Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale-Computer

Alexithymia is an important concept in both psychosomatic medicine and emotion research. A valid instrument for the assessment of alexithymia is the Levels Of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS; English version by R. Lane, German version by C. Subic-Wrana). Subjects are asked to evaluate in their own words the emotional content of briefly depicted interpersonal situations. Wide use of the LEAS has so far been hampered by a relatively complex evaluation procedure of answers that could not easily be automated. This was the motivation to create a digital version of the LEAS that allows subjects to give their answers directly to the computer and evaluates them automatically (LEAS-C). A custom-made algorithm for text analysis assesses the level of emotional awareness of each answer based on a valid glossary of emotionally relevant words. First data of the application of the LEAS-C in a sample of 187 healthy subjects are reported here. With its high interrater reliability (r=0.86–0.90) compared with human raters, the LEAS-C can be considered a reliable means of assessing alexithymia.     

Newton,Goethe and the Alleged Underdetermination of Ray Optics

Did Goethe devise an empirically viable theory of classical ray optics? Or can we at least make use of his ideas to propose one? And if so, does this confront us with an intriguing case of theory underdetermination? In this paper, which is mainly a comment on the recent work of Olaf Müller, I shall address these three questions and argue for ‘no, yes, no’. This is in contrast to Müller, who has recently launched a vivid defense of Goethe-style ray optics (Müller in “Mehr Licht. Goethe mit Newton im Streit um die Farben.” Fischer, Frankfurt a.M., 2015a; Z Philos Forsch 69(4):569–573, 2015b; Z Philos Forsch 69(4):588–598, 2015c; Br J Hist Philos 24(2):322–346, 2016). Müller aims to give an almost positive answer to all three questions: ‘perhaps, yes, yes’. My overall line of argument will be that the rather restricted regime of classical geometrical optics of spectral colors (or ray optics, for short) allows at best for a weak form of transient theory underdetermination that, in turn and more straightforwardly, also allows for a structuralist reading in terms of two structurally equivalent formulations of one and the same theory. However, extending any of the rivaling models of ray optics other than Newton’s beyond the mentioned regime and embedding them into physics in total—especially in view of thermodynamics—leads to a contradiction. Hence, Newton’s theory is confirmed as the only consistent theoretical interpretation of ray optics.     

Constraint, Alcoholism, and Electrodermal Response in Aversive Classical Conditioning and Mismatch Novelty Paradigms

This study investigated whether low levels of the personality trait of constraint and early-onset alcoholism would be associated with deficits in aversive conditioning and smaller responses to novelty in a stimulus mismatch protocol. Personality traits (constraint and socialization) and skin conductance responses (SCRs) during conditioning and novelty paradigms were assessed in alcoholics (n=41) and non-alcoholics (n = 32). The conditioning protocol involved measuring SCRs after conditioned stimuli (CS+: tones) paired with shock, CS- tones unpaired with shock, and CS+ probes unpaired with shock. The mismatch protocol involved measuring SCRs to auditory stimuli consisting of a series of 5 pure tones of the same pitch followed a shorter white noise stimulus (the novel stimulus). Contrary to the hypothesis, alcoholics did not differ from non-alcoholics in SCRs to CS+ probes or on the mismatch measure (SCR novel tone-SCR to 5th tone). Higher levels of constraint and self-reports of fear during conditioning were associated with smaller responses to both the CS+ probes and the CS- tones as well as the mismatch measure within non-alcoholics, but not within alcoholics. In alcoholics, low constraint was associated with greater habituation to CS+ probes, and poor differential conditioning on measures of change across trials in SCR to CS+ probes and CS- stimuli. The results suggest that different processes influence levels of constraint in non-alcoholics and alcoholics. The data indicate that low constraint in non-alcoholics is associated with allocating fewer processing resources to potentially significant stimuli, rather than being associated with a specific deficit in aversive conditioning per se.     

On Freedom And Responsibility: Remarks On Sartre, Levinas And Derrida

This article looks at some main stages of contemporary thought about freedom and responsibility and outlines an account of important stages of 20th century philosophy as well. Whereas the early Sartre particularly coined the notion of infinite freedom, his later writings, Levinas and Derrida (re-)discovered the conception of infinite responsibility. The article draws attention to the questions which arise out of these understandings of both responsibility and freedom and asks whether these issues can be answered from a purely secular point of view. The last part is devoted to the role of God in current philosophical considerations about responsibility and freedom.     

Dissociation of acquisition and expression of fear conditioned responses under working memory load

Previously, it has been suggested that high working memory load (WML) prevents associative learning and, thus, conditioned responses (CRs) during differential-delay fear conditioning. However, previous studies did not distinguish between the effects of WML on the acquisition versus the expression of the CRs. In the present study, we reinvestigated this issue by manipulating WML during either acquisition or postconditioning and showed that the absence of a differential CR under high WML does not indicate the absence of the acquisition of this CR. Thus, a significant CR was observed during a task-free postconditioning phase, and there was no CR during the preceding acquisition phase with high WML. Conversely, a normally acquired CR was impaired by high WML during the postconditioning phase. The results suggest that high WML affects the expression of the CR. If they are not experimentally separated, the effects of WML on the acquisition and expression of the CR may occur together, and the findings may be erroneously interpreted as indicating a lack of associative learning.     

The structure of semantic person memory: evidence from semantic priming in person recognition

This paper reviews research on the structure of semantic person memory as examined with semantic priming. In this experimental paradigm, a familiarity decision on a target face or written name is usually faster when it is preceded by a related as compared to an unrelated prime. This effect has been shown to be relatively short lived and susceptible to interfering items. Moreover, semantic priming can cross stimulus domains, such that a written name can prime a target face and vice versa. However, it remains controversial whether representations of people are stored in associative networks based on co-occurrence, or in more abstract semantic categories. In line with prominent cognitive models of face recognition, which explain semantic priming by shared semantic information between prime and target, recent research demonstrated that priming could be obtained from purely categorically related, non-associated prime/target pairs. Although strategic processes, such as expectancy and retrospective matching likely contribute, there is also evidence for a non-strategic contribution to priming, presumably related to spreading activation. Finally, a semantic priming effect has been demonstrated in the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component, which may reflect facilitated access to semantic information. It is concluded that categorical relatedness is one organizing principle of semantic person memory.     

Ageing faces in ageing minds: A review on the own-age bias in face recognition

Similar to the well-established own-race bias, participants are more accurate at remembering own- relative to other-age faces. An own-age bias (OAB) in face memory was demonstrated in participants older than approximately 5 years. Crucially, the OAB is modulated by contact—participants with substantial contact with other-age persons show either reduced or absent OAB effects. In line with a perceptual expertise account of the phenomenon, holistic processing of other-age faces is less efficient when tested with young adult versus child faces, and differential holistic processing may therefore reflect one mechanism contributing to the OAB. A possible additional contribution of sociocognitive factors to the OAB remains largely untested. Importantly, event-related brain potential studies suggest that the own-race and own-age biases are based on at least partly different mechanisms. Theoretical explanations for different group-based biases in face memory will need to consider these findings.     

Phonological abstraction without phonemes in speech perception

Recent evidence shows that listeners use abstract prelexical units in speech perception. Using the phenomenon of lexical retuning in speech processing, we ask whether those units are necessarily phonemic. Dutch listeners were exposed to a Dutch speaker producing ambiguous phones between the Dutch syllable-final allophones approximant [r] and dark [l]. These ambiguous phones replaced either final /r/ or final /l/ in words in a lexical-decision task. This differential exposure affected perception of ambiguous stimuli on the same allophone continuum in a subsequent phonetic-categorization test: Listeners exposed to ambiguous phones in /r/-final words were more likely to perceive test stimuli as /r/ than listeners with exposure in /l/-final words. This effect was not found for test stimuli on continua using other allophones of /r/ and /l/. These results confirm that listeners use phonological abstraction in speech perception. They also show that context-sensitive allophones can play a role in this process, and hence that context-insensitive phonemes are not necessary. We suggest there may be no one unit of perception.