Positive Psychology and Indian Psychology: Birds of the Same Feather

Positive psychology and Indian psychology share similar concerns regarding human life. But Indian psychology has more to offer towards our understanding of happiness and well-being than what Positive psychology can at this point of time, because of latter’s paradigmatic limitations. This commentary draws attention to certain shortcomings of the target article: (a) in presenting the contemporary Positive psychology perspective; (b) in conceptualizing IP with reference to its epistemological position; (c) and in equating certain concepts from PP and IP and their implications.     

When does prior knowledge disproportionately benefit older adults’ memory?

Material consistent with knowledge/experience is generally more memorable than material inconsistent with knowledge/experience – an effect that can be more extreme in older adults. Four experiments investigated knowledge effects on memory with young and older adults. Memory for familiar and unfamiliar proverbs (Experiment 1) and for common and uncommon scenes (Experiment 2) showed similar knowledge effects across age groups. Memory for person-consistent and person-neutral actions (Experiment 3) showed a greater benefit of prior knowledge in older adults. For cued recall of related and unrelated word pairs (Experiment 4), older adults benefited more from prior knowledge only when it provided uniquely useful additional information beyond the episodic association itself. The current data and literature suggest that prior knowledge has the age-dissociable mnemonic properties of (1) improving memory for the episodes themselves (age invariant), and (2) providing conceptual information about the tasks/stimuli extrinsically to the actual episodic memory (particularly aiding older adults).     

One-step synthesis of bulk quantities of graphene from graphite by femtosecond laser ablation under ambient conditions

Bulk synthesis of few-layer graphene (FLG) for industrial applications still remains a challenge for researchers. Here, we report a very simple technique for bulk synthesis of FLG by femtosecond laser ablation of graphite powder suspended in ethanol without the requirement of a controlled environment. Graphite powder, with an average particle size <20 μm, was suspended uniformly in ethanol and ablated at room temperature using fs pulses (wavelength ~800 nm and an input beam diameter ~8 mm) followed by ultrasonication to obtain FLG with a lateral size of ~1 μm. Raman spectroscopy and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy data confirmed the nature and morphology of the FLG. The quality and number of layers in the FLG could be controlled by tuning the laser parameters.     

Trusting Our Selves to Technology

Trust is a central dimension in the relation between human beings and technologies. In many discourses about technology, the relation between human beings and technologies is conceptualized as an external relation: a relation between pre-given entities that can have an impact on each other but that do not mutually constitute each other. From this perspective, relations of trust can vary between reliance, as is present for instance in technological extensionism, and suspicion, as in various precautionary approaches in ethics that focus on technological risks. Against these two interpretations of trust, this article develops a third one. Based on a more internal account of the relations between human beings and technologies, it becomes possible to see that every technological development puts at stake what it means to be a human being. Using technologies, then, implies trusting ourselves to technologies. We argue that this does not imply an uncritical subjection to technology. Rather, recognizing that technologies help to constitute human subjectivity implies that human beings can get actively involved in processes of technological mediation. Trust then has the character of confidence: deliberately trusting oneself to technology.     

Appearance of symmetry, beauty, and health in human faces

Symmetry is an important concept in biology, being related to mate selection strategies, health, and survival of species. In human faces, the relevance of left-right symmetry to attractiveness and health is not well understood. We compared the appearance of facial attractiveness, health, and symmetry in three separate experiments. Participants inspected front views of faces on the computer screen and judged them on a 5-point scale according to their attractiveness in Experiment 1, health in Experiment 2, and symmetry in Experiment 3. We found that symmetry and attractiveness were not strongly related in faces of women or men while health and symmetry were related. There was a significant difference between attractiveness and symmetry judgments but not between health and symmetry judgments. Moreover, there was a significant difference between attractiveness and health. Facial symmetry may be critical for the appearance of health but it does not seem to be critical for the appearance of attractiveness, not surprisingly perhaps because human faces together with the human brain have been shaped by adaptive evolution to be naturally asymmetrical.     

Attention and Short-Term Memory in Normal Children,Aggressive Children,and Non-Aggressive Children with Attention-Deficit Disorder

In the present study, fifteen 7- to 9-year-old male school children with attention deficit disorder (ADD) as well as matched groups of aggressive and normal children were compared on scores obtained for initial acquisition of information and its maintenance in the short-term score under various attentional loads. Bi-colored, alphanumeric arrays were used in a partial-report technique. Retention was measured 0, 5, 10, and 20 s, after pre- and postexposure under both rehearsal and nonrehearsal conditions. ADD children (a) were deficient in original acquisition, (b) were unable to take sufficient advantage of decreased load conditions, and (c) showed decrements over time that paralleled those of the control group (CG). The results have been interpreted in light of maturational lag and the differences between ADD and aggressive groups.     

The influence of skin tone, hair length, and hair colour on ratings of women's physical attractiveness, health and fertility

The present study investigated the role of skin tone, hair colour and hair length in perceptions of women's physical attractiveness, health and fertility. One-hundred and thirty men and 112 women rated a series of 12 line drawings that varied in three levels of skin tone, two levels of hair colour and two levels of hair length. Results showed a number of interactions between the three variables, suggesting that these phenotypes are highly intercorrelated. However, there were also significant main effects of each of the variables, with hair colour generally explaining the greatest amount of variance. In general, light-toned figures were rated the most positively. Contrary to expectations, however, brunettes were rated more positively than blondes, and hair length had only a weak effect on ratings of attractiveness. Implications of these findings and the limitations of the use of line drawings are discussed in conclusion.     

Effect of typicality on online category verification of animate category exemplars in aphasia

Normal young, elderly, Broca's aphasic, and Wernicke's aphasic individuals participated in an online category verification task where primes were superordinate category labels while targets were either typical or atypical examples of animate categories or nonmembers belonging to inanimate categories. The reaction time to judge whether the target belonged to the preceding category label was measured. Results indicated that all four groups made significantly greater errors on atypical examples compared to typical examples. Young and elderly individuals, and Broca's aphasic patients performed similarly on the verification task; these groups demonstrated faster reaction times on typical examples than atypical examples. Wernicke's aphasic patients made the most errors on the task and were slowest to respond than any other participant group. Also, these participants were not significantly faster at accepting correct typical examples compared to correct atypical examples. The results from the four groups are discussed with relevance to prototype/family resemblance models of typicality.     

Consciousness as an Inhibited Manifestation and Quantum Physics

The term soul is used in the traditional literature as a synonym for one’s true Self and is associated with the subjective essence of one’s living. Since, we don’t have any means to quantify it, the science has ruled out this idea from its investigations. But, in a recent study, Ceylan et al. (2017) has reintroduced the word soul to scientific literature and examined the possibility of the study of the soul through scientific modalities. The primary focus of their study is to find and understand the scientific analog of the soul as quoted and discussed in the traditional literature. In the present paper, we examine the idea of a soul that uses a novel approach; integrating neuroscience and quantum physics, as proposed in Ceylan et al. (2017). For this purpose, we make use of findings from neuroscientific studies on meditation to understand the concepts of soul and consciousness in terms of inhibition mechanisms. In this context, this paper serves as an attempt to call for more studies to discuss and expand the hypothesis about the soul as uninhibited mental activity.