Religious Wars or Healthy Competition in the NDE Movement?

In the early years of near-death research many organized religions rejected the near-death experience (NDE) as a legitimate expression of religious faith. More recently numerous religious apologists have laid claim to NDEs as verifying particular theological beliefs. I see this as a healthy competition between religions, and a competition that results from the very success of the near-death research effort. Religious apologists, however, must be reasonably objective in any juxtapositions of religious philosophy with NDE findings. I point out some problems in this regard with Michael Sabom's recent work. I also argue that Kenneth Ring's recent statements that we might not now be headed toward Omega as he once thought may be premature.     

Writer's cramp: A behavioural approach

The history of the treatment of writer's cramp by behaviour therapy is reviewed, and the theoretical assumptions underlying aversive treatment are criticized. The natural history of the disorder is reviewed, including the author's recent research in Student Health Centres. Some special observations are made on the disorder's peculiarities of incidence, both with regard to age of onset and the ethnic or geographical origins of what appears to be a significant minority of patients. Three approaches to studying aetiology are discussed, the neurological, psychopathological and the learning theory of orientations. Some suggestions are offered for further research embracing both experimental psychology and neurological investigation.     

Fundamental dimensions of social judgment: understanding the relations between judgments of competence and warmth

In seems there are two dimensions that underlie most judgments of traits, people, groups, and cultures. Although the definitions vary, the first makes reference to attributes such as competence, agency, and individualism, and the second to warmth, communality, and collectivism. But the relationship between the two dimensions seems unclear. In trait and person judgment, they are often positively related; in group and cultural stereotypes, they are often negatively related. The authors report 4 studies that examine the dynamic relationship between these two dimensions, experimentally manipulating the location of a target of judgment on one and examining the consequences for the other. In general, the authors' data suggest a negative dynamic relationship between the two, moderated by factors the impact of which they explore.     

Beliefs about power and its relation to emotional experience: a comparison of Japan, France, Germany, and the United States

This research examined the concept of power in Japan, France, Germany, and the United States, as well as beliefs about the emotions persons in power tend to elicit in others and about powerful people's regulation (specifically, inhibition) of certain emotions. Definitions of power were assessed by examining the importance of two main components: control over self versus other and freedom of action vis-à-vis social norms. Beliefs about both positive (pride, admiration) and negative (jealousy, contempt) emotions were measured. Analyses revealed that the concept of power differed across countries and that the definitions of power as well as country of origin significantly predicted beliefs about the emotions that are elicited in others by powerful people and also the regulation of expression of emotion by powerful people.     

Expectations about numerical events in four lemur species (Eulemur fulvus, Eulemur mongoz, Lemur catta and Varecia rubra)

Although much is known about how some primates—in particular, monkeys and apes—represent and enumerate different numbers of objects, very little is known about the numerical abilities of prosimian primates. Here, we explore how four lemur species (Eulemur fulvus, E. mongoz, Lemur catta, and Varecia rubra) represent small numbers of objects. Specifically, we presented lemurs with three expectancy violation looking time experiments aimed at exploring their expectations about a simple 1+1 addition event. In these experiments, we presented subjects with displays in which two lemons were sequentially added behind an occluder and then measured subjects duration of looking to expected and unexpected outcomes. In experiment 1, subjects looked reliably longer at an unexpected outcome of only one object than at an expected outcome of two objects. Similarly, subjects in experiment 2 looked reliably longer at an unexpected outcome of three objects than at an expected outcome of two objects. In experiment 3, subjects looked reliably longer at an unexpected outcome of one object twice the size of the original than at an expected outcome of two objects of the original size. These results suggest that some prosimian primates understand the outcome of simple arithmetic operations. These results are discussed in light of similar findings in human infants and other adult primates.This revised version was published online in March 2005 with corrections to Fig. 6.     

Means-means-end tool choice in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus): finding the limits on primates’ knowledge of tools

Most studies of animal tool use require subjects to use one object to gain access to a food reward. In many real world situations, however, animals perform more than one action in sequence to achieve their goals. Of theoretical interest is whether animals have the cognitive capacity to recognize the relationship between consecutive action sequences in which there may be one overall goal and several subgoals. Here we ask if cotton-top tamarins, a species that in captivity uses tools to solve means-end problems, can go one step further and use a sequence of tools (means) to obtain food (end). We first trained subjects to use a pulling tool to obtain a food reward. After this initial training, subjects were presented with problems in which one tool had to be used in combination with a second in order to obtain food. Subjects showed great difficulty when two tools were required to obtain the food reward. Although subjects attended to the connection between the tool and food reward, they ignored the physical connection between the two tools. After training on a two-tool problem, we presented subjects with a series of transfer tests to explore if they would generalize to new types of connections between the tools. Subjects readily transferred to new connections. Our results therefore provide the first evidence to date that tamarins can learn to solve problems involving two tools, but that they do so only with sufficient training.     

‘Core Knowledges’: a dissociation between spatiotemporal knowledge and contact‐mechanics in a non‐human primate?

Human toddlers demonstrate striking failures when searching for hidden objects that interact with other objects, yet successfully locate hidden objects that do not undergo mechanical interactions. This pattern hints at a developmental dissociation between contact-mechanical and spatiotemporal knowledge. Recent studies suggest that adult non-human primates may exhibit a similar dissociation. Here, I provide the first direct test of this dissociation using a search paradigm with adult rhesus monkeys. Subjects watched as a plum rolled behind one of two opaque barriers. In Experiment 1, subjects had to locate the plum based on the position of a wall that blocked the plum's trajectory. Subjects searched incorrectly, apparently neglecting information about the location of the wall. However, subjects searched correctly in Experiments 2-4 when they were given spatiotemporal information about the plum's movement. Results indicate that adult monkeys use spatiotemporal information, but not contact-mechanical information, to locate hidden objects. This dissociation between contact-mechanical and spatiotemporal knowledge is discussed in light of developmental theories of core knowledge and the literature on object-based attention in human adults.     

Early manifestations of personality and adult emotional functioning

Developmental antecedents to adult emotional functioning were investigated in an epidemiologic study using theories of personality and emotion. The authors tested whether different types of adult emotional distress can be linked to childhood personality attributes. Using data from 3,138 children at age 7, measures of 4 childhood personality attributes were developed and validated: Behavioral Inhibition, Distress Proneness, Attention, and Inappropriate Interpersonal Self-Regulation. Sound psychometric properties of these scales are demonstrated by considering the measures across multiple samples and in comparison with established child behavior measures. Emotional distress measures were obtained for 694 of these individuals at age 35. Of the personality attributes, 3 of 4 (except behavioral inhibition) predicted general levels of distress as well as specific aspects of adult emotional functioning.     

Memory effects in syntactic ERP tasks

The study presented here investigated the role of memory in normal sentence processing by looking at ERP effects to normal sentences and sentences containing grammatical violations. Sentences where the critical word was in the middle of the sentence were compared to sentences where the critical word always occurred in sentence-final position. Grammaticality judgments were required at the end of the sentence. While the violations in both conditions result in the expected increase in the P600 component (reflecting the fact that the syntactic violation is being processed), the sentences with the sentence-medial critical word also result in a late frontal negativity effect. It is hypothesized that this effect is due to greater memory requirements that are needed to keep the violation in mind until a response can be made at the end of the sentence. The maintenance of the decision that a sentence is ungrammatical must be kept in memory longer for sentence-medial violations as opposed to when the violation occurs at the end of the sentence (immediately preceding the moment at which the judgment can be made).     

Reactions to counterstereotypic behavior: the role of backlash in cultural stereotype maintenance

Social and economic sanctions for counterstereotypical behavior have been termed the backlash effect. The authors present a model of the role of backlash in cultural stereotype maintenance from the standpoint of both perceivers and actors. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants lost a competition to either atypical or typical men or women and subsequently showed greater tendency to sabotage deviants. Moreover, undermining deviants was associated with increased self-esteem, suggesting that backlash rewards perceivers psychologically. Experiment 3 showed that gender deviants who feared backlash resorted to strategies designed to avoid it (e.g., hiding, deception, and gender conformity). Further, perceivers who sabotaged deviants (Experiment 2) or deviants who hid their atypicality (Experiment 3) estimated greater stereotyping on the part of future perceivers, in support of the model's presumed role for backlash in stereotype maintenance. The implications of the findings for cultural stereotypes are discussed.