科学对“后世”声称的检验（一）

后世存在有证据吗？我们能否与亡者进行沟通？他们的存在是否具有一定的形式呢？是“脱离肉体的灵魂”或是“无实体的精神”？这是个古老的问题,它事关信仰永生和强烈的对不朽的渴望。科学能否调查和揭示那些基于有神论信仰者利益的声明吗？回答是肯定的。科学在尽其所能来回应这些声称时要面对不仅仅是宗教学家们所倡导的灵魂不朽和天堂许诺等内容对人们的深刻影响,还要迎接来自媒体和公众的艰巨的挑战,媒体不断追求轰动效应,庞大的公众群体迷恋于此类现象。     

Elucidating the neural correlates of egoistic and moralistic self-enhancement

Self-enhancement is the biasing of one’s view of oneself in a positive direction. The brain correlates of self-enhancement remain unclear though it has been reported that the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) may be important for producing self-enhancing responses. Previous studies have not examined whether the neural correlates of self-enhancement depend on the particular domain in which individuals are enhancing themselves. Both moralistic and egoistic words were presented to participants while transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to the MPFC, precuneus or in a sham orientation. Participants were asked to make decisions as to the words describing themselves, some of which were positive and some of which were negative. It was found the MPFC TMS significantly disrupted egoistic self-enhancement when TMS was delivered to the MPFC. Judgments involving moralistic words were not influenced by TMS. These data provide further evidence that MPFC is involved in self-enhancement, and that the role of MPFC may be selective in this regard.     

Traumatized mothers can change their minds about their toddlers: Understanding how a novel use of videofeedback supports positive change of maternal attributions

This study explored the use of a brief experimental intervention that integrates principles of infant-parent psychotherapy, videofeedback, controlled exposure to child distress in the context of parental posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and stimulation of parental reflective functioning (RF). The Clinician Assisted Videofeedback Exposure Session (CAVES) was applied to 32 interpersonal violence-exposed mothers of very young children (8-50 months) with respect to change of maternal perception of her child. While we found no significant reduction over two videotaped assessment visits with a mental health professional, we did find a significant reduction in the degree of negativity of maternal attributions towards her child following the videotaped visit focused on the CAVES (p<.01). Maternal RF, a mother's capacity to think about mental states in herself and her child, accounted for 11% of the variance in reduction of maternal negativity after accounting for baseline levels of negativity. Clinician-assisted videofeedback appears to support emotional self-regulation of mothers with violence-related PTSD. Focusing with a therapist on videofeedback of child separation distress exposes mothers to avoided mental states of helplessness and perceived loss of protection. Negative maternal attributions may mark violent trauma-associated emotion dysregulation and projected self-representations of the maltreated mother.     

Scoring Situational Judgment Tests: Once You Get the Data,Your Troubles Begin

Although situational judgment tests (SJTs) have been in use for decades, consensus has not been reached on the best way to score these assessments or others (e.g., biodata) whose items do not have a single demonstrably correct answer. The purpose of this paper is to review and to demonstrate the scoring strategies that have been described in the literature. Implementation and relative merits of these strategies are described. Then, several of these methods are applied to create 11 different keys for a video‐based SJT in order to demonstrate how to evaluate the quality of keys. Implications of scoring SJTs for theory and practice are discussed.     

The divergent autoencoder (DIVA) model of category learning

A novel theoretical approach to human category learning is proposed in which categories are represented as coordinated statistical models of the properties of the members. Key elements of the account are learning to recode inputs as task-constrained principle components and evaluating category membership in terms of model fit-that is, the fidelity of the reconstruction after recoding and decoding the stimulus. The approach is implemented as a computational model called DIVA (for DIVergent Autoencoder), an artificial neural network that uses reconstructive learning to solve N-way classification tasks. DIVA shows good qualitative fits to benchmark human learning data and provides a compelling theoretical alternative to established models.     

When head is tempered by heart: Heart rate variability modulates perception of other-blame reducing anger

This study examined the relationship between heart rate variability (HRV), as an index of individual differences in emotion regulation, and perception of other-blame, as a mechanism of anger induction. The physiological responses were recorded while subjects read a story from a computer screen. The story narrated a negative event in self-referred way -dismissal from a job as the result of a colleague’s action- under conditions of intentionality versus non-intentionality. Cognitive and emotional variables were assessed by questionnaire immediately after the physiological test. The resulting structural model supports the conclusion that HRV exerts its regulatory influence directly on perception of other-blame rather than on emotion. In situations of intentionality, individuals with higher HRV make less extreme evaluation of the offender’s blame, versus those with lower HRV, thus leading to a reduction in anger reaction. These results suggest that HRV is a direct index of cognitive rather than emotional regulation.     

Bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus) hatchlings track the direction of human gaze

Gaze following allows individuals to detect the locus of attention of both conspecifics and other species. However, little is known about how this ability develops. We explored the emergence of bobwhite quail hatchlings’ ability to track human gaze by assessing their avoidance behavior in an open arena under five testing conditions: (1) a Direct Gaze condition, in which an experimenter looking down was positioned above one of two approach areas; (2) a Gaze Follow condition in which an experimenter, positioned equidistant between two approach areas, directed his/her gaze towards one of the areas; (3) a Masked Gaze Follow condition, in which the experimenter wore a mask during the Gaze Follow test; (4) a Deprived Face Experience condition, in which hatchlings were deprived of experience with human faces prior to the Gaze Follow test; and (5) a Control condition in which no experimenter was present during testing. Results revealed that hatchlings from the Direct Gaze condition preferred the non-gazed approach area at all ages tested. Hatchlings from the Gaze Follow condition preferred the non-gazed approach area at 48 and 72 h, but not at 24 h of age. In contrast, hatchlings from the Masked Gaze Follow, Deprived Face and Control conditions did not prefer either approach area at any age tested. These results indicate that experience with human faces plays a key role in the rapid emergence of gaze following behavior in bobwhite quail hatchlings.     

The Spanish adaptation of ANEW (Affective Norms for English Words)

This article presents the Spanish adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW; Bradley & Lang, 1999). The norms are based on 720 participants' assessments of the translation into Spanish of the 1,034 words included in the ANEW. The evaluations were done in the dimensions of valence, arousal and dominance using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM). Apart from these dimensions, five objective (number of letters, number of syllables, grammatical class, frequency and number of orthographic neighbors) and three subjective (familiarity, concreteness and imageability) psycholinguistic indexes are included. The Spanish adaptation of ANEW can be downloaded at www.psychonomic.org.     

Emotional availability and psychosocial correlates among mothers in substance‐abuse treatment and their young infants

Emotional availability (EA) was investigated among low‐income mothers enrolled in substance‐abuse treatment and their young infants (n = 21) compared with a demographically matched group of mother–infant pairs who, by self‐report, were not at risk for substance abuse (n = 27). The mother–infant dyads in the treatment group generally demonstrated poorer EA functioning than those in the comparison group, but few differences between the groups on individual dimensions of EA were significant. This finding was notable considering that mothers in treatment reported significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms and psychological stress. Treatment effects may have buffered the negative impact of depression and psychological stress on mothers' EA scores. The clinical implications of the findings are discussed as they relate to substance‐abuse‐treatment services for pregnant and parenting women.