Logics of Synonymy

Journal of Philosophical Logic - We investigate synonymy in the strong sense of content identity (and not just meaning similarity). This notion is central in the philosophy of language and in...     

Tummy time without the tears: The impact of parent positioning and play

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that infants spend supervised time in the prone (tummy) position to foster motor development and prevent cranial deformities. However, infants may not tolerate the position, and consequently, caregivers may avoid placing their infants in the prone position. The AAP recommends that caregivers provide toys or interaction during tummy time. We evaluated the individual and combined effects of a play mat and experimenter interaction on negative vocalizations and head elevation during tummy time—positive effects were limited. Next, we evaluated a parent-led intervention wherein mothers interacted with their infants, using a toy, while lying chest-to-chest. This intervention was associated with a reduction in negative vocalizations and an increase in head elevation for the majority of infants. Additionally, mothers rated the effectiveness of the parent-led intervention more favorably than the experimenter-led intervention, suggesting the effects of the parent-led intervention were also socially valid.     

Peek-a-boo, I See You: Watching Japanese Hard-core Animation

This essay proposes a phenomenological approach to the viewing of Japanese hard-core animation (widely known in the West as “hentai”), a type of erotica frequently characterized by detailed, unusual and fantastic depictions of sexual activity habitually intended for sexual arousal. Pertinent instances of Japanese traditions of erotica and visual representation, as well as Japanese animation and its industry are briefly reviewed. The main theoretical focus is on the experience of viewing such animated material and is mostly informed by Western notions of pornography and film viewing, particularly Vivian Sobchack’s work on the phenomenology of film.

Learning reward expectations in honeybees

The aim of this study was to test whether honeybees develop reward expectations. In our experiment, bees first learned to associate colors with a sugar reward in a setting closely resembling a natural foraging situation. We then evaluated whether and how the sequence of the animals’ experiences with different reward magnitudes changed their later behavior in the absence of reinforcement and within an otherwise similar context. We found that the bees that had experienced increasing reward magnitudes during training assigned more time to flower inspection 24 and 48 h after training. Our design and behavioral measurements allowed us to uncouple the signal learning and the nutritional aspects of foraging from the effects of subjective reward values. We thus found that the animals behaved differently neither because they had more strongly associated the related predicting signals nor because they were fed more or faster. Our results document for the first time that honeybees develop long-term expectations of reward; these expectations can guide their foraging behavior after a relatively long pause and in the absence of reinforcement, and further experiments will aim toward an elucidation of the neural mechanisms involved in this form of learning.     

Image Theory, Social Identity, and Social Dominance: Structural Characteristics and Individual Motives Underlying International Images

The present study provides an empirical test of international relations image theory and extends the theory by emphasizing that individuals' social identity and social dominance motives contribute to such images. One hundred forty-five Lebanese participants completed a survey that assessed their perceptions of U.S.-Lebanese relations, the images they have of the United States, their social identities, and their social dominance orientations. Participants were more likely to hold the barbarian image of the United States than the enemy, imperialist, or ally images. Participants also tended to perceive the United States as having relatively superior power, inferior cultural status, and goals that are incompatible with those of Lebanon. Consistent with image theory predictions, this constellation of structural perceptions was associated with stronger endorsement of the barbarian image. Furthermore, participants were more likely to endorse the barbarian image of the United States the more they identified with Arabs and Palestinians, the less they identified with Christians and the Western world, and the lower their social dominance orientation. Results highlight the importance of considering both structural characteristics and individual motives underlying international images and demonstrate the need for scholars to move beyond the enemy image of nations when describing international relations.     

Promoting higher‐order learning benefits by building lower‐order mnemonic connections

Two experiments were conducted in an effort to combine a mnemonic strategy for remembering individual items with a mnemonic procedure for remembering, and reasoning about, inter‐item relationships. In Experiment 1, students using the combined mnemonic approach were able to identify more individual items (fish names from their pictures) and were subsequently able to remember more components of six studied hierarchies (order, family, and species names of the fish) than did students in an ‘own best method’ control condition. Additionally, and importantly, mnemonic students outperformed control students on an analogy task requiring inferences about superordinate, subordinate, and coordinate relationships. In Experiment 2, the initial number of to‐be‐learned fish was reduced so that the performance of both mnemonic and control students was comparable with respect to fish identification. Despite such item‐level comparability, an advantage for mnemonically instructed students was observed on both immediate and two‐day‐delayed hierarchy tests. We suggest that by cementing lower‐order connections, mnemonic strategies facilitate students' learning of higher‐order information. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The evidential status of philosophical intuition

Philosophers have traditionally held that claims about necessities and possibilities are to be evaluated by consulting our philosophical intuitions; that is, those peculiarly compelling deliverances about possibilities that arise from a serious and reflective attempt to conceive of counterexamples to these claims. But many contemporary philosophers, particularly naturalists, argue that intuitions of this sort are unreliable, citing examples of once-intuitive, but now abandoned, philosophical theses, as well as recent psychological studies that seem to establish the general fallibility of intuition. In the first two sections of this paper, I evaluate these arguments, and also the counter-arguments of contemporary defenders of tradition. In the next two sections, I sketch an alternative account of the role of philosophical intuitions that incorporates elements of traditionalism and naturalism - and defend it against other such views. In the final section, however, I discuss intuitions about conscious experience, and acknowledge that my view may not extend comfortably to this case. This may seem unfortunate, since so much contemporary discussion of the epistemology of modality seems motivated by worries about the mind-body problem, and informed by the position one wishes to endorse. But, as I argue, if conscious experience is indeed an exception to the view I suggest in this paper, it is an exception that proves - and can illuminate - the rule.     

The influence of episodic memory decline on value-based choice

Recent studies suggest the involvement of episodic memory in value-based decisions as a source of information about subjective values of choice options. We therefore tested the link between age-related memory decline and inconsistencies in value-based decisions in 30 cognitively healthy older adults. Within the pre-registered experiment, the inconsistencies were measured in two ways: i) the consistency between stated preferences and revealed choices; ii) the amount of intransitivities in choice triplets, revealed in a forced paired choice task including all possible pairings of 20 food products. Although no significant association of memory functions to number of intransitive triplets was observed, participants with lower memory scores were more likely to choose the item for which they stated a lower preference. The results suggest a higher noise in the underlying preference signal in participants with lower memory. We discuss the results in the context of the unique needs of elderly consumers.