Culture, attention, and emotion

This research provides experimental evidence for cultural influence on one of the most basic elements of emotional processing: attention to positive versus negative stimuli. To this end, we focused on Russian culture, which is characterized by brooding and melancholy. In Study 1, Russians spent significantly more time looking at negative than positive pictures, whereas Americans did not show this tendency. In Study 2, Russian Latvians were randomly primed with symbols of each culture, after which we measured the speed of recognition for positive versus negative trait words. Biculturals were significantly faster in recognizing negative words (as compared with baseline) when primed with Russian versus Latvian cultural symbols. Greater identification with Russian culture facilitated this effect. We provide a theoretical discussion of mental processes underlying cultural differences in emotion research.     

Proper bootstrapping

According to a much discussed argument, reliabilism is defective for making knowledge too easy to come by. In a recent paper, Weisberg aims to show that this argument relies on a type of reasoning that is rejectable on independent grounds. We argue that the blanket rejection that Weisberg recommends of this type of reasoning is both unwarranted and unwelcome. Drawing on an older discussion in the philosophy of science, we show that placing some relatively modest restrictions on the said type of reasoning suffices to block the anti-reliabilist argument.     

Oxidative stress in university students during examinations

Mental stress in psychiatric disease and in daily life contributes to oxidative stress in the body. In this study we investigated a connection between possible psychological stress caused by university undergraduate examinations and oxidative stress experienced by our test subjects. Some parameters of oxidative stress (single strand breaks of DNA in lymphocytes, sensitivity to lipid oxidation and antioxidant status) were studied in medical students on the day of the examination (stress condition) and compared with the same parameters obtained from the same students during the term between two examination periods (non-stress condition). The results show that in the stress condition oxidative damage to DNA and sensitivity to lipid oxidation were significantly increased (p<0.05) when compared with the same parameters in "non-stress" conditions. A significant decrease in plasma antioxidant activity (p<0.05) in students that were under stress was observed. These results suggest that during university examinations students are under increased oxidative stress.     

Haptics and projection: drawings by Tracy, a blind adult

Outline drawings in a raised form were made by a blind woman, Tracy, who has been blind from very early in life. Highly practiced in drawing, she reports she is largely self-taught. To invoke matters of projection, she was asked to represent an object with faces slanting away from the observer, a fixed array from different vantage points, and sets of objects in depth. In particular, she drew a cube balanced on a vertex, three objects from different vantage points, receding rows of glasses, and a house. Her drawings included features of parallel and polar projection. Her use of these features may reflect an appreciation of direction from a vantage point, which observers deal with via haptics in everyday tasks. Tracy may have advanced drawing-development skills common to the blind and the sighted.     

Lambek Calculus with Conjugates

Studia Logica - We study an expansion of the Distributive Non-associative Lambek Calculus with conjugates of the Lambek product operator and residuals of those conjugates. The resulting logic is...     

Redundancy effects of a moving distractor generated by alerting and orienting

Redundancy effects refer to improvement of performance in response to irrelevant stimulation, or distractors. Previously described redundancy effects have mainly been associated with relatively high-level perception. The present study examines whether redundancy effects exist in basic attentional and perceptual systems, such as alerting and orienting. Participants performed speeded detection of briefly presented targets while ignoring moving distractors. The presence/absence of distractors and their spatial relationships with targets were manipulated to dissociate possible alerting and orienting redundancies. The distractor pathway (straightforward vs. chaotic) and its motion predictability (blocked vs. intermixed sequences of straightforward and chaotic trials) were also manipulated. The presence of a distractor resulted in faster responses (alerting redundancy). Furthermore, participants responded faster to targets behind distractors (orienting redundancy). Orienting redundancy was found only in the straightforward condition. This indicates that generating an orienting redundancy effect is a relatively slow process based on continuous observation of motion. Lastly, a blocked sequence of trials improved the alerting redundancy effect in comparison with an intermixed sequence.     

The Preface Paradox Revisited

The Preface Paradox has led many philosophers to believe that, if it isassumed that high probability is necessary for rational acceptability, the principleaccording to which rational acceptability is closed under conjunction (CP)must be abandoned. In this paper we argue that the paradox is far less damaging to CP than is generally believed. We describe how, given certain plausibleassumptions, in a large class of cases in which CP seems to lead tocontradiction, it does not do so after all. A restricted version of CP canthus be maintained.     

Gender differences in the motivational processing of facial beauty

Gender may be involved in the motivational processing of facial beauty. This study applied a behavioral probe, known to activate brain motivational regions, to healthy heterosexual subjects. Matched samples of men and women were administered two tasks: (a) key pressing to change the viewing time of average or beautiful female or male facial images, and (b) rating the attractiveness of these images. Men expended more effort (via the key-press task) to extend the viewing time of the beautiful female faces. Women displayed similarly increased effort for beautiful male and female images, but the magnitude of this effort was substantially lower than that of men for beautiful females. Heterosexual facial attractiveness ratings were comparable in both groups. These findings demonstrate heterosexual specificity of facial motivational targets for men, but not for women. Moreover, heightened drive for the pursuit of heterosexual beauty in the face of regular valuational assessments, displayed by men, suggests a gender-specific incentive sensitization phenomenon.