Neither justice nor charity? Kant on ‘general injustice’

We often make a distinction between what we owe as a matter of repayment, and what we give or offer out of charity. But how shall we describe our obligations to fellow citizens when we are in a position to be charitable because of a past injustice on the part of the state? This essay examines the moral implications of past injustice by considering Immanuel Kant’s remarks on this phenomenon in his lectures and writings. In particular, it discusses the role of the state and the individual in addressing the problem.     

Creating false memories for brand names

Using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm, participants are presented with lists of associated words (e.g., bed, awake, night etc). Subsequently, they reliably have false memories for related but non‐presented words (e.g. SLEEP). The present study investigated whether false memories could be created for brand names (e.g. Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Waitrose and TESCO) using the DRM paradigm and whether the effect was reduced if stimuli were presented in brand appropriate fonts compared with a plain font. Participants were presented with lists of brand names in plain or brand appropriate fonts, followed by a distractor task or free recall. Finally, they had a recognition task. Both false recall and false recognition of non‐presented brand names occurred. Brand specific fonts at study had no effect on recall but increased overall recognition. There was considerable variability in levels of false recall and false recognition amongst lists and across participants and reasons for this are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mind your errors: evidence for a neural mechanism linking growth mind-set to adaptive posterror adjustments

How well people bounce back from mistakes depends on their beliefs about learning and intelligence. For individuals with a growth mind-set, who believe intelligence develops through effort, mistakes are seen as opportunities to learn and improve. For individuals with a fixed mind-set, who believe intelligence is a stable characteristic, mistakes indicate lack of ability. We examined performance-monitoring event-related potentials (ERPs) to probe the neural mechanisms underlying these different reactions to mistakes. Findings revealed that a growth mind-set was associated with enhancement of the error positivity component (Pe), which reflects awareness of and allocation of attention to mistakes. More growth-minded individuals also showed superior accuracy after mistakes compared with individuals endorsing a more fixed mind-set. It is critical to note that Pe amplitude mediated the relationship between mind-set and posterror accuracy. These results suggest that neural mechanisms indexing on-line awareness of and attention to mistakes are intimately involved in growth-minded individuals' ability to rebound from mistakes.     

Involuntary strategy-dependent dual task performance

Previous studies showed that some dual tasks can be performed simultaneously without costs. Yet, a variable SOA between the inputs to such tasks leads to strategic, often involuntary, prioritization of one of the two tasks. Here we explore the boundary conditions for this involuntary or exogenous strategy. In Experiment 1, subjects were initially trained on dual task performance where the input to the two tasks is presented simultaneously (0 SOA). We used two tasks that under such conditions can be performed without costs and indeed subjects displayed perfect sharing of the tasks. Subjects then performed the same two tasks but with a variable SOA (0, 50, 150, 800?ms). This manipulation led to a serial-like performance of the two tasks even in trials with 0 SOA. In Experiment 2, subjects participated in eight sessions. Within each session, they performed in alternation blocks with a fixed 0 SOA and blocks with a variable SOA. Subjects displayed perfect sharing in the pure 0 SOA blocks but performed the two tasks serially in the mixed SOA blocks despite receiving identical instructions. These findings demonstrate that task context is a powerful factor in dual task performance and may lead subjects to involuntarily exhibit dual task costs even in conditions where they can perform the tasks without any costs. Moreover, these findings strongly suggest that costs observed in PRP studies reflect the use of such exogenous strategies rather than a general structural dual task limitation.     

Innovations in computational type theory using Nuprl

For twenty years the Nuprl (“new pearl”) system has been used to develop software systems and formal theories of computational mathematics. It has also been used to explore and implement computational type theory (CTT)—a formal theory of computation closely related to Martin-Löf's intuitionistic type theory (ITT) and to the calculus of inductive constructions (CIC) implemented in the Coq prover.

This article focuses on the theory and practice underpinning our use of Nuprl for much of the last decade. We discuss innovative elements of type theory, including new type constructors such as unions and dependent intersections, our theory of classes, and our theory of event structures.

We also discuss the innovative architecture of Nuprl as a distributed system and as a transactional database of formal mathematics using the notion of abstract object identifiers. The database has led to an independent project called the Formal Digital Library, FDL, now used as a repository for Nuprl results as well as selected results from HOL, MetaPRL, and PVS. We discuss Howe's set theoretic semantics that is used to relate such disparate theories and systems as those represented by these provers.     

Naïve Realism,Hallucination, and Causation: A New Response to the Screening Off Problem

This paper sets out a novel response to the ‘screening off’ problem for naïve realism. The aim is to resist the claim (which many naïve realists accept) that the kind of experience involved in hallucinating also occurs during perception, by arguing that there are causal constraints that must be met if an hallucinatory experience is to occur, ones that are never met in perceptual cases. Notably, given this response, it turns out that, contra current orthodoxy, naïve realists need not adopt any particular view about the psychological nature of hallucinatory experience to handle the screening off problem. Consequently, room opens up for naïve realists to endorse whatever theory of hallucinatory experience seems to best capture the distinctive nature of such episodes.     

Are Fast Complex Movements Unimaginable? Pupillometric Studies of Motor Imagery in Expert Piano Playing

Motor imagery (MI; mental simulation of actions) shares certain mental representations and processes with executed movement (ME). This neurocognitive overlap between MI and ME may explain why the systematic use of MI improves skilled performance in numerous domains. Unfortunately, the attentional mechanisms underlying MI remain unresolved. Therefore, the present studies investigated the role of attentional effort (as measured by pupil dilation) in MI. We evaluated the effects of movement complexity and speed on expert pianists' pupil dilation as they physically executed and used MI to perform easy/complex and slow/fast music phrases. Results revealed that easy movements required similar levels of attentional effort during MI and ME. However, during complex movements performed at a fast speed, the correspondence between execution and imagery of movement was disrupted.     

Initial perceptions in negotiations: evaluation and response to ‘logrolling’ offers

In negotiations, where several issues are under consideration and parties have different priorities among these issues, integrative agreements can be reached through ‘logrolling’: concessions on low priority issues in exchange for gains on higher priority issues. The present research focuses on the potential role of initial offers in the development of integrative agreements. We show first, that in a simulated competitive market the specific composition of initial offers influences the final agreements, beyond the effect predicted by their overall value. In order to obtain some insight into the judgmental processes that might play a role, we explore the way in which inexperienced negotiators presented with a hypothetical negotiation context evaluate and respond to logrolling versus distributive initial offers. Three hypotheses were tested: logrolling offers convey an implicit message of cooperation, logrolling offers promote understanding of the mutual interest structure of the task, and, finally, logrolling offers establish within‐issue anchors. Results do not support the first two hypotheses: logrolling offers were not necessarily judged more attractive than distributive ones, and they did not seem to affect the deeply rooted fixed‐pie assumption. However, initial offers did establish within‐issue anchors: counter‐offers were affected by the specific composition of the initial offers beyond the effect of their overall value. This anchoring process resulted in logrolling offers yielding a higher profit for their initiator, as well as higher combined profits for both parties. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.