Some Notes on the Census of Religious Bodies, 1926

In line with previous results that challenge the traditional primacy of warmth over competence in outgroup perception, we propose to bridge elements from stereotype content model and social identity theory: Perceivers will use the competence and warmth dimensions differentially when interpreting higher or lower status outgroup members' behavior. We test the hypothesis that the dimension that is less favorable for the outgroup and more favorable for the ingroup will be used. In particular, we investigate whether the warmth dimension would better predict the interpretation of higher status outgroup members' behavior than the competence dimension, whereas the competence dimension would better predict the interpretation of lower status outgroup members' behavior than the warmth dimension. Two studies separately test these effects. Results suggest the existence of a motivated bias in interpreting outgroup members' behavior, especially when there is ingroup identification.     

The Tower of London Test: different scoring criteria for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment

The Tower of London (TOL) is used for evaluating planning skills, which is a component of the executive functions. Different versions and scoring criteria were developed for this task, and some of them present with different psychometrical properties. This study aimed to evaluate two specific scoring methods of the TOL in diagnosing Mild Cognitive Impairment and probable Alzheimer's disease. The TOL total scores from 60 patients of each diagnosis were compared with the performance of 60 healthy-aged controls using receiver operating characteristics analysis and multinomial logistic regression. Krikorian method better diagnosed Alzheimer's disease, while Portellas's was better at discriminating healthy controls from Mild Cognitive Impairment, but were not efficient at comparing this last group with Alzheimer's patients. Regression analysis indicates that in addition to screening tests, TOL improves the classification of the three groups. The results suggest the two scoring methods used for this task may be useful for different diagnostic purposes.     

Eyes as windows to the soul: Gazing behavior is related to personality

Gazing is a fundamental human behavior with important cognitive, affective, motivational, and social underpinnings that is likely to have produced individual differences linking it to major personality traits. If traits play a substantial role in gazing, they should predict eye movement parameters above and beyond stimuli without meaningful and topical information. The current eye-tracking study (N = 242) demonstrated with linear mixed models that personality (Big Five, Behavioral Inhibition System/Behavioral Activation System) predicts number of fixations, mean fixation duration, and dwelling time in two different abstract animations. Specifically, neuroticism, extraversion, openness, and the Behavioral Activation System were related to eye movement parameters. Prospective research in studying links between dispositions and gazing is discussed.     

Logic for physical space

Since the early days of physics, space has called for means to represent, experiment, and reason about it. Apart from physicists, the concept of space has intrigued also philosophers, mathematicians and, more recently, computer scientists. This longstanding interest has left us with a plethora of mathematical tools developed to represent and work with space. Here we take a special look at this evolution by considering the perspective of Logic. From the initial axiomatic efforts of Euclid, we revisit the major milestones in the logical representation of space and investigate current trends. In doing so, we do not only consider classical logic, but we indulge ourselves with modal logics. These present themselves naturally by providing simple axiomatizations of different geometries, topologies, space-time causality, and vector spaces.     

The twofold role of diagrams in Euclid’s plane geometry

Proposition I.1 is, by far, the most popular example used to justify the thesis that many of Euclid??s geometric arguments are diagram-based. Many scholars have recently articulated this thesis in different ways and argued for it. My purpose is to reformulate it in a quite general way, by describing what I take to be the twofold role that diagrams play in Euclid??s plane geometry (EPG). Euclid??s arguments are object-dependent. They are about geometric objects. Hence, they cannot be diagram-based unless diagrams are supposed to have an appropriate relation with these objects. I take this relation to be a quite peculiar sort of representation. Its peculiarity depends on the two following claims that I shall argue for: (i) The identity conditions of EPG objects are provided by the identity conditions of the diagrams that represent them; (ii) EPG objects inherit some properties and relations from these diagrams.     

Neonatal hippocampal lesion alters the functional maturation of the prefrontal cortex and the early cognitive development in pre-juvenile rats

Mnemonic and executive performance is encoded into activity patterns of complex neuronal networks. Lesion studies revealed that adult recognition memory critically depends on the activation of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and hippocampus (HP). However, its developmental profile remains poorly elucidated. We previously showed the rat PFC and HP are functionally coupled in theta- and gamma-band oscillations during neonatal [postnatal day (P) 5-8] and pre-juvenile (P10-15) stages of development. Here, we assess the behavioral readout of this early prefrontal-hippocampal activation by investigating the ontogeny and the mechanisms of novelty detection and recognition memory in relationship to the functional integrity of the PFC and HP. Excitotoxic lesion of the HP at birth led to abnormal oscillatory entrainment of the PFC throughout neonatal and pre-juvenile development. Although the onset of novelty detection correlated rather with the maturation of sensory perception and motor skills than with hippocampal integrity, the pre-juvenile performance in item, spatial and temporal order recognition memory significantly decreased after HP lesion at birth. This poorer performance does result neither from abnormal developmental milestones and locomotion nor from increased anxiety. Thus, novelty recognition in rat emerges during the second postnatal week and requires functional integrity of communication within neuronal networks including the PFC and HP.     

Omission of expected reward agitates Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar)

The evolutionary background for cognition and awareness is currently under ardent scrutiny. Poikilothermic vertebrates such as teleost fishes are capable of classical conditioning and have long-term memories, but it remains unknown to what degree such capabilities are associated with affective states. Here, we investigate whether the concept of frustration may apply to Atlantic salmon. In mammals, this paradigm comprises the omission of an expected reward (OER), which elicits behavioural and physiological coping responses (e.g. aggression and stress reactions). Six groups with 200 fish in each were conditioned to associate a flashing light (CS) with feeding. Conditioning over 22?days led to a change from aversion to attraction to the CS. Subsequently, 3 groups served as control, and 3 groups were subjected to an OER paradigm for 9?days, in which the expected food reward was delayed for 30?min during two out of three daily meals. Compared to controls, OER groups displayed higher levels of aggression and more heterogeneous growth rates, indicating a more pronounced social hierarchy. Cortisol levels did, however, not differ between treatments and both groups responded similarly to acute stress. These results indicate that teleost fishes, like mammals, respond aggressively to OER. The capacity to respond behaviourally to frustrating conditions thus likely reflects an adaptive response to environmental unpredictability, which has been conserved throughout vertebrate evolution.     

Spatial cognition and crime: the study of mental models of spatial relations in crime analysis

Several studies employed different algorithms in order to investigate criminal's spatial behaviour and to identify mental models and cognitive strategies related to it. So far, a number of geographic profiling (GP) software have been implemented to analyse mobility and its relation to the way criminals are using spatial environment when committing a crime. Since crimes are usually perpetrated in the offender's high-awareness areas, those cognitive maps can be employed to create a map of the criminal's operating area to help investigators to circumscribe search areas. The aim of the present study was to verify accuracy of simple statistical analysis in predicting spatial mobility of a group of 30 non-criminal subjects. Results showed that statistics such as Mean Centre and Standard Distance were accurate in elaborating a GP for each subject according to the mobility area provided. Future analysis will be implemented using mobility information of criminal subjects and location-based software to verify whether there is a cognitive spatial strategy employed by them when planning and committing a crime.     

Space coding for sensorimotor transformations can emerge through unsupervised learning

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is fundamental for sensorimotor transformations because it combines multiple sensory inputs and posture signals into different spatial reference frames that drive motor programming. Here, we present a computational model mimicking the sensorimotor transformations occurring in the PPC. A recurrent neural network with one layer of hidden neurons (restricted Boltzmann machine) learned a stochastic generative model of the sensory data without supervision. After the unsupervised learning phase, the activity of the hidden neurons was used to compute a motor program (a population code on a bidimensional map) through a simple linear projection and delta rule learning. The average motor error, calculated as the difference between the expected and the computed output, was less than 3°. Importantly, analyses of the hidden neurons revealed gain-modulated visual receptive fields, thereby showing that space coding for sensorimotor transformations similar to that observed in the PPC can emerge through unsupervised learning. These results suggest that gain modulation is an efficient coding strategy to integrate visual and postural information toward the generation of motor commands.