Sensitivity to tonality across the pitch range

Striking changes in sensitivity to tonality across the pitch range are reported. Participants were presented a key-defining context (do-mi-do-sol) followed by one of the 12 chromatic tones of the octave, and rated the goodness of fit of the probe tone to the context. The set of ratings, called the probe-tone profile, was compared to an established standardised profile for the Western tonal hierarchy. The presentation of context and probe tones at low and high pitch registers resulted in significantly reduced sensitivity to tonality. Sensitivity was especially poor for presentations in the lowest octaves where inharmonicity levels were substantially above the threshold for detection. We propose that sensitivity to tonality may be influenced by pitch salience (or a co-varying factor such as exposure to pitch distributional information) as well as suprathreshold inharmonicity.     

Day-to-day body-image states: prospective predictors of intra-individual level and variability

Most body-image research has focused on the trait level of body-image evaluation, often neglecting the momentary fluctuations many people experience in everyday life. The present prospective study investigated whether theory-relevant body-image measures, perfectionistic self-presentation, and eating attitudes would predict average day-to-day body-image levels and their intra-individual variability. A convenience sample consisted of 121 women from two universities. In Phase 1 of the study, participants completed an online battery of selected body-image and personality questionnaires. In Phase 2, participants went online to complete the dependent measure, the Body Image States Scale, once per evening over 10 days. As hypothesized, more favorable body-image state levels were associated with less investment in appearance for self-worth, less body-image disturbance, fewer body-image cognitive distortions, less disturbed eating attitudes, and lower body mass. Moreover, greater day-to-day body-image variability was predicted by greater psychological investment in appearance, more body-image cognitive distortions, and higher perfectionistic self-presentation. Implications and future directions for research are discussed.     

Physical abuse amplifies attention to threat and increases anxiety in children

Two experiments using event-related potentials (ERPs) examined the extent to which early traumatic experiences affect children's ability to regulate voluntary and involuntary attention to threat. The authors presented physically abused and nonabused comparison children with conflicting auditory and visual emotion cues, posed by children's mothers or a stranger, to examine the effect of emotion, modality, and poser familiarity on attention regulation. Relative to controls, abused children overattended to task-relevant visual and auditory anger cues. They also attended more to task-irrelevant auditory anger cues. Furthermore, the degree of attention allocated to threat statistically mediated the relationship between physical abuse and child-reported anxiety. These findings indicate that extreme emotional experiences may promote vulnerability for anxiety by influencing the development of attention regulation abilities.     

Colour vision,evolution, and perceptual content

Computational models of colour vision assume that the biological function of colour vision is to detect surface reflectance. Some philosophers invoke these models as a basis for externalism about perceptual content (content is distal) and objectivism about colour (colour is surface reflectance). In an earlier article (Thompson et al. 1992), I criticised the computational objectivist position on the basis of comparative colour vision: There are fundamental differences among the colour vision of animals and these differences do not converge on the detection of any single type of environmental property. David R. Hilbert (1992) has recently defended computational objectivism against my comparative argument; his arguments are based on the externalist approach to perceptual content originally developed by Mohan Matthen (1988) and on the computationally inspired theory of the evolutionary basis for trichromacy developed by Roger N. Shepard (1990). The present article provides a reply to Hilbert with extensive criticism of both Matthen's and Shepard's theories. I argue that the biological function of colour vision is not to detect surface reflectance, but to provide a set of perceptual categories that can apply to objects in a stable way in a variety of conditions. Comparative research indicates that both the perceptual categories and the distal stimuli will differ according to the animal and its visual ecology, therefore externalism and objectivism must be rejected.Versions of this article were read to the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago and to the Department of Philosophy at Boston University. I am grateful to the audiences for the discussions that ensued. I am also grateful to an anonymous referee for constructive criticism of certain points in the article. Special thanks are due to my comparative colour vision collaborators, Adrian Palacios and Francisco Varela.     

Neuropsychological Performance in Gulf War Era Veterans: Traumatic Stress Symptomatology and Exposure to Chemical–Biological Warfare Agents

Because complaints of diminished concentration and memory are among the most common health symptoms reported by Gulf War (GW) veterans with unexplained illnesses, this study investigated neuropsychological functions among GW veterans and controls. Relationships between neuropsychological performance, severity of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology, and exposure to chemical–biological warfare agents (CBW) were assessed. Participants were 225 veterans recruited from three cohorts: GW-deployed veterans from Ft. Devens, MA ( n = 141) and New Orleans, LA (n = 37), and Germany-deployed veterans from a Maine National Guard unit (n = 47). A comprehensive evaluation was completed. Severity of subclinical PTSD symptomatology was significantly related to scores on specific neuropsychological tests. PTSD symptom severity in GW-deployed veterans was found to be greater and associated with a broader range of neuropsychological deficits than in Germany-deployed veterans. PTSD severity was associated with lower performance on a range of neuropsychological tasks, whereas CBW exposure contributed to performance deficits on specific cognitive tasks.     

Shifty talk: knowledge and causation

In this paper, I criticise one main strategy for supporting anti-intellectualism, the view that whether a subject knows may depend on the stakes. This strategy appeals to difficulties with developing contextualist and pragmatic treatments of the shiftiness of our talk about knowledge to motivate anti-intellectualism. I criticise this strategy by drawing an analogy between debates about causation and knowledge. In each case, talk about a phenomenon is shifty and contextualist and pragmatic explanations of the shifty talk face the same objections. However, in the case of causation it would be implausible to argue that difficulties with the relevant contextualist and pragmatic accounts motivate a revisionary metaphysics of causation. I conclude that the defender of anti-intellectualism needs to employ a different strategy to defend her view.