Diachronic Dutch Books and Sleeping Beauty

Hitchcock advances a diachronic Dutch Book argument (DDB) for a 1/3 answer to the Sleeping Beauty problem. Bradley and Leitgeb argue that Hitchcock’s DDB argument fails. We demonstrate the following: (a) Bradley and Leitgeb’s criticism of Hitchcock is unconvincing; (b) nonetheless, there are serious reasons to worry about the success of Hitchcock’s argument; (c) however, it is possible to construct a new DDB for 1/3 about which such worries cannot be raised.     

Wittgensteinian Tableaux, Identity, and Co-Denotation

Wittgensteinian predicate logic (W-logic) is characterized by the requirement that the objects mentioned within the scope of a quantifier be excluded from the range of the associated bound variable. I present a sound and complete tableaux calculus for this logic and discuss issues of translatability between Wittgensteinian and standard predicate logic in languages with and without individual constants. A metalinguistic co-denotation predicate, akin to Frege’s triple bar of the Begriffsschrift, is introduced and used to bestow the full expressive power of first-order logic with identity on W-logic in the presence of constants.

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Minds at rest? Social cognition as the default mode of cognizing and its putative relationship to the "default system" of the brain

The “default system” of the brain has been described as a set of regions which are ‘activated’ during rest and ‘deactivated’ during cognitively effortful tasks. To investigate the reliability of task-related deactivations, we performed a meta-analysis across 12 fMRI studies. Our results replicate previous findings by implicating medial frontal and parietal brain regions as part of the “default system”.However, the cognitive correlates of these deactivations remain unclear. In light of the importance of social cognitive abilities for human beings and their propensity to engage in such activities, we relate our results to findings from neuroimaging studies of social cognition. This demonstrates a remarkable overlap between the brain regions typically involved in social cognitive processes and the “default system”.We, henceforth, suggest that the physiological ‘baseline’ of the brain is intimately linked to a psychological ‘baseline’: human beings have a predisposition for social cognition as the default mode of cognizing which is implemented in the robust pattern of intrinsic brain activity known as the “default system”.     

氟哌啶醇干扰决策过程中前扣带回神经元的放电活动

运用在体多通道神经元放电同步记录技术, 观察和记录大鼠在完成T-迷宫成本效益决策任务时前扣带回神经元放电和局部场电位的变化及氟哌啶醇对此的改变, 在细胞水平上探讨前扣带回在决策中的作用以及多巴胺递质系统对决策的作用机制。结果显示, 经过一段时间的训练, 10只大鼠中有8只偏好高付出-高奖赏端, 且在选择高付出-高奖赏端时的神经元放电频率要显著高于选择低付出-低奖赏端时的频率, 同时局部场电位也呈现出事件相关性; 腹腔注射多巴胺受体拮抗剂氟哌啶醇后, 大鼠不再偏好高付出-高奖赏端, 对该端的选择显著减少, 而对低付出-低奖赏端的选择显著增加, 且神经元的放电频率和局部场电位显著降低, 神经元放电和局部场电位的特征性也消失。研究提示, 前扣带回和多巴胺在努力相关决策任务中有着至关重要的作用。     

幼儿能力判断发展特点研究

本研究以62名3~6岁儿童为被试,考察了幼儿在不同任务中对自身和他人能力判断的发展特点。结果表明:(1)幼儿对自身或他人能力判断的准确性随着年龄的增长而提高;(2)幼儿对他人能力判断并不比对自身能力判断更准确,随着年龄的增长,幼儿开始对自身能力做出更加积极的判断;(3)幼儿能够明确区分愿望与预期,不过当幼儿对自身能力进行判断时这种区分不容易显现出来。     

论现代传染病防治中医患关系的特点

现代传染病防治中传统的医患关系的内涵和外延都发生了一定的变化,无论是医方还是患方都体现出强烈超医学性和社会性,在社会大防治的概念下医患之间出现一定的界限模糊甚至角色重叠.现代传染病的发展给我们提供了审视医患关系的新视角,引发人们关于医学发展、社会道德的深层次的思考.     

纪念老子诞辰2578周年系列活动在河南鹿邑隆重举行

2007年4月2日(农历二月十五),是伟大的哲学家、道家学派创始人、道祖老子诞辰2578周年纪念日。当日早上7:30,来自海内外的道教界代表、各级领导和当地群众近二万人参加了纪念活动。中国道教协会任法融会长,黄信阳、张金涛副会长、袁炳     

Why don't health professionals check patient understanding? A questionnaire-based study

Checking patient understanding, by asking questions about information presented in a medical consultation, is a core communication skill but its use is not frequently assessed. The newborn hearing screening commenced in England with a pilot of its implementation in January 2002. Because it is a new screening test, it provided an opportunity for studying the effective communication of novel information. A randomized controlled trial of training newborn hearing screeners to present information about the screening test and to ask questions to check understanding was commenced but had to be prematurely ended as the majority of the screeners did not ask the questions. The aim of this study was to understand why the screeners did not ask questions to check understanding of the information provided. Questionnaires were sent to screeners who participated in the study to elicit their responses to the use of the questions to check understanding. A response rate of 87% (26/30) was achieved. Screeners who reported not asking the questions were more likely to express a lack of confidence in their ability to ask questions, and to perceive asking questions as an ineffective way of increasing patient understanding. The study suggests that the ability and willingness of healthcare professionals to use simple communication skills may have been overestimated and training needs to target skills as well as beliefs about the effectiveness of using them.     

Last but not least

A central tenet of Gestalt psychology is that the visual scene can be separated into figure and ground. The two illusions we present demonstrate that Gestalt processes can group spatial contrast information that cuts across the figure/ground separation. This finding suggests that visual processes that organise the visual scene do not necessarily require structural segmentation as their primary input.     

Apparent rotation and jazzing in Leviant's Enigma illusion

In 1981 Leviant devised Enigma, a figure that elicits perceived rotary motion in the absence of real motion. However, despite its striking appearance there is no good explanation for this motion illusion to date. Gregory (1993 Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 253 123) pointed out a similarity to MacKay's 'complementary' afterimage in his ray pattern and suggested accommodative fluctuations and small eye movements as a potential origin for these phenomena. Furthermore, Zeki et al (1993 Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 252 215-222) found PET-activation in response to Enigma in visual area V5 and immediately surrounding areas (called V5 complex) suggesting that the illusory motion could be mediated by the same neurons as real motion. In the experiments reported here, I show that the rotary motion is perceived on coloured as well as achromatic annuli intercepting the radial lines. More importantly, the illusory streaming motion continues to be seen with a cycloplegic lens as well as through a pinhole (ie ruling out transient changes of accommodation), and in the positive after-image (ie in the absence of eye movements). Apparent rotation is strongest with radial inducers impinging at right angles onto the annuli, but persist, although to a lesser degree, when the inducing lines are tilted in opposite directions, non-collinear, or replaced by dotted lines or lines with rounded terminators. For an explanation, the Enigma illusion requires a neural mechanism that uses lines abutting an empty annulus to elicit orthogonal streaming motion in one or the other direction.