Newman and Quasi-Fideism: A Reply to Duncan Pritchard

Abstract: In recent years, Duncan Pritchard has developed a position in religious epistemology called quasi-fideism that he claims traces back to John Henry Newman's treatment of the rationality of religious belief. In this paper, we give three reasons to think that Pritchard's reading of Newman as a quasi-fideist is mistaken. First, Newman's parity argument does not claim that religious and non-religious beliefs are on a par because both are groundless; instead, for Newman, they are on a par because both often stem from implicit rather than explicit reasoning. Second, pace Pritchard, Newman's distinction between simple and complex assent does not map onto the Wittgensteinian distinction between groundless hinge commitments and beliefs that flow from these hinges. For Newman, simple and complex assent differ in terms of the believer's level of awareness of their grounds. Third, and finally, Newman does not reject Locke's evidentialism in toto. Instead, he argues that certitude is not restricted to beliefs stemming from intuition and demonstration but often rightly includes probabilistically supported (or fallibly evidenced) beliefs.     

Priming or executive control? Associative priming of cue encoding increases “switch costs” in the explicit task-cuing procedure

The explicit task-cuing procedure involves presenting a cue that indicates which task to perform on a target. Responses are typically faster when tasks repeat than when they alternate, and this difference is often interpreted as a measure of the time required for executive control processes to change task set. This article suggests that the difference reflects priming of cue encoding when successive cues are identical or associatively related. Subjects responded to task repetitions more quickly when the cue on the current trial was associatively related to the cue on the previous trial (e.g., day --> night) than when the cues were unrelated (e.g., verb --> night). Models applied to the time course function--generated by manipulating the interval between the onsets of the cue and the target--showed that the facilitation was due to cue encoding, a process that does not require online executive control.     

Parallel memory retrieval in dual-task situations: II. Episodic memory

Three experiments asked whether subjects could retrieve information from a 2nd stimulus while they retrieved information from a 1st stimulus. Subjects performed recognition judgments on each of 2 words that followed each other by 0, 250, and 1,000 ms (Experiment 1) or 0 and 300 ms (Experiments 2 and 3). In each experiment, reaction time to both stimuli was faster when the 2 stimuli were both targets (on the study list) or both lures (not on the study list) than when 1 was a target and the other was a lure. Each experiment found priming from the 2nd stimulus to the 1st when both stimuli were targets. Reaction time to the 1st stimulus was faster when the 2 targets came from the same memory structure at study (columns in Experiment 1; pairs in Experiment 2; sentences in Experiment 3) than when they came from different structures. This priming is inconsistent with discrete serial retrieval and consistent with parallel retrieval.     

Restraint and Cancellation: Multiple Inhibition Deficits in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

We used variations of the stop signal task to study two components of motor response inhibition—the ability to withhold a strong response tendency (restraint) and the ability to cancel an ongoing action (cancellation)—in children with a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and in non-ADHD controls of similar age (ages 7–14 years). The goal was to determine if restraint and cancellation were related and if both were deficient in ADHD. The stop signal task involved a choice reaction time task (go task) which required a rapid response. The demand for inhibitory control was invoked through the presentation of a stop signal on a subset of go trials which required that the ongoing response be suspended. The stop signal was presented either concurrently with the go signal (restraint version) or after a variable delay (cancellation version). In Study 1, we compared ADHD and control children on the cancellation version of the stop task; in Study 2, we compared ADHD and controls on the restraint version. In Study 3, a subset of ADHD and control participants completed both tasks so that we could examine convergence of these dimensions of inhibition. Compared to control participants, ADHD participants showed a deficit both in the ability to cancel and to restrain a speeded motor response. Performance on the restraint version was significantly correlated with performance on the cancellation version in controls, but not in ADHD participants. We conclude that ADHD is associated with deficits in both restraint and cancellation subcomponents of inhibition.     

Inhibitory control in mind and brain: an interactive race model of countermanding saccades

The stop-signal task has been used to study normal cognitive control and clinical dysfunction. Its utility is derived from a race model that accounts for performance and provides an estimate of the time it takes to stop a movement. This model posits a race between go and stop processes with stochastically independent finish times. However, neurophysiological studies demonstrate that the neural correlates of the go and stop processes produce movements through a network of interacting neurons. The juxtaposition of the computational model with the neural data exposes a paradox-how can a network of interacting units produce behavior that appears to be the outcome of an independent race? The authors report how a simple, competitive network can solve this paradox and provide an account of what is measured by stop-signal reaction time.     

Task switching versus cue switching: using transition cuing to disentangle sequential effects in task-switching performance

Recent methodological advances have allowed researchers to address confounds in the measurement of task-switch costs in task-switching performance by dissociating cue switching from task switching. For example, in the transition-cuing procedure, which involves presenting cues for task transitions rather than for tasks, cue transitions (cue switches and cue repetitions) and task transitions (task switches and task repetitions) can be examined in a complete factorial design. Transition cuing removes the confound between cue transitions and first-order task transitions, but it introduces a confound between cue transitions and longer task sequences. In the present study, transition cuing was studied with two cues per transition (REPEAT and AGAIN for task repetitions; SWITCH and CHANGE for task switches), enabling a partial deconfounding of cue transitions and task sequences. Two experiments revealed robust sequential effects, with higher order task transitions affecting performance when cue transitions were held constant and with cue transitions affecting performance when task sequences were held constant. Methodological and theoretical implications of these findings for research on task switching are discussed.     

Beauty is in the ease of the beholding: A neurophysiological test of the averageness theory of facial attractiveness

Hundreds of studies have shown that people prefer attractive over unattractive faces. But what is an attractive face, and why is it preferred? Averageness theory claims that faces are perceived as being attractive when their facial configuration approximates the mathematical average facial configuration of the population. Conversely, faces that deviate from this average configuration are perceived as being unattractive. The theory predicts that both attractive and mathematically averaged faces should be processed more fluently than unattractive faces, whereas the averaged faces should be processed marginally more fluently than the attractive faces. We compared neurocognitive and behavioral responses to attractive, unattractive, and averaged human faces to test these predictions. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) and reaction times (RTs) from 48 adults while they discriminated between human and chimpanzee faces. The participants categorized averaged and high-attractive faces as being “human” faster than low-attractive faces. The posterior N170 (150–225 ms) face-evoked ERP component was smaller in response to high-attractive and averaged faces than to low-attractive faces. Single-trial electroencephalographic analysis indicated that this reduced ERP response arose from the engagement of fewer neural resources, and not from a change in the temporal consistency of how those resources were engaged. These findings provide novel evidence that faces are perceived as being attractive when they approximate a facial configuration close to the population average, and they suggest that processing fluency underlies preferences for attractive faces.     

Precipitating Circumstances of Suicide among Active Duty U.S. Army Personnel Versus U.S. Civilians, 2005–2010

To help understand suicide among soldiers, we compared suicide events between active duty U.S. Army versus civilian decedents to identify differences and inform military prevention efforts. We linked 141 Army suicide records from 2005 to 2010 to National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) data. We described the decedents’ military background and compared their precipitators of death captured in NVDRS to those of demographically matched civilian suicide decedents. Both groups commonly had mental health and intimate partner precipitating circumstances, but soldier decedents less commonly disclosed suicide intent.     

Revitalizing Narcissistic Perfectionism: Evidence of the Reliability and the Validity of an Emerging Construct

Theorists have long speculated about narcissistic perfectionism—an outwardly directed need for perfection marked by grandiosity, entitlement, and lofty expectations for others. This study provides evidence of reliability and predictive validity for an emerging model of narcissistic perfectionism using two waves of measurement and multiple data sources (self-report and informant-report) in a sample of 155 undergraduate students. As hypothesized, confirmatory factor analysis showed manifest indicators of narcissistic perfectionism cohered together as a constellation of traits while showing reliability and factorial validity across time and source. Hierarchical multiple regression indicated narcissistic perfectionism uniquely and incrementally predicted anger beyond competing measures of other-oriented perfectionism and narcissism. Informant-reports of narcissistic perfectionism uniquely predicted anger beyond self-reports. These results offer promising empirical support for the often discussed, but seldom tested, concept of narcissistic perfectionism.