Misperception of Chance,Conjunction, Framing Effects and Belief in the Paranormal: A Further Evaluation

Studies exploring relationships between belief in the paranormal and vulnerability to cognitive bias suggest that believers are liable to misperception of chance and conjunction fallacy. Research investigating misperception of chance has produced consistent findings, whilst work on conjunction fallacy is less compelling. Evidence indicates also that framing biases within a paranormal context can increase believers' susceptibility. The present study, using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling, examined the contribution of each bias to belief in the paranormal and assessed the merits of previous research. Alongside, the Revised Paranormal Belief Scale, participants completed standard and paranormal framed perception of randomness and conjunction problems. Perception of randomness was more strongly associated with belief in the paranormal than conjunction fallacy. Inherent methodological issues limited the usefulness of framing manipulations; presenting problems within a paranormal context weakened their predictive power.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Obligation as Optimal Goal Satisfaction

Formalising deontic concepts, such as obligation, prohibition and permission, is normally carried out in a modal logic with a possible world semantics, in which some worlds are better than others. The main focus in these logics is on inferring logical consequences, for example inferring that the obligation O q is a logical consequence of the obligations O p and O (p → q). In this paper we propose a non-modal approach in which obligations are preferred ways of satisfying goals expressed in first-order logic. To say that p is obligatory, but may be violated, resulting in a less than ideal situation s, means that the task is to satisfy the goal p ∨ s, and that models in which p is true are preferred to models in which s is true. Whereas, in modal logic, the preference relation between possible worlds is part of the semantics of the logic, in this non-modal approach, the preference relation between first-order models is external to the logic. Although our main focus is on satisfying goals, we also formulate a notion of logical consequence, which is comparable to the notion of logical consequence in modal deontic logic. In this formalisation, an obligation O p is a logical consequence of goals G, when p is true in all best models of G. We show how this non-modal approach to the treatment of deontic concepts deals with problems of contrary-to-duty obligations and normative conflicts, and argue that the approach is useful for many other applications, including abductive explanations, defeasible reasoning, combinatorial optimisation, and reactive systems of the production system variety.     

关于日中大学生记忆活动的比较研究

本研究以日中两国的大学生为调查对象,比较了记忆尺度的下位尺度得分。主要结果如下：(1)日本大学生比中国大学生检索失败的机会多;(2)与日本大学生相比中国大学生善于利用内在记忆策略;(3)与中国大学生相比日本大学生善于利用外在记忆策略;（4)对记忆的自信。日中两国大学生未见差别。     

Verb aspect and the activation of event knowledge

The authors show that verb aspect influences the activation of event knowledge with 4 novel results. First, common locations of events (e.g., arena) are primed following verbs with imperfective aspect (e.g., was skating) but not verbs with perfect aspect (e.g., had skated). Second, people generate more locative prepositional phrases as completions to sentence fragments with imperfective than those with perfect aspect. Third, the amplitude of the N400 component to location nouns varies as a function of aspect and typicality, being smallest for imperfective sentences with highly expected locations and largest for imperfective sentences with less expected locations. Fourth, the amplitude of a sustained frontal negativity spanning prepositional phrases is larger following perfect than following imperfective aspect. Taken together, these findings suggest a dynamic interplay between event knowledge and the linguistic stream.     

User perceptions of process-outcome linkages in pupil peer counselling for bullying services in the UK

Users of pupil peer counselling for bullying services (n=50) rated their most helpful and their least helpful experiences of these services on five counselling process variables. The aim was to identify which, if any, of these variables differentiated between the two types of experience. Participants gave significantly higher ratings to 'core conditions', 'client openness' and 'maintain positive self-regard', but significantly lower ratings to 'counsellor directiveness', for their most helpful experience than for their least helpful experience. No significant differences emerged for ratings of 'counsellor self-disclosure'. None of these effects were qualified by gender. The implications of these findings for providers of peer counselling for bullying services are discussed.     

Subliminal smells can guide social preferences

It is widely accepted that unconscious processes can modulate judgments and behavior, but do such influences affect one's daily interactions with other people? Given that olfactory information has relatively direct access to cortical and subcortical emotional circuits, we tested whether the affective content of subliminal odors alters social preferences. Participants rated the likeability of neutral faces after smelling pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant odors delivered below detection thresholds. Odor affect significantly shifted likeability ratings only for those participants lacking conscious awareness of the smells, as verified by chance-level trial-by-trial performance on an odor-detection task. Across participants, the magnitude of this priming effect decreased as sensitivity for odor detection increased. In contrast, heart rate responses tracked odor valence independently of odor awareness. These results indicate that social preferences are subject to influences from odors that escape awareness, whereas the availability of conscious odor information may disrupt such effects.     

Neural correlates of conceptual implicit memory and their contamination of putative neural correlates of explicit memory

During episodic recognition tests, meaningful stimuli such as words can engender both conscious retrieval (explicit memory) and facilitated access to meaning that is distinct from the awareness of remembering (conceptual implicit memory). Neuroimaging investigations of one type of memory are frequently subject to the confounding influence of the other type of memory, thus posing a serious impediment to theoretical advances in this area. We used minimalist visual shapes (squiggles) to attempt to overcome this problem. Subjective ratings of squiggle meaningfulness varied idiosyncratically, and behavioral indications of conceptual implicit memory were evident only for stimuli given higher ratings. These effects did not result from perceptual-based fluency or from explicit remembering. Distinct event-related brain potentials were associated with conceptual implicit memory and with explicit memory by virtue of contrasts based on meaningfulness ratings and memory judgments, respectively. Frontal potentials from 300 to 500 msec after the onset of repeated squiggles varied systematically with perceived meaningfulness. Explicit memory was held constant in this contrast, so these potentials were taken as neural correlates of conceptual implicit memory. Such potentials can contaminate putative neural correlates of explicit memory, in that they are frequently attributed to the expression of explicit memory known as familiarity. These findings provide the first neural dissociation of these two memory phenomena during recognition testing and underscore the necessity of taking both types of memory into account in order to obtain valid neural correlates of specific memory functions.     

One-trial conditioning of aerial respiratory behaviour in Lymnaea stagnalis

Repeated spaced training sessions of contingent tactile stimulation to the pneumostome as it opens are required to cause long-term memory (LTM) formation of aerial respiratory behaviour making if difficult to determine exactly when memory forms. We have devised a single-trial aversive operant conditioning training procedure in Lymnaea to be better able to elucidate the causal mechanisms of LTM formation. Observations of baseline breathing behaviour in hypoxia were first made. Twenty-four hours later the snails were trained using the single trial procedure, by placing them in a small Petri dish containing 4 ml of 25 mM KCl for 30-35s as soon as the first pneumostome opening in hypoxia was attempted. LTM was present if (1) breathing behaviour following training was significantly less than before; and (2) breathing behaviour post-training was significantly less in experimental groups than in yoked control groups. LTM persisted for 24 h but not 48 h. Yoked controls that received an aversive stimulus not contingent with pneumostome opening had no evidence of memory. Cooling directly after, but not at any other time, blocks LTM formation. LTM formation was also prevented by removal of the cell body of the neuron RPeD1 before training.     

Validating neural correlates of familiarity

Familiarity is a pervasive memory phenomenon that occurs in its most basic form when someone recognizes a repeated stimulus without recollecting other aspects of the requisite prior learning episode. Theoretical controversy currently abounds with respect to both the cognitive and neural characteristics of familiarity. Here, we show that the extant data, particularly brain-potential data, are insufficient for validating putative neural correlates of familiarity, and we outline strategies for making progress on this problem. Conceptual priming is an implicit-memory phenomenon that often occurs together with familiarity; experiments that conflate the two phenomena can be misleading. Avoiding this conflation is required to understand familiarity and to determine the extent to which the neurocognitive processes that support priming also drive familiarity.     

Measuring 3-D understanding on the Web and in the laboratory

We describe the ongoing development of a psychometric test to measure understanding of three-dimensional (3-D) concepts represented in drawings. The test consists of five subtests requiring participants to complete timed choice tasks previously used in experimental investigations of 3-D understanding, and a new subtest based on the idea of true length. We examined performance in terms of accuracy and response time usingboth laboratory- and Web-based methods of delivery. Reliability coefficients were high for both methods (.90 and .96, respectively, for accuracy, and .87 and .95, respectively, for response time measures), but Web-based participants produced consistently lower overall scores. Issues regarding the deployment of, and recruitment for, complex Web-based experimental tasks, and factors affecting comparisons between Web and laboratory results, such as the presence of an experimenter, and interface and sample differences, are discussed.