Comprehension of human communicative signs in pet dogs (Canis familiaris).

On the basis of a study by D. J. Povinelli, D. T. Bierschwale, and C. G. Cech (1999), the performance of family dogs (Canis familiaris) was examined in a 2-way food choice task in which 4 types of directional cues were given by the experimenter: pointing and gazing, head-nodding ("at target"), head turning above the correct container ("above target"), and glancing only ("eyes only"). The results showed that the performance of the dogs resembled more closely that of the children in D. J. Povinelli et al.'s study, in contrast to the chimpanzees' performance in the same study. It seems that dogs, like children, interpret the test situation as being a form of communication. The hypothesis is that this similarity is attributable to the social experience and acquired social routines in dogs because they spend more time in close contact with humans than apes do, and as a result dogs are probably more experienced in the recognition of human gestures.     

Attachment behavior of adult dogs (Canis familiaris) living at rescue centers: forming new bonds

In this study, 60 shelter dogs (Canis familiaris) were observed in the modified version of the Strange Situation Test, which has proved to be a useful method for studying dogs' attachment behavior toward humans (J. Topál, A. Miklósi, V. Csányi, & A. Dóka, 1998). Before testing, 40 dogs were handled 3 times for 10 min. In the test, handled dogs encountered 2 persons: the handler in the role of the "owner" (OW) and an unfamiliar person (UP), whereas the 20 nonhandled dogs encountered unfamiliar persons in both roles. Dogs in the handled group exhibited more contact seeking with the entering OW, less physical contact with the UP, less frequent following of the leaving UP, and less standing by the door in the presence of the OW. The specific response of the handled dogs toward the handler fulfilled the operational criteria of attachment. In shelter conditions, the remarkable demand for social contact with humans may result in rather fast forming of attachment even in adult dogs.     

The Mode of Existence of Illocutionary Negation

This paper examines a recent attempt to provide anegative answer to the question of the existence of illocutionary negations. It argues that the attempt is unsuccessful both because it presupposes amisinterpretation of the question's theoretical import and because, even granting that misinterpretation, it bases its proposed answer on certain assumptions that can independently be shown to be untenable.     

Stability of nonlinear principal components analysis: an empirical study using the balanced bootstrap

Principal components analysis (PCA) is used to explore the structure of data sets containing linearly related numeric variables. Alternatively, nonlinear PCA can handle possibly nonlinearly related numeric as well as nonnumeric variables. For linear PCA, the stability of its solution can be established under the assumption of multivariate normality. For nonlinear PCA, however, standard options for establishing stability are not provided. The authors use the nonparametric bootstrap procedure to assess the stability of nonlinear PCA results, applied to empirical data. They use confidence intervals for the variable transformations and confidence ellipses for the eigenvalues, the component loadings, and the person scores. They discuss the balanced version of the bootstrap, bias estimation, and Procrustes rotation. To provide a benchmark, the same bootstrap procedure is applied to linear PCA on the same data. On the basis of the results, the authors advise using at least 1,000 bootstrap samples, using Procrustes rotation on the bootstrap results, examining the bootstrap distributions along with the confidence regions, and merging categories with small marginal frequencies to reduce the variance of the bootstrap results.     

The Ethics of NIMBY Conflicts

NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) refers to an oppositional attitude from local residents against some risk generating facility that they have been chosen to host either by government or industry. The attitude is claimed to be characteristic of someone who is positive to a facility but who wants someone else to be its host. Since siting cannot be provided if everyone has this attitude, society ends up in a worse situation. The attitude is claimed to be egoistic and irrational. Here it is argued that the NIMBY critique rests on questionable assumptions about the rightness of weighing total benefit against total cost. This weighing-principle will sometimes have to yield so that the rights of individuals can be acknowledged.

Memory transfer for emotionally valenced words between identities in dissociative identity disorder

The present study aimed to determine interidentity retrieval of emotionally valenced words in dissociative identity disorder (DID). Twenty-two DID patients participated together with 25 normal controls and 25 controls instructed to simulate DID. Two wordlists A and B were constructed including neutral, positive and negative material. List A was shown to one identity, while list B was shown to another identity claiming total amnesia for the words learned by the first identity. The identity claiming amnesia was tested for intrusions from list A words into the recall of words from list B and recognition of the words learned by both identities. Test results indicated no evidence of total interidentity amnesia for emotionally valenced material in DID. It is argued that dissociative amnesia in DID may more adequately be described as a disturbance in meta-memory functioning instead of an actual retrieval inability.     

Positive and negative associations underlying ambivalent attitudes

In two studies, we compared the strength of positive and negative associations of ambivalent attitudes to those of nonambivalent attitudes. In Study 1, results from an implicit association task showed that, in contrast to nonambivalent attitudes, ambivalent attitudes were characterized by strong positive and negative associations. In Study 2 responses to ambivalent attitude objects were faster following a positive as well as following a negative prime, compared to a non-word prime, whereas for neutral attitude objects prime type did not influence response times. Results provide direct evidence for the assumption that both positive and negative associations of ambivalent attitudes are relatively strong. Implications for attitude strength and attitude structure are discussed.