Traumatic memories of war veterans: not so special after all

Several authors have argued that traumatic experiences are processed and remembered in a qualitatively different way from neutral events. To investigate this issue, we interviewed 121 Croatian war veterans diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) about amnesia, intrusions (i.e., flashbacks and nightmares), and the sensory qualities of their most horrific war memories. Additionally, they completed a self-report scale measuring dissociative experiences. In contrast to what one would expect on the basis of theories emphasizing the special status of traumatic memories, amnesia, and high frequency intrusions were not particularly typical for our sample of traumatized individuals. Moreover, traumatic memories were not qualitatively different from neutral memories with respect to their stability and sensory qualities. The severity of PTSD symptoms was not significantly correlated with dissociative experiences. Our findings do not support the existence of special memory mechanisms that are unique to experiencing traumatic events.     

Specialization effect and its influence on memory and problem solving in expert chess players

Expert chess players, specialized in different openings, recalled positions and solved problems within and outside their area of specialization. While their general expertise was at a similar level, players performed better with stimuli from their area of specialization. The effect of specialization on both recall and problem solving was strong enough to override general expertise—players remembering positions and solving problems from their area of specialization performed at around the level of players 1 standard deviation (SD) above them in general skill. Their problem-solving strategy also changed depending on whether the problem was within their area of specialization. When it was, they searched more in depth and less in breadth; with problems outside their area of specialization, the reverse. The knowledge that comes from familiarity with a problem area is more important than general purpose strategies in determining how an expert will tackle it. These results demonstrate the link in experts between problem solving and memory of specific experiences and indicate that the search for context-independent general purpose problem-solving strategies to teach to future experts is unlikely to be successful.     

Should reason be fragmented?

Cognitive relativists‐pragmatists (Stich, Churchland) claim that human cognitive strategies, lacking a common goal, are in addition divergent to the point of incommensurability. They appeal to the study of reasoning heuristics for evidence on cognitive diversity and incorrigibility. It is here argued that no such evidence is offered by the research, which, on the contrary (1) presents heuristics as uniform across great variations; (2) offers advice for correcting and improving human reasoning; and (3) very often postulates a uniformity of core logical strategies, built into reasoning competence. Cognitive research thus supports a moderate rationalism rather than relativism‐pragmatism.     

What predicts anti‐Roma prejudice? Qualitative and quantitative analysis of everyday sentiments about the Roma

The present research focused on two primary goals: (a) identifying the content of sentiments about the Roma to which Hungarians are exposed during everyday family conversations, and (b) determining which types of everyday sentiments about the Roma most strongly predict Hungarian respondents’ anti‐Roma prejudice. Content analyzing open‐ended responses from a representative sample of Hungarians (N = 505), we found that more than 76% of the respondents reported being exposed to negative stereotypes about the Roma, 27% to threats posed by Roma, and 16% to overt dehumanization of Roma; additionally more than 20% reported hearing no positive sentiments about the Roma in everyday family conversations. We then examined which negative and positive sentiments most strongly predicted respondents’ anti‐Roma prejudice (using measures of social distance and modern racism). Higher social distance scores were predicted by a lack of positive sentiments, whereas lower social distance scores were most strongly predicted by unambiguously positive sentiments expressed during family conversations. Higher modern racism scores were further predicted by sentiments expressing dehumanization, threat, and violence against Roma. Together, these results attest to the extremity of anti‐Roma sentiments expressed regularly by Hungarians, and suggest how exposure to specific sentiments may foster anti‐Roma hostility. Moreover, these findings provide guidance regarding the specific negative anti‐Roma sentiments that should be combated to enhance the effectiveness of anti‐prejudice interventions.     

Gödel’s Natural Deduction

This is a companion to a paper by the authors entitled “Gödel on deduction”, which examined the links between some philosophical views ascribed to Gödel and general proof theory. When writing that other paper, the authors were not acquainted with a system of natural deduction that Gödel presented with the help of Gentzen’s sequents, which amounts to Ja?kowski’s natural deduction system of 1934, and which may be found in Gödel’s unpublished notes for the elementary logic course he gave in 1939 at the University of Notre Dame. Here one finds a presentation of this system of Gödel accompanied by a brief reexamination in the light of the notes of some points concerning his interest in sequents made in the preceding paper. This is preceded by a brief summary of Gödel’s Notre Dame course, and is followed by comments concerning Gödel’s natural deduction system.