Equality, Priority and Social Justice

The moral principle of giving greater priority to benefiting people, the less well off they are, has been thought by some to share the plausibility of egalitarianism whilst avoiding the less plausible implications of the latter. This paper argues that the 'priority' principle does have an authentic place in our moral thinking, and that it is distinct from the idea of 'equality', but that the latter also has an indispensible role to play. The idea of 'priority'has its place as the expression of the moral standpoint of benevolent and sympathetic concern. 'Equality', in contrast, functions as a conception of social justice, from which it cannot be displaced by the idea of 'priority'.     

Conditioned memory modulation, freezing, and avoidance as measures of amygdala-mediated conditioned fear

Three conditioned aversive responses were used to infer the existence of an unobservable central state of "conditioned fear," and the roles of certain amygdala subregions in producing these responses were investigated. Rats received tone-shock pairings in one compartment of a shuttle box and no tones or shocks in the other, distinctive, compartment. They were then trained to find food in one arm of a Y-maze. After the final training trial they were exposed to different sets of stimuli in the shuttle box with no shock. Twenty-four hours later rats that had received immediate posttraining exposure to the conditioned stimuli (in the shock-paired compartment) made significantly more correct responses on the Y-maze than rats that had been exposed to the neutral stimuli (in the no-shock compartment) or rats that had received delayed posttraining exposure to the conditioned stimuli. This constitutes a demonstration of posttraining memory modulation by conditioned aversive stimuli. Freezing increased during posttraining exposure to the conditioned stimuli compared to the neutral stimuli. When subsequently allowed to move freely between the two compartments, the rats in all groups also showed significant conditioned avoidance of the compartment containing the conditioned stimuli. In a second experiment the effects of lesions confined to specific parts of the amygdala on the three conditioned responses (memory modulation, freezing, avoidance) were tested. Lesions of the central nucleus impaired all three conditioned responses; lesions of the medial nucleus impaired conditioned modulation and avoidance. These lesions had no effect on freezing during the training trials. Lesions of the lateral and basolateral nuclei attenuated freezing during both training and testing. The findings suggest that the central and medial nuclei of the amygdala may be important parts of neural circuits mediating conditioned responses that constitute conditioned aversive states, but that conditioned freezing may be mediated independently.     

Aging and visual 3-D shape recognition from motion

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the ability of younger and older adults to recognize 3-D object shape from patterns of optical motion. In Experiment 1, participants were required to identify dotted surfaces that rotated in depth (i.e., surface structure portrayed using the kinetic depth effect). The task difficulty was manipulated by limiting the surface point lifetimes within the stimulus apparent motion sequences. In Experiment 2, the participants identified solid, naturally shaped objects (replicas of bell peppers, Capsicum annuum) that were defined by occlusion boundary contours, patterns of specular highlights, or combined optical patterns containing both boundary contours and specular highlights. Significant and adverse effects of increased age were found in both experiments. Despite the fact that previous research has found that increases in age do not reduce solid shape discrimination, our current results indicated that the same conclusion does not hold for shape identification. We demonstrated that aging results in a reduction in the ability to visually recognize 3-D shape independent of how the 3-D structure is defined (motions of isolated points, deformations of smooth optical fields containing specular highlights, etc.).     

Aging and the perception of speed

Two experiments were conducted to explore the potential effects of aging upon the perception and discrimination of speed. In the first experiment, speed difference thresholds were obtained for younger and older observers for a variety of standard speeds ranging from slow to fast. The second experiment was designed to evaluate the observers' ability to discriminate differences in the speed of moving patterns in the presence of significant amounts of noise (the noise was manipulated by limiting the lifetimes of individual moving stimulus elements). The results of both experiments revealed a significant deterioration in the ability of the older observers to perceive or detect differences in speed. While the presence of noise was found to affect the observers' discrimination performance, it affected both younger and older observers' thresholds in a proportionally equivalent manner-the older observers were no more affected by noise than the younger observers.     

An interactive preference ordering model and its monte carlo evaluation

A computer-interactive preference ordering procedure that is based on assumed transitivity of relations is described. The procedure includes features that are designed to make it robust in the presence of inconsistency. With errorless data, the method will find the underlying order in close to log₂ n! comparisons. Two simulation studies are described where the responses are assumed to follow the Thurstone Case V model. It was found that the method produces orders that are more valid than does a considerably larger preselected subset of pairs.This research was supported in part by Public Health Service Grant MH 16474. It was part of a larger project, and major contributions were made by Jerald F. Kehoe and Rex S. Green.     

The temperamental nature of personality

Historically, the terms ‘temperament’, ‘character’, and ‘personality’ have been used to refer to what we now mean by the term ‘personality’. Temperament refers to the raw material out of which personality evolves. Personality is a person's coherent manner of interacting with himself/herself and with the environment. The concept of temperament has been prominent with Eastern European psychologists and with developmental psychologists in North America. A number of developmental theories of temperament are discussed, and differences and similarities between temperament parameters and personality parameters are described. The genetics of personality are presented and evaluated. Mechanistic and dynamic interactions are distinguished, and the multidimensional interaction model of anxiety and relevant research are discussed. A preliminary interaction model of anxiety, stress, and coping is presented. Finally, the temperamental nature of personality is discussed, and suggestions for possible rapprochements between personality and temperament are presented.