You can detect the trees as well as the forest when adding the leaves: Evidence from visual search tasks containing three-level hierarchical stimuli

The present study investigated how multiple levels of hierarchical stimuli (i.e., global, intermediate and local) are processed during a visual search task. Healthy adults participated in a visual search task in which a target was either present or not at one of the three levels of hierarchical stimuli (global geometrical form made by intermediate forms themselves constituted by local forms). By varying the number of distractors, the results showed that targets presented at global and intermediate levels were detected efficiently (i.e., the detection times did not vary with the number of distractors) whereas local targets were processed less efficiently (i.e., the detection times increased with the number of distractors). Additional experiments confirmed that these results were not due to the size of the target elements or to the spatial proximity among the structural levels. Taken together, these results show that the most local level is always processed less efficiently, suggesting that it is disadvantaged during the competition for attentional resources compared to higher structural levels. The present study thus supports the view that the processing occurring in visual search acts dichotomously rather than continuously. Given that pure structuralist and pure space-based models of attention cannot account for the pattern of our findings, we discuss the implication for perception, attentional selection and executive control of target position on hierarchical stimuli.     

Remembering Public,Political Events: A Cross‐Cultural and ‐Sectional Examination of Australian and Japanese Public Memories

We examined and compared the initiating conditions of flashbulb memory (FBM) confidence and event memory accuracy across two different, yet similar public, political events occurring in two different countries: Australia and Japan. To do so, we seized upon the occurrence of two politically important events: the resignation of the Japanese and Australian Prime Ministers in June 2010. In a series of mean and correlation analyses, we concluded that different factors may determine event memory accuracy and FBM confidence across cultures. In particular, the way different cultures emotionally appraise and rehearse the event, their attitude toward the political parties/their political involvement and self‐construal may have important implications for how individuals accurately remember the event and the confidence they hold for their memories of the context when learning of the event. We discuss avenues of future research to better understand the extent to which cultural differences drove these results. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Not my future? Core values and the neural representation of future events

Individuals with pronounced self-transcendence values have been shown to put greater weight on the long-term consequences of their actions when making decisions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying the evaluation of events occurring several decades in the future as well as the role of core values in these processes. Thirty-six participants viewed a series of events, consisting of potential consequences of climate change, which could occur in the near future (around 2030), and thus would be experienced by the participants themselves, or in the far future (around 2080). We observed increased activation in anterior VMPFC (BA11), a region involved in encoding the personal significance of future events, when participants were envisioning far future events, demonstrating for the first time that the role of the VMPFC in future projection extends to the time scale of decades. Importantly, this activation increase was observed only in participants with pronounced self-transcendence values measured by self-report questionnaire, as shown by a statistically significant interaction of temporal distance and value structure. These findings suggest that future projection mechanisms are modulated by self-transcendence values to allow for a more extensive simulation of far future events. Consistent with this, these participants reported similar concern ratings for near and far future events, whereas participants with pronounced self-enhancement values were more concerned about near future events. Our findings provide a neural substrate for the tendency of individuals with pronounced self-transcendence values to consider the long-term consequences of their actions.     

Repeated Effects of Vigorous Interval Training in Basketball,Running-Biking,and Boxing on the Physical Self-Perceptions of Obese Adolescents

This study aims to examine the repeated effects of three sessions of vigorous interval training (VIT) in basketball, running-biking, and boxing on the physical self-perceptions (PSP) of obese adolescents participating in a dietary program. A sample of 24 obese adolescents performed the consecutive VIT sessions every week for 5 weeks. PSP were measured immediately after each training session. Analyses of covariance were used to examine changes in PSP. The results showed rapid and constant increases in PSP with significant differences according to sex, time, type of VIT, and an interaction of sex by time by type of VIT, mainly for basketball.     

From stimulus-driven to appraisal-driven attention: Towards differential effects of goal relevance and goal relatedness on attention?

The Component Process Model posits that attention is appraisal-driven rather than stimulus-driven and that the appraisal of relevance is of critical importance in such a mechanism. This means that any stimulus can attract attention or not depending on how relevant it is appraised. This hypothesis was tested in an implicit border similarity judgement task, in which thirsty participants were presented with bottles and vases that were respectively very relevant and weakly relevant to their goal to quench their thirst. These stimuli were also presented to quenched participants for whom none of the stimuli was relevant. The findings support the idea that our attention is more likely to be appraisal-driven than stimulus-driven, since bottles produced an attentional interference in thirsty participants only. It was also observed that, even if vases were judged weakly relevant by thirsty participants, they produced an attentional interference compared to empty stimuli, which was not the case in the quenched participants group. The concept of goal relatedness was proposed as an explanation for this result, and methodological implications were also discussed.     

Categorical perception of anger is disrupted in alexithymia: Evidence from a visual ERP study

High and low alexithymia scorers were confronted with a modified visual oddball task that allowed the study of categorical perception of emotional expressions on faces. Participants had to quickly detect a deviant (rare) morphed face that shared or did not share the same emotional expression as the frequent one. Expected categorical perception effects, which were also neurophysiologically indexed, showed that rare stimuli were detected faster if they depicted a different emotional expression compared to rare stimuli depicting the same emotional expression than the frequent one. Even if no differences were observed at a behavioural level, high alexithymia scorers evidenced overall delayed neurophysiological responses in components related to the attentional processing of rare emotional faces. Moreover, the categorical perception effects for event-related components associated with the attentional processing were smaller in high alexithymia scorers and were even absent for anger. These results show that high alexithymia scorers present discrimination delays that are already observed at the attentional level.     

The amplification of reason,or the recuperation of imagination: Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society

Abstract

The principal aim of this article is to focus on the problem of the applicability of Rawls’s ideas to the growing interest in developing what might now well be called a “global bioethics”. The specific focus is the question whether Rawls’s later work helps us to develop principles of distributive justice for such an alleged global bioethics, drawing on and critically evaluating Alan Buchanan’s critical discussion of Rawls’s The Law of Peoples. The main tenets of Rawls’s theory of justice, particularly as it concerns health care as one of our “primary needs”, are discussed, drawing on the work of Norman Daniels. Secondly, an argument for the necessity of a global approach to biomedical ethics in view of the need for a more equitable provision of health care between developed and developing worlds is developed. Thirdly, the main tenets of Rawls’s The Law of Peoples, the book in which Rawls extrapolated the implications of his theory of justice to the sphere of just international law, are discussed. Allen Buchanan’s criticisms of this Rawlsian enterprise are critically reviewed. On the basis of this discussion, two additional Principles of Global Distributive Justice (PGDJ) are formulated. The first principle is: “Justice in international relations requires that the burden of catastrophic events be distributed equitably between affected and unaffected peoples”. The implications of this principle are discussed, and complemented with an extended definition of the concept of “catastrophe”. Drawing on each component of that definition, the author then illustrates how the HIV/AIDS pandemic is the best current example of an international catastrophe, and how that calls for the implementation of the formulated principle. Then follows the formulation of the second principle for distributive justice for the law of peoples. This principle is: “Justice requires that efforts at an equitable distribution of burdens at the level of international relations be met with policies from the beneficiaries that, as far as possible, sustain the benefits attained from these efforts”. The author ends by showing how this principle is being neglected by the denialism of, for example, the South African policy-makers’ lack of a responsible response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic over the past decade, and by making suggestions how this denial and neglect might be rectified in the area of the provision of antiretroviral drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV.     

Factor structure and measurement invariance of a short measure of the Big Five personality traits

The main purpose of this study is to assess the factor structure and the measurement invariance of the Mini-International Personality Item Pool (Mini-IPIP; Donnellan, Oswald, Baird, & Lucas, 2006). The Mini-IPIP is a brief instrument evaluating personality traits according to the Big Five models. Two samples were collected comprising nearly 800 participants. Confirmatory factor analyzes revealed a five-factor solution consistent with the Big Five model. Measurement invariance analyses showed that the Mini-IPIP was reasonably invariant across samples, genders and age groups. Overall, results pointed to a satisfactory factorial structure and an adequate invariance of the measure.     

Eye'm lovin' it! The role of gazing awareness in mimetic desires

Recent studies showed that people evaluate objects more favorably when these objects are gazed-at by others, an effect coined as “mimetic desire”. In two studies, we tested whether mimetic desire stems from an automatic form of learning by examining one dimension of automaticity, i.e., people's awareness of the object-gaze association. Participants saw 6 neutral art paintings associated with a female gazing toward two of the paintings, away from two of the paintings, and closing her eyes with respect to the last two paintings. After the exposition phase, participants evaluated the paintings and performed a contingency-awareness test. Importantly, participants' responses on this test were genuinely driven by memory and not by inferences from liking. Results show that participants preferred objects that were gazed-at but only when they were aware of the object-gaze association. Hence, despite the adaptive function of joint attention, its impact on valence acquisition does not seem to qualify as an implicit learning process.