When self-protection overreaches: Relationship-specific threat activates domain-general avoidance motivation

Murray, Holmes, and Collins’ [Murray, Holmes, and Collins (2006) Optimizing assurance: The risk regulation system in relationships. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 641-666] interpersonal risk regulation model posits that people cope with threats to their romantic relationships by prioritizing self-protection goals over connectedness goals. The current paper tests whether these relationship-specific responses to threat are reflective of broader shifts in motivation. In Study 1, participants were quicker to identify avoidance-related words than approach-related words following a relationship-specific threat. In Study 2, threatened participants performed better than control participants on an anagram task under an avoidance frame, but not under an approach frame. These results suggest that relationship threat nonconsciously heightens global avoidance motivation and that the interpersonal risk regulation model may originate from a more fundamental approach-avoidance system.     

A limited defense of moral perception

One popular reason for rejecting moral realism is the lack of a plausible epistemology that explains how we come to know moral facts. Recently, a number of philosophers have insisted that it is possible to have moral knowledge in a very straightforward way—by perception. However, there is a significant objection to the possibility of moral perception: it does not seem that we could have a perceptual experience that represents a moral property, but a necessary condition for coming to know that X is F by perception is the ability to have a perceptual experience that represents something as being F. Call this the ‘Representation Objection’ to moral perception. In this paper I argue that the Representation Objection to moral perception fails. Thus I offer a limited defense of moral perception.     

The Need for an Ethics of Sustainable Knowledge Production

The modern research university is an unsustainable institution. It normalizes academic activity along the lines of a scientist engaged in normal science and seeks to measure the success or failure of academics based largely on the quantity of their contributions to a particular discipline, often measured in terms of papers published and conference presentations. The ensuing race to produce academic studies is creating unprecedented mountains of academic studies, but often in haphazard, unstructured, and unsustainable ways, especially in the humanities and the social sciences, which do not discover nomothetic laws or accumulate knowledge in a fashion similar to science. This not only undermines the quality of work being done and the character of academics doing this work but also results in the thoughtless, endless, largely unstructured mountains of new studies that no one can keep up with.     

Against reductive ethical naturalism

Philosophical Studies - This paper raises an objection to two important arguments for reductive ethical naturalism. Reductive ethical naturalism is the view that ethical properties reduce to the...     

Essence,necessity, and definition

Philosophical Studies - What is it for something to be essential to an item? For some time, it was standard to think that the concept of necessity alone can provide an answer: for something to be...     

The effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on multitasking performance and oculometrics

Multitasking is the ability to perform more than one task simultaneously. The need to multitask is common in many industries especially within the military with tasks such as air traffic controllers, cyber defense operators and image analysts. However, as the time on task increases, information throughput can become overwhelming resulting in a performance decrement. Through task prioritizing, the operator is able to maintain performance on specific subtasks in which they selected as high importance while other subtasks experience a decrement. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) applied to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (ldLPFC) on information processing capabilities to improve individual and overall multitasking performance while performing the multi-attribute task battery (MATB). Two groups of 8 participants each received either 2 mA of anodal or sham tDCS while performing MATB. In addition, eye tracking was implemented to record eye movement patterns. In doing so, we were able to determine how much time the operator allocated to each of the subtasks within MATB and how their task priorities changed as workload demands increased. The findings provided evidence that 2 mA of anodal tDCS during MATB significantly improved overall information throughput compared to the sham group. With respect to the individual subtasks, communication and system monitoring displayed the greatest enhancement with anodal tDCS. Our data suggests that tDCS could be a useful tool to enhance information processing capabilities during a multitasking paradigm resulting in improved processing capabilities and information throughput.     

Recycling Identities: A Narrative Inquiry on Consumer Decision Making Among Urban Poor Families in the Philippines

The purpose of this article is to explore consumption-related decisions of urban poor families. Using a combination of in-depth interviews and visual narrative exercise, stories of six urban poor families living in Payatas, Quezon City, were analyzed. Key findings show that consumption-related decisions of participants follow a double cyclic narrative of just right spending. Community shared practices enable participants to survive by managing tensions between making ends meet and sustaining a public ideal of living a simple life. The researchers provide reflections on the socio-economic reproduction of a public ideal and rethinking the role of psychology in poverty reduction policies.     

Using automated controlled rearing to explore the origins of object permanence

What are the origins of object permanence? Despite widespread interest in this question, methodological barriers have prevented detailed analysis of how experience shapes the development of object permanence in newborn organisms. Here, we introduce an automated controlled‐rearing method for studying the emergence of object permanence in strictly controlled virtual environments. We used newborn chicks as an animal model and recorded their behavior continuously (24/7) from the onset of vision. Across four experiments, we found that object permanence can develop rapidly, within the first few days of life. This ability developed even when chicks were reared in impoverished visual environments containing no object occlusion events. Object permanence failed to develop, however, when chicks were reared in environments containing temporally non‐smooth objects (objects moving on discontinuous spatiotemporal paths). These results suggest that experience with temporally smooth objects facilitates the development of object permanence, confirming a key prediction of temporal learning models in computational neuroscience.     

Advancing access to Medicare-funded mental health treatment during the opioid epidemic: A counselor advocacy analysis

Although advocacy is a priority for counseling professionals, little is known about counseling advocates’ participation in the legislative advocacy process. Recent legislation to address the opioid crisis allowed counseling advocates to provide public comments to advance counselor inclusion in the Medicare program. A thematic analysis of 548 public comments provided on behalf of the counseling profession yielded four categories: advocacy on behalf of (1) the proposed rule change; (2) broader Medicare inclusion; (3) the proposed rule change with an additional request for broader Medicare reimbursement; and (4) no clear advocacy. Subthemes included increasing access to care, qualifications necessary to provide care, and the urgency of the opioid epidemic, among others. Implications for the counseling profession and counselor advocacy are discussed.     

Observational Effects on Preference Selection for Four Children on the Autism Spectrum: A Replication

Individuals with autism have been noted to have restricted interests and repetitive behavior such as nonfunctional manipulation of objects. In this study, we used an observational conditioning procedure to switch the preference of items for four individuals diagnosed with autism who are considered lower functioning. The procedure consisted of the participant observing an adult playing with toys that were initially non‐preferred by the participant in a functional and engaging manner. For two participants, results were similar to the findings by Leaf; one participant required additional conditioning procedures, and we were unable to switch the preference for the other participant. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.