THE HEART OF MY CONCERN

Abstract. This brief piece summarizes the author's lifelong personal credo, particularly his attempt to translate traditional religious wisdom into modern scientific concepts. Contemporary science reveals to us the vast system of natural processes that has brought the universe, our planet, and our species into existence. This natural system is in fact a "more-than-human 'Lord of History,'" corresponding to traditional ideas of God. This Lord of History not only has created us but also sustains us—not just externally but also our interior psychic and spiritual nature. We are challenged to discern the requirements that this system of natural processes places upon us; if we conform to these requirements, we shall be blessed, and we will be enabled as co-creators of our future evolution.     

Predicting Election Outcomes from Positive and Negative Trait Assessments of Candidate Images

Conventional wisdom, and a growing body of behavioral research, suggests that the nonverbal image of a candidate influences voter decision making. We presented subjects with images of political candidates and asked them to make four trait judgments based solely on viewing the photographs. Subjects were asked which of the two faces exhibited more competence, attractiveness, deceitfulness, and threat, which are arguably four of the most salient attributes that can be conveyed by faces. When we compared our subjects' choices to the actual election outcomes, we found that the candidates chosen as more likely to physically threaten the subjects actually lost 65% of the real elections. As expected, our findings support the conclusions of Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, and Hall (2005 ) by showing a positive correlation between the competence judgments and the real election outcomes. Surprisingly, attractiveness was correlated with losing elections, with the effect being driven by faces of candidates who looked politically incompetent yet personally attractive. Our findings have implications for future research on negative political communication, as they suggest that both threatening first impressions and fleeting impressions of attractiveness can harm a candidate's electoral chances.     

A combined fMRI and DTI examination of functional language lateralization and arcuate fasciculus structure: Effects of degree versus direction of hand preference

The present study examined the relationship between hand preference degree and direction, functional language lateralization in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, and structural measures of the arcuate fasciculus. Results revealed an effect of degree of hand preference on arcuate fasciculus structure, such that consistently-handed individuals, regardless of the direction of hand preference, demonstrated the most asymmetric arcuate fasciculus, with larger left versus right arcuate, as measured by DTI. Functional language lateralization in Wernicke’s area, measured via fMRI, was related to arcuate fasciculus volume in consistent-left-handers only, and only in people who were not right hemisphere lateralized for language; given the small sample size for this finding, future investigation is warranted. Results suggest handedness degree may be an important variable to investigate in the context of neuroanatomical asymmetries.     

Facial expressions modulate the ontogenetic trajectory of gaze-following among monkeys

Gaze-following, the tendency to direct one's attention to locations looked at by others, is a crucial aspect of social cognition in human and nonhuman primates. Whereas the development of gaze-following has been intensely studied in human infants, its early ontogeny in nonhuman primates has received little attention. Combining longitudinal and cross-sectional observational data from Barbary macaques at 'La Forêt des Singes', we show here that gaze-following among conspecifics develops within the first year of life with a rapid increase between 5 and 6 months, reaching adult levels at 1 year. Sex, rank, and relatedness of the animal whose gaze the subject followed did not affect gaze-following rates. Interestingly, however, the behavior was enhanced in all age classes if a gaze-cue was accompanied by a facial expression. Furthermore, the effect of facial expressions had a modulatory influence on the ontogenetic trajectory of gaze-following, suggesting that it is of functional significance in the development of the behavior. Follow-up analyses revealed that one specific facial expression that is given in response to social interactions between third parties was particularly efficient in eliciting gaze-following responses, indicating the importance of cues that are able to guide the acquisition of social information. Taken together, these results suggest that the development and the operation of gaze-following are tuned to the social and physical characteristics of a species' environment.     

Confucian Political Philosophy for Non-Confucians

Contemporary proponents of Confucian political philosophy often ignore the fact that any sizeable future Confucian political order will have to accommodate many “non-Confucians.” The guiding question of this paper is therefore the following: how could a Confucian political philosophy, if it can at all, adequately take into account a plurality of comprehensive worldviews? I first turn to John Rawls and his account of these terms and of reasonable pluralism more generally. I then examine some particularly relevant developments and criticism of Rawls’ account. Finally, I offer a discussion of some recent proposals for a Confucian political philosophy, and examine to what extent each recognizes the fact of pluralism, sees it as a challenge, and deals with it in a persuasive manner. The paper concludes with a depiction of two major stumbling blocks that might stand firmly in the way of such a pluralism-accommodating political Confucianism.     

Dynamic time warping: a new method in the study of poor handwriting

Poor handwriting is a diagnostic criterion for developmental coordination disorder. Typical of poor handwriting is its low overall quality and the high variability of the spatial characteristics of the letters, usually assessed with a subjective handwriting scale. Recently, Dynamic Time Warping (DTW), a technique originally developed for speech recognition, was introduced for pattern recognition in handwriting. The present study evaluates its application to analyze poor handwriting. Forty children attending Dutch mainstream primary schools were recruited and based on their scores on the Concise Evaluation Scale for Children's Handwriting (Dutch abbreviation: BHK), 20 good and 20 poor writers (of whom 13 were scheduled for handwriting intervention) were identified. The groups were matched for age (7-9 years), school grade (grades 2 and 3) and handedness. The children subsequently wrote sequences of the letter "a" on a graphics tablet in three conditions (normal, fast, and accurate). Classical kinematics were obtained and for each individual letter DTW was used to calculate the distance from the mean shape. The DTW data revealed much higher variability in the letter forms of the poor writers that was independent of the kinematic results of larger trajectories, faster movements, and higher pen pressure. The current results suggest that DTW is a valid and objective technique for letter-form analysis in handwriting and may hence be useful to evaluate the rehabilitation treatments of children suffering from poor handwriting. In education research it may be exploited to explore how children (should) learn to write.     

The role of global top-down factors in local eye-movement control in reading

Although the development of the field of reading has been impressive, there are a number of issues that still require much more attention. One of these concerns the variability of skilled reading within the individual. This paper explores the topic in three ways: (1) it quantifies the extent to which, two factors, the specific reading task (comprehension vs. word verification) and the format of reading material (sentence vs. passage) influence the temporal aspects of reading as expressed in word-viewing durations; (2) it examines whether they also affect visuomotor aspects of eye-movement control; and (3) determine whether they can modulate local lexical processing. The results reveal reading as a dynamic, interactive process involving semi-autonomous modules, with top-down influences clearly evident in the eye-movement record.     

The conjunction fallacy and the many meanings of and

According to the conjunction rule, the probability of A and B cannot exceed the probability of either single event. This rule reads and in terms of the logical operator wedge, interpreting A and B as an intersection of two events. As linguists have long argued, in natural language "and" can convey a wide range of relationships between conjuncts such as temporal order ("I went to the store and bought some whisky"), causal relationships ("Smile and the world smiles with you"), and can indicate a collection of sets rather than their intersection (as in "He invited friends and colleagues to the party"). When "and" is used in word problems researching the conjunction fallacy, the conjunction rule, which assumes the logical operator wedge, therefore cannot be mechanically invoked as a norm. Across several studies, we used different methods of probing people's understanding of and-conjunctions, and found evidence that many of those respondents who violated the conjunction rule in their probability or frequency judgments inferred a meaning of and that differs from the logical operator wedge. We argue that these findings have implications for whether judgments involving ambiguous and-conjunctions that violate the conjunction rule should be considered manifestations of fallacious reasoning or of reasonable pragmatic and semantic inferences.     

Negative Affectivity and Drinking in Adolescents: An Examination of Moderators Predicted by Affect Regulation Theory

This investigation examined potential moderators of the longitudinal relation between negative affectivity and drinking. Specifically tested was the degree to which alcohol expectancies and coping styles moderate the relation between negative affectivity in early adolescence and drinking in middle and late adolescence. Four hundred ninety nine early adolescents completed inventories of negative affectivity, coping style, and tension reduction expectancies, and were followed up with inventories of drinking in middle and late adolescence. Constructive coping moderated the relation between negative affectivity and drinking in middle adolescence, such that only those with poor coping skills exhibited this positive relation. Although early negative affectivity was directly related to drinking in late adolescence, no interactions between negative affectivity and expectancies or coping were detected for drinking at that age. This absence of consistent moderating effects indicates significant limitations in the ability of the traditionally-conceived affect regulation model to reliably predict adolescent drinking. This research was conducted at the Center for Education and Drug Abuse Research (CEDAR) which is located in the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh and is supported by grant P50-DA-05605 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.