Seeing behind the surface: communicative demonstration boosts category disambiguation in 12‐month‐olds

In their first years, infants acquire an incredible amount of information regarding the objects present in their environment. While often it is not clear what specific information should be prioritized in encoding from the many characteristics of an object, different types of object representations facilitate different types of generalizations. We tested the hypotheses that 1‐year‐old infants distinctively represent familiar objects as exemplars of their kind, and that ostensive communication plays a role in determining kind membership for ambiguous objects. In the training phase of our experiment, infants were exposed to movies displaying an agent sorting objects from two categories (cups and plates) into two locations (left or right). Afterwards, different groups of infants saw either an ostensive or a non‐ostensive demonstration performed by the agent, revealing that a new object that looked like a plate can be transformed into a cup. A third group of infants experienced no demonstration regarding the new object. During test, infants were presented with the ambiguous object in the plate format, and we measured generalization by coding anticipatory looks to the plate or the cup side. While infants looked equally often towards the two sides when the demonstration was non‐ostensive, and more often to the plate side when there was no demonstration, they performed more anticipatory eye movements to the cup side when the demonstration was ostensive. Thus, ostensive demonstration likely highlighted the hidden dispositional properties of the target object as kind‐relevant, guiding infants’ categorization of the foldable cup as a cup, despite it looking like a plate. These results suggest that infants likely encode familiar objects as exemplars of their kind and that ostensive communication can play a crucial role in disambiguating what kind an object belongs to, even when this requires disregarding salient surface features.     

Social Capital and Individual Happiness in Europe

This paper explores the relationship between social capital and happiness both in Europe as a whole, as well as in its four main geographical macro-regions—North, South, East and West—separately. We test the hypothesis of whether social capital, in its three-fold definition established by Coleman (Am J Sociol 94:S95–S120 1988)—trust, social interaction, and norms and sanctions—influences individual happiness across European countries and regions. The concept of social capital is further enriched by incorporating Putnam (Making democracy work—civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993) and Olson (The rise and decline of nations—economic growth, stagflation, and social rigidities. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1982) type variables on associational activity. Using ordinal logistic regression analysis on data for 48,583 individuals from 25 European countries, we reach three main findings. First, social capital matters for happiness across the three dimensions considered. Second, the main drivers of the effects of social capital on happiness appear to be informal social interaction and general social, as well as institutional trust. And third, there are significant differences in how social capital interacts with happiness across different areas of Europe, with the connection being at is weakest in the Nordic countries.     

Emotional adjustment in victims and perpetrators of cyberbullying and traditional bullying

Given the rise in cyberbullying among secondary education students and the importance of certain psychological adjustment variables for the comprehension of this type of violent behavior, both in bullies and in victims, the purpose of the present study was to analyse the emotional adjustment of those involved in cyber- and traditional bullying. The adjustment variables studied were self-concept, perceived stress, loneliness, depressive symptomatology, social anxiety, life satisfaction, and emotional intelligence. Using a sample of 1318 adolescents (47% boys), aged between 11 and 17 years, four groups were established to compare victims and cybervictims (uninvolved students, traditional victims, cybervictims, and traditional–cybervictims). The analysis of variance showed that students who performed the same role (bully or victim) in both contexts (at school and online). In particular, those who suffered traditional or cyberbullying or both conjointly presented lower scores in physical and social self-concept, life satisfaction, emotional clarity, and emotion regulation, as well as higher scores in perceived stress, loneliness, depression, and social anxiety. In bullies—traditional, cyberbullying or both simultaneously—higher scores were observed in perceived stress, loneliness, depressive symptomatology, fear of negative assessment, avoidance, and general social anxiety, and lower scores in the dimensions of academic and family self-concept, life satisfaction, emotional clarity, and emotion regulation. In general, the findings indicate that students who were involved in bullying situations, both victims and bullies, presented more damaged emotional profiles than those who are uninvolved, especially students who performed the same role (bully or victim) in both contexts (at school and online).

     

NMDA and muscarinic receptors of the nucleus accumbens have differential effects on taste memory formation

Animals recognize a taste cue as aversive when it has been associated with post-ingestive malaise; this associative learning is known as conditioned taste aversion (CTA). When an animal consumes a new taste and no negative consequences follow, it becomes recognized as a safe signal, leading to an increase in its consumption in subsequent presentations (attenuation of neophobia, AN). It has been shown that the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) has an important role in taste learning. To elucidate the involvement of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) and muscarinic receptors in the NAcc during safe and aversive taste memory formation, we administrated bilateral infusions of DL-2-amino-5-phosphonopentanoic acid (APV) or scopolamine in the NAcc shell or core respectively. Our results showed that pre-training injections of APV in the NAcc core and shell disrupted aversive but not safe taste memory formation, whereas pre-training injections of scopolamine in the NAcc shell, but not core, disrupted both CTA and AN. These results suggest that muscarinic receptors seem to be necessary for processing taste stimuli for either safe or aversive taste memory, whereas NMDA receptors are only involved in the aversive taste memory trace formation.     

Effects of prime task on affective priming by facial expressions of emotion

Priming of affective word evaluation by pictures of faces showing positive and negative emotional expressions was investigated in two experiments that used a double task procedure where participants were asked to respond to the prime or to the target on different trials. The experiments varied between-subjects the prime task assignment and the prime-target interval (SOA, stimulus onset asynchrony). Significant congruency effects (that is, faster word evaluation when prime and target had the same valence than when they were of opposite valence) were observed in both experiments. When the prime task oriented the subjects to an affectively irrelevant property of the faces (their gender), priming was observed at SOA 300 ms but not at SOA 1000 ms (Experiment 1). However, when the prime task assignment explicitly oriented the subjects to the valence of the face, priming was observed at both SOA durations (Experiment 2). These results show, first, that affective priming by pictures of facial emotion can be obtained even when the subject has an explicit goal to process a non-affective property of the prime. Second, sensitivity of the priming effect to SOA duration seems to depend on whether it is mediated by intentional or unintentional activation of the valence of the face prime.     

Virtuous Arguers: Responsible and Reliable

Virtuous arguers are expected to manifest virtues such as intellectual humility and open-mindedness, but from such traits the quality of arguments does not immediately follow. However, it also seems implausible that a virtuous arguer can systematically put forward bad arguments. How could virtue argumentation theory combine both insights? The solution, I argue, lies in an analogy with virtue epistemology: considering both responsibilist and reliabilist virtues gives us a fuller picture of the virtuous arguer.     

Scientific Progress,Understanding, and Knowledge: Reply to Park

Dellsén (2016) has recently argued for an understanding-based account of scientific progress, the noetic account, according to which science (or a particular scientific discipline) makes cognitive progress precisely when it increases our understanding of some aspect of the world. I contrast this account with Bird’s (2007, 2015); epistemic account, according to which such progress is made precisely when our knowledge of the world is increased or accumulated. In a recent paper, Park (2017) criticizes various aspects of my account and his arguments in favor of the noetic account as against Bird’s epistemic account. This paper responds to Park’s objections. An important upshot of the paper is that we should distinguish between episodes that constitute and promote scientific progress, and evaluate account of scientific progress in terms of how they classify different episodes with respect to these categories.     

A longitudinal study of psychosocial distress in breast cancer: prevalence and risk factors

This longitudinal study was conducted among 102 women with non-metastasic breast cancer to identify the time evolution and prevalence of distress at specific times through diagnosis and treatment of disease: preliminary diagnosis, surgery, definitive diagnosis and chemotherapy. Additionally, the study aimed to examine the role of demographic, medical and psychosocial factors on distress. The results indicated that prevalence of distress was higher at initial diagnosis (25%) than the following time points (approximately 17%). The differences inter-individuals in the levels of distress were observed over the four assessments. No relation between distress and demographic and medical factors was found. However, psychosocial aspects were significant risk factors. Patterns of emotional suppression and specific coping responses like helplessness/hopelessness, anxious preoccupation, cognitive avoidance and fatalism were positively related to distress, whereas fighting spirit and perceived social support showed a protective role. Moreover, helplessness/hopelessness and anxious preoccupation jointly predicted 75% of cases and 98% non-cases of distress. Finally, a mediational model between emotional suppression and distress through helplessness/hopelessness was tested. Results support the necessity of routine distress screening all through the illness. Implications of data for psychosocial interventions with breast cancer patients are highlighted.