Memory for faces with emotional expressions in Alzheimer’s disease and healthy older participants: positivity effect is not only due to familiarity

Young individuals better memorize initially seen faces with emotional rather than neutral expressions. Healthy older participants and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients show better memory for faces with positive expressions. The socioemotional selectivity theory postulates that this positivity effect in memory reflects a general age-related preference for positive stimuli, subserving emotion regulation. Another explanation might be that older participants use compensatory strategies, often considering happy faces as previously seen. The question about the existence of this effect in tasks not permitting such compensatory strategies is still open. Thus, we compared the performance of healthy participants and AD patients for positive, neutral, and negative faces in such tasks. Healthy older participants and AD patients showed a positivity effect in memory, but there was no difference between emotional and neutral faces in young participants. Our results suggest that the positivity effect in memory is not entirely due to the sense of familiarity for smiling faces.     

The social impact and the intrusive dimension of enhancement

A key feature of Buchanan (2011) is emphasis put on the social impact of biomedical enhancement. This social turn enables Buchanan to reframe the question of the desirability of enhancers. The fundamental question is no longer an individual question (do I want to use X, and why, and would it be right?) but a social question: what would be the advantages and the drawbacks of X in our society? The individual question, in Buchanan’s analysis, is second to the social question. Now, if one accepts that an enhancer may have secondary effects, or drawbacks, the social question requires a cost and benefit analysis. I will argue that there are two flaws in Buchanan’s position: 1) the way in which he envisions the social debate about biomedical enhancement, and a cost and benefit analysis, would only be adequate in a kind of utopia which no actual existing State seems to match; 2) The cost and benefit analysis needs to be complemented not by an individual ethics but by narratives accounting for the experience of the subject. The level on which takes place Buchanan’s discussion covers up an individual experience which needs to be articulated and taken into account. It is this kind of individual, or singular, narrative that I will look for in the work of the post-phenomenological philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, thus attempting to bridge a gap between two different philosophical traditions and styles of writing.     

Revised Statutes and Rules of Procedure of the International Union of Psychological Science

The International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS) is a non‐profit, international non‐government organization. Its legal venue is located in Montreal, Canada where it is incorporated. The Statutes and Rules of Procedure set out the organization's objectives as well as the structure and process by which it operates. For those not already familiar with the IUPsyS, it is important to note that the fundamental entity of the Union is the “National Member”. Similar to many other international scientific unions, IUPsyS does not have individual members. National Members, one per country, are recognized and admitted according to the criteria and procedures found in the Statutes and Rules. Provision is also made for Affiliates, which are also, organized entities. Questions about the Statutes and Rules should be addressed to the Secretary‐General, Pierre L.‐J. Ritchie, Secretary‐General, E‐mail: pritchie@uottawa.ca     

Passion and Gambling: Investigating the Divergent Affective and Cognitive Consequences of Gambling1

Vallerand et al. (2003) developed a theoretical framework of passion where two types of passions are proposed: obsessive and harmonious passion. Obsessive passion is characterized by an internal pressure that pushes the person to engage in the passionate activity, whereas harmonious passion is characterized by the person's choice to engage in the activity. The goal of the present study was to examine the outcomes of these types of passion toward gambling. A total of 554 participants completed instruments assessing their passion toward gambling, as well as several cognitive and affective outcomes. Results indicated that, in general, harmonious passion was associated with positive outcomes, while obsessive passion was related to negative consequences. Results also showed that casino activities accentuated both positive and negative outcomes by fostering both types of passion toward the gambling activity. Conceptual and practical implications are discussed.     

Pre‐frontal‐insular‐cerebellar modifications correlate with disgust feeling blunting after subthalamic stimulation: A positron emission tomography study in Parkinson's disease

Subthalamic nucleus (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) has recently advanced our understanding of the major role played by this basal ganglion in human emotion. Research indicates that STN DBS can induce modifications in all components of emotion, and neuroimaging studies have shown that the metabolic modifications correlated with these emotional disturbances following surgery are both task‐ and sensory input‐dependent. Nevertheless, to date, these modifications have not been confirmed for all emotional components, notably subjective emotional experience, or feelings. To identify the neural network underlying the modification of feelings following STN DBS, we assessed 16 patients with Parkinson's disease before and after surgery, using both subjective assessments of emotional experience and ¹⁸[F]fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (¹⁸FDG‐PET). The patients viewed six film excerpts intended to elicit happy, angry, fearful, sad, disgusted, and neutral feelings, and they self‐rated the intensity of these feelings. After DBS, there was a significant reduction in the intensity of the disgust feeling. Correlations were observed between decreased disgust experience and cerebral glucose metabolism (FDG uptake) in the bilateral pre‐frontal cortices (orbitofrontal, dorsolateral, and inferior frontal gyri), bilateral insula, and right cerebellum. We suggest that the STN contributes to the synchronization process underlying the emergence of feelings.     

The role of awareness in anticipation and recall performance in the Hebb repetition paradigm: implications for sequence learning

Sequence learning has notably been studied using the Hebb repetition paradigm (Hebb, 1961) and the serial reaction time (SRT) task (Nissen & Bullemer, Cognitive Psychology 19:1–32, 1987). These two paradigms produce robust learning effects but differ with regard to the role of awareness: Awareness does not affect learning a repeated sequence in the Hebb repetition paradigm, as is evidenced by recall performance, whereas in the SRT task, awareness helps to anticipate the location of the next stimulus. In this study, we examined the role of awareness in anticipation and recall performance, using the Hebb repetition paradigm. Eye movements were monitored during a spatial reconstruction task where participants had to memorize sequences of dot locations. One sequence was repeated every four trials. Results showed that recall performance for the repeated sequence improved across repetitions for all participants but that anticipation increased only for participants aware of the repetition.     

Handwriting in patients with Parkinson disease: effect of L-dopa and stimulation of the sub-thalamic nucleus on motor anticipation

The present research focused on how patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) produce handwriting sequences. PD patients who were on/off medication or deep brain stimulation treatments had to write lll and lln trigrams. We evaluated their ability to anticipate on-line the last letter in the trigram. The results revealed that in PD patients, contrary to healthy participants, the percentage of time taken by the down-stroke of the second l did not vary as a function of the spatial constraints of the following letter (l or n). In other words, the handwriting of the PD patients did not exhibit any sign of motor anticipation. However, under treatment, PD patients exhibited similar results to healthy participants despite no improvement in movement variability. Taken together these results do not seem consistent with the hypothesis that PD patients do not anticipate future movements because of their movement variability. They are more in agreement with theories that postulate that PD patients have a general deficit in the parallel processing of the components of a motor sequence.     

Finding a place for elimination in inter-level reductionist activities: Reply to Wimsatt

According to Wimsatt, a proper treatment of reduction must distinguish between two types of reductionist activities scientists engage in. One of the benefits of better understanding the nature of reduction, he believes, is that it shows that eliminativism, that is, the elimination of concepts and theories from science, is a rather circumscribed and limited affair, especially in the case of inter-level reductionist activities. While I agree with Wimsatt that it is important to distinguish the two types of reductionisms, I show that elimination in inter-level reductionist activities can be a powerful heuristic in science, driving both inter-level and successional reduction.     

Examining Racial Identity and Masculinity as Correlates of Self‐Esteem and Psychological Distress in Black Men

Data presented for 124 young adult Black men indicate that self‐esteem was positively related to participants' Internalization racial identity attitudes, and negatively related to conformity to traditional masculine norms in the dominant culture in the United States. Psychological distress was positively related to Pre‐Encounter and Immersion‐Emersion racial identity attitudes (J. E. Helms, 1995) and to conformity to masculine norms. Los datos se presentan para 124 jovenes adultos Negros, que indican que el autoestima fue relacionado positivamente a la Interiorización actitudes de la identidad racial, y negativamente relacionado a la conformidad a normas masculinas tradicionales en la cultura dominante en los Estados Unidos. La angustia psicológica fue relacionada positivamente al Pre‐Encounter y el Immersion‐Emersion actitudes de la identidad racial (J. E. Helms, 1995), y a la conformidad a las normas masculinas.     

Radical views on cognition and the dynamics of scientific change

Radical views on cognition are generally defined by a cluster of features including non-representationalism and vehicle-externalism. In this paper, I concentrate on the way radical views on cognition define themselves as revolutionary theories in cognitive science. These theories often use the Kuhnian concepts of “paradigm” and “paradigm shift” for describing their ambitions and the current situation in cognitive science. I examine whether the use of Kuhn’s theory of science is appropriate here. There might be good reasons to think that cognitive science is in a situation of foundational crisis, but that does not entail that the classical paradigm (computationalism) is currently displaced to the benefit of a new paradigm. Larry Laudan’s theory of research traditions is more enlightening than Kuhn’s theory for describing the scope and ambitions of radical views on cognition, and their relations with an anti-intellectualist tradition in philosophy.