Autopoiesis,Adaptivity, Teleology,Agency

A proposal for the biological grounding of intrinsic teleology and sense-making through the theory of autopoiesis is critically evaluated. Autopoiesis provides a systemic language for speaking about intrinsic teleology but its original formulation needs to be elaborated further in order to explain sense-making. This is done by introducing adaptivity, a many-layered property that allows organisms to regulate themselves with respect to their conditions of viability. Adaptivity leads to more articulated concepts of behaviour, agency, sense-construction, health, and temporality than those given so far by autopoiesis and enaction. These and other implications for understanding the organismic generation of values are explored.     

The old and thee, uh, new: disfluency and reference resolution

Most research on the rapid mental processes of on-line language processing has been limited to the study of idealized, fluent utterances. Yet speakers are often disfluent, for example, saying "thee, uh, candle" instead of "the candle." By monitoring listeners' eye movements to objects in a display, we demonstrated that the fluency of an article ("thee uh" vs. "the") affects how listeners interpret the following noun. With a fluent article, listeners were biased toward an object that had been mentioned previously, but with a disfluent article, they were biased toward an object that had not been mentioned. These biases were apparent as early as lexical information became available, showing that disfluency affects the basic processes of decoding linguistic input.     

Extinction-induced immobility in the water maze and its neurochemical concomitants in aged and adult rats: a possible model for depression?

Extinction of escape behavior in the water maze due to the removal of the platform, was hypothesized to induce a negative state, including the development of immobility, which is held to reflect a state of "despair" when measured in the forced swimming test. 27 aged and 8 adult animals (26 and 3 months old Wistar rats, respectively) were tested in the water maze during nine days with a platform hidden, followed by 7 days of extinction trials with the platform absent. As expected, both age groups developed immobility over the extinction trials, with the aged showing more than the adults. To examine whether the age difference in immobility was related to performance differences during acquisition, the aged were subdivided into superior, intermediate and inferior learners (n = 9 per group) on the basis of overall times to platform during acquisition, and compared with each other and the adults. Results showed that the aged inferior learners displayed the highest levels of immobility among the aged. Immobility scores were then correlated with post-mortem neurotransmitter contents in the hippocampus and ventral striatum. In the ventral striatum, levels of immobility were correlated with levels of acetylcholine, dopamine and the metabolite dihydroxyphenylacetic acid in the aged, and with norepinephrine in the adults. The data support the hypothesis that multiple extinction trials in the water maze result in immobility that may indicate "behavioral despair," and that striatal neurotransmitter systems correlate with the degree of its expression. The concept of extinction-induced despair is held to provide the promise of a conceptual and empirical model of human depression that is the consequence of loss of reinforcers.     

Is the unilateral lesion of the left substantia nigra pars compacta sufficient to induce working memory impairment in rats?

Adult male Wistar rats with a substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) lesion induced by intranigral administration of 1 micromol 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) were used as a model of early phase Parkinson's disease (PD). This lesion caused a partial depletion of striatal dopamine (DA). The animals were submitted to a spatial working memory version of the water maze task in which they had to find a hidden (submersed) platform using online-maintained information that the platform remains in the same place during four consecutive trials, but that it is moved to another place every training day. Left, but not right SNc-lesioned rats were impaired in finding the platform in the second trial. This result suggests that the left SNc plays a key role in spatial working memory. Control experiments ruled out the possibility that motor impairment, sensory neglect, and/or impairment in the mental representation of the contralateral spatial environment had affected performance of the SNc-lesioned rats.     

Transitive responding in hooded crows requires linearly ordered stimuli

Eight crows were taught to discriminate overlapping pairs of visual stimuli (A+ B-, B+ C-, C+ D-, and D+ E-). For 4 birds, the stimuli were colored cards with a circle of the same color on the reverse side whose diameter decreased from A to E (ordered feedback group). These circles were made available for comparison to potentially help the crows order the stimuli along a physical dimension. For the other 4 birds, the circles corresponding to the colored cards had the same diameter (constant feedback group). In later testing, a novel choice pair (BD) was presented. Reinforcement history involving stimuli B and D was controlled so that the reinforcement/nonreinforcement ratios for the latter would be greater than for the former. If, during the BD test, the crows chose between stimuli according to these reinforcement/nonreinforcement ratios, then they should prefer D; if they chose according to the diameter of the feedback stimuli, then they should prefer B. In the ordered feedback group, the crows strongly preferred B over D; in the constant feedback group, the crows' choice did not differ significantly from chance. These results, plus simulations using associative models, suggest that the orderability of the postchoice feedback stimuli is important for crows' transitive responding.     

Religiosity, values, and horizontal and vertical individualism-collectivism: a study of Turkey, the United States, and the Philippines

The authors examined the links between two dimensions that have been useful in understanding cross-cultural differences and similarities, namely, individualism-collectivism (I-C) and value orientations. The authors examined the relations and parallels between the two variables by directly relating them and examining the patterns of relations that both have with a third variable, religiosity. Participants were 475 college students from the Philippines, the United States, and Turkey who responded to measures of horizontal and vertical I-C, value orientations, and religiosity. The authors found partial support for the parallels between I-C and value types, particularly for collectivism and conservative values. Moreover, religiosity was associated positively with conservative values and collectivism, across all three cultures. The authors found individualism to also relate to openness-to-change values, though the patterns were not as consistent as those that they found between collectivism and conservation. Differences and similarities emerged in links of I-C-values to religiosity across the three samples.     

Neuropsychological executive functioning in children at elevated risk for alcoholism: findings in early adolescence

One component of individual risk for alcoholism may involve cognitive vulnerabilities prodromal to alcoholism onset. This prospective study of 198 boys followed between 3 and 14 years of age evaluated neurocognitive functioning across three groups who varied in familial risk for future alcoholism. Measures of intelligence, reward-response, and a battery of neuropsychological executive and cognitive inhibitory measures were used. Executive functioning weaknesses were greater in families with alcoholism but no antisocial comorbidity. IQ and reward-response weaknesses were associated with familial antisocial alcoholism. Executive function effects were clearest for response inhibition, response speed, and symbol-digit modalities. Results suggest that executive deficits are not part of the highest risk, antisocial pathway to alcoholism but that some executive function weaknesses may contribute to a secondary risk pathway.     

Associations in the course of personality disorders and Axis I disorders over time

In this study, the authors examined time-varying associations between schizotypal (STPD), borderline (BPD), avoidant (AVPD), or obsessive-compulsive (OCPD) personality disorders and co-occurring Axis I disorders in 544 adult participants from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study. The authors tested predictions of specific longitudinal associations derived from a model of crosscutting psychobiological dimensions (L. J. Siever & K. L. Davis, 1991) with participants with the relevant Axis I disorders. The authors assessed participants at baseline and at 6-, 12-, and 24-month follow-up evaluations. BPD showed significant longitudinal associations with major depressive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. AVPD was significantly associated with anxiety disorders (specifically social phobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder). Two of the four personality disorders under examination (STPD and OCPD) showed little or no association with Axis I disorders.