Anxiety and retrieval inhibition: support for an enhanced inhibition account

Retrieval inhibition of negative associations is important for exposure therapy for anxiety, but the relationship between memory inhibition and anxiety is not well understood—anxiety could either be associated with enhanced or deficient inhibition. The present study tested these two competing hypotheses by measuring retrieval inhibition of negative stimuli by related neutral stimuli. Non-clinically anxious undergraduates completed measures of trait and state anxiety and completed a retrieval induced forgetting task. Adaptive forgetting varied with state anxiety. Low levels of state anxiety were associated with no evidence for retrieval inhibition for either threatening or non-threatening categories. Participants in the middle tertile of state anxiety scores exhibited retrieval inhibition for non-threatening categories but not for threatening categories. Participants in the highest tertile of state anxiety, however, exhibited retrieval inhibition for both threatening and non-threatening categories with the magnitude of retrieval inhibition being greater for threatening than non-threatening categories. The data are in line with the avoidance aspect of the vigilance–avoidance theory of anxiety and inhibition. Implications for cognitive behavioural therapy practices are discussed.     

Psychophysics with junctions in real images

Junctions, formed at the intersection of image contours, are thought to play an important and early role in vision. The interest in junctions can be attributed in part to the notion that they are local image features that are easy to detect but that nonetheless provide valuable information about important events in the world, such as occlusion and transparency. Here I test the notion that there are locally defined junctions in real images that might be detected with simple, early visual mechanisms. Human observers were used as a tool to measure the visual information available in local regions of real images. One set of observers was made to label all the points in a set of real images where one edge occluded another. A second set of observers was presented with variable-size circular subregions of these images, and was asked to judge whether the regions were centered on an occlusion point. This task is easy if junctions are visible, but I found performance to be poor for small regions, not approaching ceiling levels until observers were given fairly large (approximately 50 pixels in diameter) regions over which to make the judgment. Control experiments ruled out the possibility that the effects are just due to junctions at multiple scales. Experiments reported here suggest that, although some junctions in real images are locally defined and can be detected with simple mechanisms, a substantial fraction necessitate the use of more complex and global processes. This raises the possibility that junctions in such cases may not be detected prior to scene interpretation.     

Communication before communicative intentions

This paper explores the significance of intelligent social behavior among non-human animals for philosophical theories of communication. Using the alarm call system of vervet monkeys as a case study, I argue that interpersonal communication (or what I call “minded communication”) can and does take place in the absence of the production and recognition of communicative intentions. More generally, I argue that evolutionary theory provides good reasons for maintaining that minded communication is both temporally and explanatorily prior to the use of communicative intentions. After developing these negative points about the place of communicative intentions in detail, I provide a novel alternative account according to which minded communication is characterized in terms of patterns of action and response that function to coordinate the representational mental states of agents. I show that an account which centers on patterns of representational coordination of this sort is well suited to capture the theoretical roles associated with minded communication and that it does so in a way that provides a good fit with comparative facts about the presence of minded communication among non-human animals.     

A DEFENSE OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION: REFLECTIONS ON PETER HARRISON'S “AFTER SCIENCE AND RELIGION” PROJECT

Recent scholars have called into question the categories “science” and “religion” because they bring metaphysical and theological assumptions that theologians should find problematic. The critique of the categories “science” and “religion” has above all been associated with Peter Harrison and his influential argument in The Territories of Science and Religion (2015). This article evaluates the philosophical conclusions that Harrison draws from his antiessentialist philosophy in the two volumes associated with his “After Science and Religion Project.” I argue that Harrison's project is too skeptical toward the categories “science” and “religion” and places too much emphasis on naturalism being incompatible with Christian theology. One can accept the lessons of antiessentialism—above all, how meanings of terms shift over time—and still use the terms “science” and “religion” in responsible ways. This article defends the basic impulse of most scholars in science and religion who promote dialogue and argues for a more moderate reading of the lesson of Territories.     

The influence of power and solidarity on emotional display rules at work

This study examined the influence of two interpersonal relationship dimensions, relative power and solidarity (closeness), on the emotional display rules that employees report they would adopt in work situations in which they felt happiness or anger. Results demonstrated that display rules involved more control over emotional expressions (i.e., more deamplification and masking of emotion and less expressing and amplification of emotion) when the interaction partner had higher relative power compared to when the interaction partner had equal or lower relative power. This pattern of results was present for both happiness and anger, though the effects were larger for anger. Display rules also involved more control when the interaction partner was low in solidarity compared to when the interaction partner was high in solidarity, with this effect being similar in magnitude for anger and happiness.     

Comparative Analysis of Suicide,Accidental, and Undetermined Cause of Death Classification

Suicide determination is not standardized across medical examiners, and many suspected suicides are later classified as accidental or undetermined. The present study investigated patterns between these three groups using a medical examiner database and 633 structured interviews with next of kin. There were similarities across all three classification groups, including rates of mental illness and psychiatric symptoms. Those classified suicide were more likely to be male, to have died in a violent fashion, and have a stronger family history of suicide. Chronic pain was very common across all three groups, but significantly higher in the accidental and undetermined groups.