Smooth-pursuit eye tracking in first-episode psychotic patients and their relatives.

We wished to determine the specificity of smooth-pursuit eye tracking dysfunction to schizophrenia and the prevalences of dysfunction among functionally psychotic and normal individuals. Therefore, we investigated pursuit tracking in a large sample of psychotic patients, normal subjects, and first-degree relatives (N = 482). Patients were recruited as part of an epidemiological study of first-episode psychosis that used a broadly based referral network to identify all cases in a major metropolitan area over a 2 1/2-year period. Patients received diagnoses of schizophrenia, schizophreniform disorder, psychotic mood disorder, and paranoid or other psychotic disorder based on the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1980). The distribution of tracking performance was bimodal for the schizophrenic patients and their relatives, perhaps reflecting major gene action. Moreover, poor tracking ran in families. Pursuit tracking dysfunction was relatively specific to schizophrenic patients and their relatives and occurred infrequently in other psychotic patients and normal subjects.     

What can Examining the Psychology of Nationalism Tell Us About Our Prospects for Aiming at the Cosmopolitan Vision?

Opponents of cosmopolitanism often dismiss the position on the grounds that cosmopolitan proposals are completely unrealistic and that they fly in the face of our human nature. We have deep psychological needs that are satisfied by national identification and so all cosmopolitan projects are doomed, or so it is argued. In this essay we examine the psychological grounds claimed to support the importance of nationalism to our wellbeing. We argue that the alleged human needs that nationalism is said to satisfy are: (i) either more complex than initially one might think or (ii) do not necessarily provide very strong grounds for the theses advocated by nationalists or (iii) can be well met in alternate ways than through national identification. Moreover, commitment to cosmopolitanism is not antithetical to meeting these needs: rather, more cosmopolitan worldviews can do quite well in meeting the needs of interest. Moreover, we argue that since nationalism is a fluid and socially constructed phenomenon, quite open to the influence of other factors, the current evidence suggests that central aspects of cosmopolitanism are quite feasible and realistic.

大爆炸宇宙论与无神论--大爆炸理论缘何无助于有神论者

上世纪60年代中期．大爆炸宇宙论让获得了一定科学知识的有神论者欣喜若狂。因为这一理论表明,150万年前的一次大爆炸导致了宇宙的产生,有神论者认为这是证明上帝存在的最有力的科学证据。他们说宇宙显然不会无缘无故地产生,那么,最合理的假设就是上帝是宇宙产生的起因。他们的理论基于“任何事物的产生都有起因”这样一个假设。有神论者威廉·雷恩·克雷格(William Lane Craig)在其1994年所著《理智的信仰》(Reason- able Faith)一书中,应用了如下推理: 1．任何事物的产生都有起因。 2．宇宙产生了。 3．因此,宇宙有起因。他认为, “这个基本假设的正确性确凿无疑,     

Audiovisual presentation demonstrates that selective adaptation in speech perception is purely auditory

MRC Institute of Hearing Research, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG72RD, England Both auditory and phonetic processes have been implicated by previous results from selective adaptation experiments using speech stimuli. It has proved difficult to dissociate their individual contributions because the auditory and phonetic structure of conventional acoustical stimuli are mutually predictive. In the present experiment, the necessary dissociation was achieved by using an audiovisual adaptor consisting of an acoustical [b?] synchronized to a video recording of a talker uttering the syllable [g?]. This stimulus was generally identified as one of the dentals [d?] or [??]. It produced an adaptation effect, measured with an acoustical [b?-d?] test continuum, identical in size and direction to that produced by an acoustical [b?]—an adaptor sharing its acoustical structure—and opposite in direction to that produced by an acoustical [d?]—an adaptor sharing its perceived phonetic identity. Thus, the result strongly suggests that auditory rather than phonetic levels of processing are influenced in selective adaptation.