Inducing and reducing false memories: a Swedish version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm

Participants tend to falsely remember a nonpresented critical word after having studied a list of the word's primary associates. We present here a Swedish version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm, which provides a tractable method of experimentally inducing and investigating such illusory memories. In Experiment 1 it was demonstrated that the constructed stimulus material induced highly reliable false-recall and false-recognition effects, and, moreover, that veridical and false memories were associated with a similar phenomenological experience of remembering. The results from Experiment 2 indicated that the susceptibility to false recognition can be substantially reduced when participants are explicitly required to monitor the sources of their memories. These findings are consistent with predictions derived from the source-monitoring framework.     

Are covert verbal responses mediating false implicit memory?

In the DRM paradigm, illusory memories of a nonpresented word can be induced by the presentation of strong associates to this word. In two experiments, we explored previous findings of false implicit memory of the nonpresented words (McDermott, 1997; McKone & Murphy, 2000). Experiment 1 extended the finding of false priming to the anagram task. Furthermore, participants attributed this "false" influence on performance to the difficulty of the anagrams and judged them as easier to solve for other students. In Experiment 2, articulatory suppression during the study of the associates resulted in nonsignificant levels of false priming, whereas the normal priming effect was in the same range as that observed in Experiment 1. The study replicates and extends findings of false implicit memory to the anagram task and suggests that future studies should examine the role of covert verbal responses in producing false implicit memory.     

THE UNSUITABILITY OF EMERGENCE THEORY FOR PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY: A RESPONSE TO BRADNICK AND MCCALL

In this response to David Bradnick's and Bradford McCall's defense of Amos Yong's usage of emergence theory, we defend our previous argument regarding the tension between Yong's Pentecostal commitments and the philosophical entailments of emergence theory. We clarify and extend our previous concerns in three ways. First, we explore the difficulties of construing divine action naturalistically (i.e. natural divine causation). Second, we clarify the problems of employing supervenience in theology. Third, we show why Bradnick's and McCall's advice to Yong to adopt weak emergence is theologically costly. In conclusion, it is suggested that theologians within the science and religion dialogue should not fear, but recover, the language of supernaturalism and dualism.     

Re‐examination of Oostenbroek et al. (2016): evidence for neonatal imitation of tongue protrusion

The meaning, mechanism, and function of imitation in early infancy have been actively discussed since Meltzoff and Moore's (1977) report of facial and manual imitation by human neonates. Oostenbroek et al. (2016) claim to challenge the existence of early imitation and to counter all interpretations so far offered. Such claims, if true, would have implications for theories of social‐cognitive development. Here we identify 11 flaws in Oostenbroek et al.'s experimental design that biased the results toward null effects. We requested and obtained the authors’ raw data. Contrary to the authors’ conclusions, new analyses reveal significant tongue‐protrusion imitation at all four ages tested (1, 3, 6, and 9 weeks old). We explain how the authors missed this pattern and offer five recommendations for designing future experiments. Infant imitation raises fundamental issues about action representation, social learning, and brain–behavior relations. The debate about the origins and development of imitation reflects its importance to theories of developmental science.     

Regaining a sense of agency and shared self-reliance: the experience of advanced disease cancer patients participating in a multidimensional exercise intervention while undergoing chemotherapy--analysis of patient diaries

Evidence is emerging that exercise can reduce psychological distress in cancer patients undergoing treatment. The present study aimed to (qualitatively) explore the experiences of advanced disease cancer patients participating in a 6-week, 9-hours weekly, structured, group-based multidimensional exercise intervention while undergoing chemotherapy. Unstructured diaries from a purposive sample of three females and two males (28-52 years old) who participated in the program served as the database. Data were analyzed using a phenomenological, narrative method. The analysis yielded three themes: shifting position, self-surveillance, and negotiated strength. The intervention highlighted situations making it possible for the participants to negate psychological and physical constraints. The concept of structured exercise contains viable psychotherapeutic potentials by allowing the development of alternative bodily and mental realities complying with cancer patients' demands and abilities to regain autonomy and commitment to discover and adopt a sense of agency and shared self-reliance.     

Theological Pragmatism: A Critical Evaluation

Theological pragmatists like Daly, Kaufman, McFague and Reuther claim that the God we should believe in and the kind of images we should use to express our religious faith should be evaluated primarily on the basis of the consequences they have for the maintenance of certain political or moral values. These views are presented and critically evaluated. One difficulty is that their pragmatism seems to clash with our intuition and experience that there is no automatic fit between our moral aspirations and political visions, on the one hand, and how the world is actually structured, on the other. Their strong emphasis on political and moral considerations is, therefore, questionable and only plausible under certain specific circumstances.     

ERP correlates of target–distracter differentiation in repeated runs of a continuous recognition task with emotional and neutral faces

The emotional salience of faces has previously been shown to induce memory distortions in recognition memory tasks. This event-related potential (ERP) study used repeated runs of a continuous recognition task with emotional and neutral faces to investigate emotion-induced memory distortions. In the second and third runs, participants made more false alarms to distracters (repeated from previous runs). Emotion did not modulate the amount of errors, but the extent to which recollection was employed to maximise performance as reflected in the putative ERP correlate of recollection; the parietal old–new effect. Targets from all stimulus classes (positive, negative, neutral) were associated with parietal ERP memory effects, but this was also the case for correctly rejected negative distracters. This suggests that recollection was strategically used to correctly reject negative distracters (recall-to-reject). This finding is consistent with the view that facilitated recollection of negative stimuli may be used to decrease the susceptibility to memory errors induced by emotional salience.     

A hidden markov model-based analysis framework using eye-tracking data to characterise re-orientation strategies in minimally invasive surgery

Natural Orifice Translumenal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES) represents a new paradigm in minimally invasive surgery whereby an operator uses a flexible instrument to navigate within an anatomical space. The flexible instrument is introduced via a natural body orifice such as the mouth to perform an operative intervention controlled by the surgeon without making incisions in the anterior abdominal wall. It differs from laparoscopic (traditional keyhole) surgery in two main ways: (1) the instruments used in NOTES are not rigid as in laparoscopic surgery and not specifically designed for this application; and (2) there are no incisions in the anterior abdominal wall. Disorientation during NOTES is a significant problem because as in laparoscopic surgery the operator typically uses a 2D camera-monitor interface for visualisation by the camera at the site of the operation. Furthermore, the positional cue offered by the external component (outside the body) of the camera is absent, and camera navigation is more cumbersome. When the operator is disorientated, it is important to be able to re-orientate quickly to minimise potential surgical errors. It is hypothesised that when surgeons become disorientated, there exist discrete patterns in psychophysical behaviour which are associated with effective re-orientation, and that these patterns are recognisable. In this study, we examine visual re-orientation behaviour in 18 subjects using eye-tracker data in a model comprised of selective image manipulation of everyday objects in a box trainer. We characterise effective behaviour using a fixation sequence similarity-based hidden Markov model. We show that the output of this algorithm is reliable in differentiating visual behavioural sequences, and that there are specific behavioural patterns and strategies associated with successful re-orientation in this model. Good re-orientation strategy appears to rely on identification and focus on a central object within the scene and judging position of its surrounding peripheral objects, suggesting integration of both geometric and feature information in a systematic way. Using selective, inconsistent feature cues for re-orientation were associated with less effective performance.