Book reviews

Buckley, Key W. (1989). Mechanical man: John Broadeus Watson and the beginnings of Behaviorism. New York: Guilford Press. Pp. 293. ISBN 0-89862-744-3. $32.45/£18.00.

Colgan, P. (1989), Animal Motivation. New York and London: Chapman and Hall. Pp. 168. ISBN 0412-31850. £25.00 (hardback). ISBN 0412-31860, £10.95 (paperback).

Antinucci, F (Ed.) (1989). Cognitive structure and development in nonhuman prinates. Hillsdale, Nj: Laweence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Pp. 266. ISBN 0-8058-0544. £16.50 (Hardback).

Parker, S.T. & Gibson, K.R. (Eds.) (1990). “Language” and intelligence in monkeys and apes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 590. ISBN 0-521-38028-6. £40.00 (hardback).

Ley, Ronald (1990). A whisper of espionnage: Wolfgang Koehler and the apes of Tenerife. Garden City Park, NY: Avery Publoshing Corporation. Pp.264. ISBN 0-89529-432-x. $19.95.     

Philosophy of Education in a Poor Historical Moment: A Personal Account

Under the post-metaphysical sky “old” humanistic-oriented education is possible solely at the cost of its transformation into its negative, into a power that is determined to diminish human potentials for self-exaltation. Nothing less than total metamorphosis is needed to rescue the core of humanistic genesis: the quest for edifying Life and resistance to the call for “home-returning” into the total harmony that is promised to us within nothingness.     

Action-based and vision-based selection of input: Two sources of control

In the first part of this paper we review evidence suggesting that there exists a mechanism that selects input on the basis of its similarity to the required action. This response-based input selection differs from the more established space- and object-based input selection in that it is not constrained by the structure of the input. Our evidence suggests that the two-choice Stroop effect is caused by this response-based selection mechanism. By contrast, it is known that the flanker effect is determined by the space- and object- based selection mechanisms. We explore whether the conflict resolution of the Stroop and flanker tasks is different as well by embedding these two tasks in a PRP (Psychological Refractory Period) paradigm. We show that the Stroop and the PRP effects are additive whereas the flanker and the PRP effects are underadditive, suggesting that the processes in charge of the conflict resolution in the Stroop and the flanker tasks are indeed different. We discuss possible reasons for this difference, and discuss possible ways in which the response-based mechanism can be implemented in information processing models.