the relative importance of sexuality in daily life; (2) potential or overt homosexuality; (3) marriage—whether based on arrangement or love; and (4) cross-cultural romantic and marital relationships. Immigration can stir up conflicts in each of these realms and lead to defensive retreat into familiar customs or a counterphasic plunge into new cultural avenues. Ideally, it would lead to a working-through of these conflicts and subsequent growth in the immigrant’s understanding of his or her sexual self.