Does Truth Matter? Introduction to Papers by Jody Davies,Shlomit Gadot,and Donnel Stern

Each of these three essays touches on the universal meaning and relevance of truth. Yet all are dealing with the relational truths that survive and hold us after the 2016 election amounted to a loss of certain assumed truths of everyday life.

Donnel Stern asks, If relational truth is constructed, dialogical, multiple, how does this belief survive when we find ourselves outraged, by what seem like cavalier untruths—lies, some kind of runaway, twittered, subjective truth? He argues that a credible, measurable, objectivity about certain truths indeed survives perfectly well within our overall relational worldview.

Shlomit Gadot adds that truth, relational truth, does and can exist most stably in our essential recognition of the multiplicity of (often relationally shaped) premises, frameworks, perspectives on truth. What “matters” when truth becomes threatened with serious shattering (here in a clash with love) is that she begins with an effort at genuine openness to the truth of the other.

Jody Davies implies that relational truth at virtually in all levels is embedded with the trauma narrative of truth, its meanings, and motivated hiding as we know it clinically. Truth survives its subjective shattering by recognizing that within the sociopolitical realm, we are being abused and traumatized by political authority and an abusive father.

The complexity of relational truth may involve creatively grieving certain certainties about truth that we may have experienced as lost. Truth in these three essays may lie in our overall effort to be equal to the full complexity of that loss and, paradoxically, to become expanded and more deeply connected through that experience.     

Characteristics of Boys' and Girls' Toys

In Study 1, 292 undergraduates rated 126 toys as to whether they were suitable for boys, girls, or both. From these ratings, we established five categories of toys: strongly masculine, moderately masculine, neutral, moderately feminine, and strongly feminine. Using these categories, we constructed four toysets; each consisted of 15 toys, three from each category. In Study 2, 706 undergraduates individually rated the toys from one of the toysets on 26 scales that measured the toys' characteristics. We found that girls' toys were associated with physical attractiveness, nurturance, and domestic skill, whereas boys' toys were rated as violent, competitive, exciting, and somewhat dangerous. The toys rated as most likely to be educational and to develop children's physical, cognitive, artistic, and other skills were typically rated as neutral or moderately masculine. We conclude that strongly gender-typed toys appear to be less supportive of optimal development than neutral or moderately gender-typed toys.     

The Contribution of Perceived Fitness to Physiological and Self-Reported Responses to Laboratory Stress

This study sought to evaluate the contribution of perceived physical fitness beyond the contributions of gender, body mass index (BMI), defensiveness, and estimated aerobic fitness on both physiological and self-reported stress responsivity to laboratory-induced stress. Ninety healthy individuals (45 males, 45 females) participated in the experiment. Participants completed a laboratory procedure measuring cardiovascular responses (i.e. pulse rate and blood pressure) and self-reported rating of anxiety (i.e. the anxiety scale from the Multiple Affective Checklist–Revised—MAACL–R) while performing stressful laboratory tasks (i.e. the Stroop Color Naming Test and Serial 7's). Estimated aerobic fitness (i.e. VO₂max using the Bruce protocol) as well as perceived fitness (using a 10-point Likert scale) were also determined. Multiple regression and effect size results revealed that perceived fitness significantly contributed to the variance associated with both physiological and self-reported responses to laboratory stress. Specifically, perceived fitness significantly added to the variance beyond that attributed to gender, BMI, defensiveness, and estimated aerobic physical fitness while assessing pulse rate and MAACL–R anxiety scores. Overall results support the view that perception of fitness may be an important factor above and beyond aerobic fitness in its association with physiological and self-reported responses to stress.     

Brief inductions in episodic past or future thinking: effects on episodic detail and problem-solving

Cognitive Processing - Episodic specificity inductions, involving brief training in recollecting episodic details, have been shown to improve subsequent performance on tasks involving remembering...     

The role of spatial configuration in tests of working memory explored with functional neuroimaging

While the importance of the prefrontal cortex for "higher-order" cognitive functions is largely undisputed, no consensus has been reached regarding the fractionation of functions within this region. Several recent functional neuroimaging studies have suggested that the mid-ventrolateral frontal cortex may play an important role in various aspects of human memory. Thus, similar patterns of activation have been observed in this region during analogous spatial, verbal and visual span tasks. In the present study, however, activation was observed in a more dorsolateral region of the lateral frontal cortex during a modified version of the spatial span task, which differed only in the spatial configuration of the array employed. The results of a supplementary behavioral study, designed to investigate this effect further, suggest that in spatial memory tasks certain stimulus configurations may encourage subjects to adopt mnemonic strategies, which may depend upon dorsolateral, rather than ventrolateral, regions of the frontal cortex. These findings shed further light on the functional relationship between dorsal and ventral regions of the lateral frontal cortex and, more specifically, how the "executive" processes assumed to be dependent upon these regions might contribute to aspects of human memory.     

An exploration of prevalence of domestic violence in same-sex relationships

The prevalence of domestic violence in a sample of 33 men and 33 women currently or previously in same-sex relationships was assessed. Data were collected through a mail survey in the state of Virginia. Of 1000 surveys sent out 66 usable ones were returned (response rate = 6.6%). Analysis indicated that 34 had experienced some form of domestic violence, but significant differences between male and female respondents were not detected. When data from this same-sex sample were compared with those of the heterosexual sample of the National Violence Against Women Survey, intimate partner assault may be more prevalent against gay men than against heterosexual men, but there was no significant difference between lesbians and heterosexual females.     

Corporal punishment experiences and attitudes in a sample of college students

This article describes an analysis of an exploratory survey administered to a sample of 123 college students. The purpose was twofold. First, the respondents' experiences with spanking in childhood are described. Second, factors that led respondents to perceive their childhood spankings as beneficial or not beneficial are examined.     

Contributions of the human pulvinar to linking vision and action

In 3 patients with unilateral pulvinar lesions, we tested the pulvinar’s role in selective attention processing. Each patient completed four variants of a flanker interference task in which they reported the color of a square of a specified size while ignoring an irrelevant flanker that appeared either contralesionally or ipsilesionally to the target. The main finding was that when target location was not known and target and flanker were associated with competing responses, reaction times to contralesional targets were longer than those to ipsilesional targets. Our findings suggest that pulvinar damage produces a contralesional deficit in response competition.     

The role of the left hemisphere in motor control of touch: a functional magnetic resonance imaging analysis

Previous research using a simple finger-touching task has shown greater blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) activation volume in the motor cortex of the right hemisphere for contralateral finger touching compared to ipsilateral finger touching, but no significant contralateral advantage for the left hemisphere. Such equal involvement of the left hemisphere for both contralateral and ipsilateral finger touching suggests a special role of the left hemisphere for finger touching. In contrast, we found a contralateral advantage in the motor cortex of both hemispheres in a majority of participants (14/16) when consistently activated BOLD volumes were examined. However, participants who did not show a clear contralateral advantage for the left hemisphere did show activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG; Broca's Area) and in the left insular cortex, which suggests that verbally mediated sequencing of finger movements can account for our less frequent result.