The Importance of Philosophy: Reflections on John Rawls

This paper tackles the question whet her we should punish a remorseful offender. Traditional retributive and consequentialist theories on punishment are struggling with the question of the justification of punishment, but I think a more basic question needs to be solved first; namely, how can we interpret the practice of punishment. I state that a theory of symbolic restoration can help us to understand the meaning of this practice. A theory of symbolic restoration depends on an expressivist account of punishment, like Joel Feinberg's. Expressivism gives us an insight into the importance of the feeling of moral condemnation and it is this feeling that gives rise to the longing for punishment and remorse. Because of moral condemnation after a crime we ask for punishment and expect some kind of remorse. The question is whether punishment can be exchanged for remorse and I argue that in certain cases it cannot. The punishment of a remorseful offender is, I argue, – in certain cases – justified.     

Ideomotor perception modulates visuospatial cueing

The ideomotor theory of action posits that the cognitive representation of an action includes the learned perceptual effects of the action. Support for this theory has come from studies demonstrating how perceptual features that match the outcome of a response can facilitate selection of that response. We investigated another, complementary implication of ideomotor theory: would a bias toward selecting a response result in a perceptual bias toward the known effect of the response? In other words, would an action tendency direct attention to the anticipated perceptual features? Through an initial acquisition phase, participants learned that two possible responses (left/right keypress) consistently produced two distinct colors. Next, in a test phase, we manipulated response bias at the beginning of each trial, using an uninformative spatial prime presented at the left or right periphery. We then examined the extent to which color transients that either matched or mismatched the induced response bias can orient participants’ visual attention. Results revealed a perceptual bias toward the color effect of the primed response, manifested in a stronger visual orienting toward this color. Thus, biasing response selection can bias perception. These findings extend the scope of the ideomotor theory to visual perceptual processes.     

The motor system computes well but remembers poorly

The psychological approach to human voluntary movements advocated by F. Mechsner (2004) can be aligned with the view that motor commands are generated afresh but are not retrieved from memory. This movement-generation hypothesis gains indirect support in the findings Mechsner reviewed and obtains more direct support from the results of studies of memory for movement and computational modeling of motor planning.     

Discrimination of functionally appropriate and inappropriate throwing tools by captive tufted capuchins (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Cebus apella</Emphasis>)

A tool-throwing task was used to test whether capuchin monkeys understand the difference between functionally appropriate and functionally inappropriate tools. A group of monkeys was trained to obtain a sticky treat from a container outside their enclosure using a projectile attached to one end of an anchored line. Subsequently, these monkeys were given choice tests between functional and nonfunctional versions of tools used in training. A different feature of the tool was varied between alternatives in each choice test. The monkeys chose to use functional tools significantly more often than nonfunctional tools in early exposures to each choice test. A second experiment tested whether these subjects, as well as a second group of minimally trained participants, could distinguish between functional and nonfunctional tools that appeared different from those used in training. A new set of design features was varied between tools in these choice tests. All participants continued to choose functional tools significantly more often than nonfunctional tools, regardless of their tool-throwing experience or the novel appearance of the tools. These results suggest that capuchin monkeys, like chimpanzees studied in similar experiments, are sensitive to a variety of functionally relevant tool features.     

The validity of psychomotor vigilance tasks of less than 10-minute duration

The 10-min psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) has often been used to assess the impact of sleep loss on performance. Due to time constraints, however, regular testing may not be practical in field studies. The aim of the present study was to examine the suitability of tests shorter than 10 min. in duration. Changes in performance across a night of sustained wakefulness were compared during a standard 10-min PVT, the first 5 min of the PVT, and the first 2 min of the PVT. Four performance metrics were assessed: (1) mean reaction time (RT), (2) fastest 10% of RT, (3) lapse percentage, and (4) slowest 10% of RT. Performance during the 10-min PVT significantly deteriorated with increasing wakefulness for all metrics. Performance during the first 5 min and the first 2 min of the PVT deteriorated in a manner similar to that observed for the whole 10-min task, with all metrics except lapse percentage displaying significant impairment across the night. However, the shorter the task sampling time, the less sensitive the test is to sleepiness. Nevertheless, the 5-min PVT may provide a viable alternative to the 10-min PVT for some performance metrics.     

Pigeons' discrimination of Michotte's launching effect

We trained four pigeons to discriminate a Michotte launching animation from three other animations using a go/no-go task. The pigeons received food for pecking at one of the animations, but not for pecking at the others. The four animations featured two types of interactions among objects: causal (direct launching) and noncausal (delayed, distal, and distal & delayed). Two pigeons were reinforced for pecking at the causal interaction, but not at the noncausal interactions; two other pigeons were reinforced for pecking at the distal & delayed interaction, but not at the other interactions. Both discriminations proved difficult for the pigeons to master; later tests suggested that the pigeons often learned the discriminations by attending to subtle stimulus properties other than the intended ones.     

Toward Mapping Daily Challenges of Living with ADHD: Maternal and Child Perspectives Using Electronic Diaries

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has an impact on the family as well as the affected child. This study developed and tested an electronic diary for mapping the challenges of everyday family life in a sample of children with ADHD being treated with pharmacotherapy. Across 7 days, mothers and children (27 ADHD; 25 non-ADHD) independently reported their moods, behaviors, and social contexts every 30 min during nonschool hours. Symptomatic behaviors and negative moods were elevated in the ADHD group, combined with maternal perceptions of lower parenting effectiveness and quality of life. Differences in the contexts of maternal anger were salient, with mothers in the ADHD group more often angry when with their children and comparison mothers more often angry when not. Although mothers' diaries were more informative, children's diaries also distinguished the two groups, especially during mornings and weekends. The need for family-wide interventions, the utility of child self-reports, and the promise of electronic diaries are discussed.     

Hotel room suicide

The objective of our research was to quantify the increased risk of suicide associated with registering in local hotels/motels. Medical examiner case files of suicide in King County, Washington, were reviewed for years 2002-2004. The incidence of suicide in local residents registering in local hotels/motels was 223/100,000 which is significantly greater than the incidence of suicide in the general population of King County (11.7/100,000 p < 0.0001). Hotel/motel guests from outside Washington had a significantly reduced incidence of suicide (3.9/100,000 p = 0.002). The study results suggest that there is an increased risk of suicide in local residents who register in local hotel rooms.     

Optimal predictions in everyday cognition

Human perception and memory are often explained as optimal statistical inferences that are informed by accurate prior probabilities. In contrast, cognitive judgments are usually viewed as following error-prone heuristics that are insensitive to priors. We examined the optimality of human cognition in a more realistic context than typical laboratory studies, asking people to make predictions about the duration or extent of everyday phenomena such as human life spans and the box-office take of movies. Our results suggest that everyday cognitive judgments follow the same optimal statistical principles as perception and memory, and reveal a close correspondence between people's implicit probabilistic models and the statistics of the world.