Event and form: two themes in the Davos-debate between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer

The article reconsiders the Davos-debate between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer to reassess the discussion of interrelations and differences of their philosophies. The focus is the fecund motifs of thought that each philosopher presents. These are worked out by dispersing the contexts. Heidegger’s primary motifs of thought are identified through the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard as the question of finitude understood as continuance of the event and as the act of understanding the event. The primary motif of thought in Cassirer’s philosophy is identified with the question of form and formation. It is argued that it is possible to think the motifs of event and form in connection with each other. The focal point of connection between their philosophies is uncovered in the relations of form between persons—in the rigorous practice of promising and demanding. The philosophies of Heidegger and Cassirer are thus read in a way where they productively enhance each other without minimizing the differences of their motifs of thought.     

Information search and mental representation in risky decision making: The advantages first principle

In three experiments the problem is investigated how people identify early in the decision process those alternatives that are worthwhile to be examined in more detail. We assume that decision makers employ the Advantages first Principle: They first search for information about positive outcomes and then focus their information search (e.g., for negative consequences or for risk defusing operators) on those alternatives that appear attractive after this initial evaluation. In Experiment 1 (120 participants), initial information about consequences was varied for eight alternatives (no information, positive consequences, negative, or mixed for four alternatives). In all conditions, the great majority of participants followed both aspects of the Advantages first Principle. In Experiment 2, 60 participants decided in two quasi‐realistic scenarios with two alternatives each. Initial information was presented so that one alternative had better positive consequences, worse negative consequences, or both. In all conditions, more information was searched for in the initially better alternative. In Experiment 3 (20 participants) the Advantages first Principle was not only confirmed for a scenario but also for choices in traditional gambling tasks with two and eight alternatives, respectively. Participants could win or lose real money. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Recognition memory and the hippocampus: A test of the hippocampal contribution to recollection and familiarity

It has been suggested that the hippocampus selectively supports recollection and that adjacent cortex in the medial temporal lobe can support familiarity. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the hippocampus supports both recollection and familiarity. We tested these suggestions by assessing the performance of patients with hippocampal lesions on recognition memory tests that differ in the extent to which recollection and familiarity contribute to the recognition decision. When targets and foils are highly similar, prior evidence suggests that, on a forced-choice test in which targets are presented together with highly similar, corresponding foils (the FC-C format), performance is supported primarily by familiarity. By contrast, when targets are presented together with foils that are similar to other targets (the FC-NC format) or when memory is tested in a yes/no (Y/N) format, performance is based much more strongly on recollection. Accordingly, a finding that hippocampal damage impaired both Y/N recognition and FC-NC recognition but spared FC-C recognition would suggest that the hippocampus selectively supports recollection. We administered Y/N, FC-C, and FC-NC tests to five memory-impaired patients with circumscribed hippocampal lesions and 14 controls. The patients were impaired on all three types of recognition test, and there was no indication that the patients were disproportionately benefited or disproportionately impaired on any test. This pattern of performance suggests that the hippocampus supports both recollection and familiarity.The medial temporal lobe (the hippocampus plus the entorhinal, perirhinal, and parahippocampal cortices) is essential for the recognition of past experience. The capacity for recognition is widely thought to depend on two distinct processes, recollection and familiarity (Mandler 1980; Yonelinas et al. 2002; Wixted 2007). Recollection involves remembering specific details about the episode in which an item was encountered. Familiarity involves simply knowing that an item was presented, even when no additional information can be retrieved about the learning episode itself. This distinction has been prominent in recent discussions about memory, particularly in relation to its possible anatomical basis. One proposal is that recollection depends on the hippocampus and that familiarity depends on the adjacent medial temporal lobe cortex (Brown and Aggleton 2001; Mayes et al. 2002; Yonelinas et al. 2002). Alternatively, it has been suggested that the hippocampus is important for both recollection and familiarity and that the distinction between these two processes does not illuminate the functional differences between the hippocampus and adjacent cortex (Rutishauser et al. 2006; Wais et al. 2006; Squire et al. 2007; Wixted 2007).To clarify the role of the hippocampus in recognition memory, the performance of memory-impaired patients with hippocampal damage has often been compared to that of controls on tests that differ in the extent to which recollection and familiarity contribute to the recognition memory decision. One such approach involves the use of highly similar targets and foils tested using a yes/no (Y/N) format and a forced-choice corresponding (FC-C) format (Holdstock et al. 2002; Westerberg et al. 2006; Bayley et al. 2008). In the case of the Y/N format, participants see a list of targets intermixed with foils (each similar to one of the targets) and are asked to respond “yes” to the targets and “no” to the foils. In the FC-C format, participants see a target presented together with its corresponding, similar foil and are asked to identify the target. According to an idea advanced by Norman and O''Reilly (2003), familiarity can support FC-C recognition because one can make effective use of small but consistent differences between the familiarity signals triggered by the target and foil items. That is, when targets and foils are highly similar and are presented together in the FC-C format, familiarity for the target is likely to slightly and reliably exceed that of the similar foil, allowing the target to be correctly chosen on the basis of familiarity. By contrast, in the Y/N format, slight differences between the familiarity signals of target items and their corresponding foils no longer provide useful information, because the targets and their corresponding foils are not presented together at test. Accordingly, good performance with the Y/N format is more dependent on recollection than with the FC-C format.The same explanation may account for why performance on FC-C tests sometimes exceeds performance on forced-choice noncorresponding (FC-NC) tests (e.g., Hintzman 1988). In the FC-NC format, target items are presented together with a noncorresponding foil that is similar to another target item from the study list (Fig. 1). Thus, the FC-C and FC-NC tests differ only in that the similar targets and foils are presented together in the former but not in the latter. When the corresponding targets and foils are presented together (in the FC-C format), participants can make effective use of consistent differences in familiarity values (as discussed above). When the corresponding targets and foils are not presented together, participants cannot make use of the small differences that they might detect through a side-by-side comparison.Open in a separate windowFigure 1.Test format and materials for the three kinds of recognition test. For each test, 12 images, either objects (A) or silhouettes (B), were presented at study, and memory was tested in one of three ways. For the forced-choice corresponding test (FC-C), each target (a studied item) was presented together with a highly similar foil (a new item). For the forced-choice noncorresponding test (FC-NC), each target was presented together with a foil that was highly similar to a different target from the study list. Participants were asked to point to exactly the same image they had seen during study. For the yes/no test (Y/N), the 12 targets and the 12 foils (each similar to one of the targets) were intermixed and presented one at a time. Participants were asked to respond “yes” if they had seen exactly the same image before and “no” if they had not. Asterisks identify the target items.A recent study (Migo et al. 2009) provides empirical support for the suggestion that familiarity primarily contributes to the recognition decision in the FC-C format, whereas recollection contributes more strongly in the Y/N format and in the FC-NC format. In the Migo et al. (2009) study, healthy participants received FC-C, FC-NC, and Y/N tests after receiving either standard instructions to make their decisions based on familiarity or recollection or modified instructions to base their decisions on familiarity only. On the FC-NC test and on the Y/N test, performance using familiarity alone was significantly worse than under standard instructions. On the FC-C test, performance using familiarity alone was nearly as good as under standard instructions. This result supports the earlier suggestion that FC-C is primarily supported by familiarity, whereas recollection plays a larger role in FC-NC and Y/N recognition (Norman and O''Reilly 2003).If the hippocampus is critical for recollection but not for familiarity, and if good performance on the FC-C format can be achieved using familiarity alone, then patients with focal hippocampal lesions should be differentially impaired on the Y/N and FC-NC recognition test formats compared with the FC-C format. Three recent studies investigated this issue by assessing the effects of hippocampal damage (or presumed hippocampal damage) on Y/N and FC-C tests that used highly similar targets and foils (the FC-NC format was not used in these earlier studies). All three studies used black-and-white silhouette images of objects, and the FC-C test involved the target item and three similar foils (i.e., multiple-choice with four alternatives). In one study, a single patient with bilateral hippocampal damage (patient Y.R.) was impaired on the test of Y/N recognition but was unimpaired on the test of FC-C recognition (Holdstock et al. 2002). A similar result was reported in patients with a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (Westerberg et al. 2006). These findings have been taken to support the suggestion that the hippocampus selectively supports recollection. However, the study by Holdstock and colleagues (2002) involved a single patient (Y.R.), and findings from a single patient need not agree with findings obtained from a group of patients (see Discussion). In addition, the Westerberg et al. (2006) study involved individuals with a diagnosis of MCI for whom anatomical data were not available. It is therefore not clear what the status of the hippocampus was in these patients. Moreover, a standard Y/N procedure involving 12 study items and 24 test items (as opposed to the 12 study test items and 60 test items used in previous studies [Holdstock et al. 2002; Westerberg et al. 2006; Bayley et al. 2008]) might be better suited to address the question of whether Y/N recognition is selectively impaired in hippocampal patients. Bayley et al. (2008) tested five patients with circumscribed hippocampal damage using the same test materials and procedure as in Holdstock et al. (2002). When all 60 test items of the Y/N test were scored, the patients were found to be more impaired on the Y/N test than on the FC-C test. However, when only the first 24 test items of the Y/N test were scored (according to the standard Y/N procedure), the patients were found to be impaired on both the Y/N and FC-C tests to a similar degree.The earlier studies (Holdstock et al. 2002; Westerberg et al. 2006; Bayley et al. 2008) compared Y/N recognition to four-alternative FC-C recognition in which each target was presented along with three corresponding foils. None of the earlier studies investigated how patients with hippocampal lesions performed on FC-NC recognition. As Migo et al. (2009) point out, FC-C and FC-NC tests are better matched than the FC-C and Y/N tests because they are both forced-choice tests, and both use the same number of test trials. As such, they argue, it would be more useful to compare FC-C recognition performance to FC-NC recognition performance to determine whether patients with hippocampal lesions are intact or impaired on familiarity-based tests.The present study assessed Y/N, two-alternative FC-C, and two-alternative FC-NC recognition, using highly similar targets and foils. The tests were given to five patients with circumscribed hippocampal damage and 14 matched controls. The Y/N test involved an equal number of targets and foils (unlike the design used in the prior studies), and a two-alternative format was used for the forced-choice tests to make them comparable to the Y/N test (i.e., all three tests involved the same number of targets and foils). The FC-C and FC-NC tests were identical except with respect to how the targets and their corresponding foils were paired on the recognition test.To extend our findings beyond the stimuli used in prior studies, we also used color photographs of objects in addition to black-and-white silhouettes. Using these three test formats, we asked the following questions: (1) Does hippocampal damage impair Y/N recognition memory but spare, or disproportionately benefit, FC-C recognition (as suggested by the view that the hippocampus supports recollection and not familiarity)? Or does hippocampal damage impair Y/N and FC-C recognition similarly (as suggested by the view that the hippocampus supports both recollection and familiarity)? (2) Does hippocampal damage disproportionately benefit FC-C recognition relative to FC-NC recognition, or does hippocampal damage impair FC-C and FC-NC recognition similarly?     

The Relationship Between Personality and Peers’ Judgments of the Appropriateness of Accommodations for Individuals With Disabilities1

The purpose of this research was to provide a preliminary evaluation of how the personality characteristics of peers, as defined by the 5‐factor model of personality, explained their judgments of the appropriateness of accommodations given to disabled persons. We hypothesized that both agreeableness and openness to experience would be related positively to judgments of appropriateness and that conscientiousness would be related negatively. We also hypothesized that personality dimensions would interact with disability and accommodation types in determining judgments of appropriateness. We obtained partial support for our hypotheses in that the interactions of Disability × Accommodation × Agreeableness as well as Disability × Accommodation × Openness to Experience were significant, although the personality dimensions themselves did not produce significant results.     

Understanding Anti‐Arab Reactions Post‐9/11: The Role of Threats,Social Categories,and Personal Ideologies1

This study examined social psychological processes associated with anti‐Arab reactions (prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination) following the September 11 terrorist attacks. Participants (N= 201) responded to an online survey. Perceived threats, self‐categorization, social dominance orientation, and just‐world beliefs were tested for their effectiveness in predicting anti‐Arab reactions. The results reveal that self‐categorization and social dominance orientation each individually accounted for a substantial percentage of the variance, while perceived threats accounted for a relatively small amount of the variance in anti‐Arab responses. However, an integrated model demonstrated that social dominance orientation, threats, self‐categorization, and a threat by self‐categorization interaction provided the best prediction of anti‐Arab reactions. Results are discussed in terms of the theoretical and practical applications for understanding out‐group derogation following political‐cultural world events.     

Recalled Childhood Teasing among Non-Clinical, Non-College Adults

This study examined the psychometric properties of the Teasing Questionnaire—Revised (TQ-R) in a non-clinical community sample of adults. The TQ-R, Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale, Beck Depression Inventory-II, and UCLA Loneliness Scale were administered to 355 adults, aged 18–86 years. Confirmatory factor analysis showed the five-factor teasing model proposed by Storch et al. (Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 18, 665–679, 2004c) was not a good fit for these data. A three-factor model consisting of Academic, Social, and Appearance factors was found through exploratory analyses [termed the Teasing Questionnaire—Revised—Short Form (TQ-R-S)]. Internal consistency was good for the TQ-R-S Total Score and resultant TQ-R-S Academic, Social, and Appearance factors. TQ-R-S scores were directly correlated with current psychosocial functioning with correlations of a small to medium effect size. These results provide evidence that teasing during childhood is linked to later symptoms of depression, anxiety, and loneliness.     

Comparing Personality Test Formats and Warnings: Effects on criterion‐related validity and test‐taker reactions

The potential for applicant response distortion on personality measures remains a major concern in high‐stakes testing situations. Many approaches to understanding response distortion are too transparent (e.g., instructed faking studies) – or are too subtle (e.g., correlations with social desirability measures as indices of faking). Recent research reveals more promising approaches in two methods: using forced‐choice (FC) personality test items and warning against faking. The present study examined effects of these two methods on criterion‐related validity and test‐taker reactions. Results supported incremental validity for an FC and Likert‐scale measure in warning and no‐warning conditions, above and beyond cognitive ability. No clear differences emerged between the FC vs Likert measures or warning vs no‐warning conditions in terms of validity. However, some evidence suggested that FC measures and warnings may produce negative test‐taker reactions. We conclude with implications for implementation in selection settings.     

Best friends forever?: High school best friendships and the transition to college

The transition from high school to college is an important phase for adolescents in social as well as academic aspects. This study examined the changes that occur in high school best friendships during the first year of college. Results revealed that during the first year in college high school best friendships declined in satisfaction, commitment, rewards, and investments. During this period there was also an increase in costs and alternatives to best friend relationships. Proximity did not influence the friendships; however, level of communication did moderate friendship deterioration. Furthermore, individuals who continued their best friendship reported engaging in more maintenance behaviors of positivity, supportiveness, self‐disclosure, and interaction than individuals who reported a change in the relationship to close or casual friendship. Maintaining the best friendship also appeared to buffer adolescents from social loneliness. The results are discussed in terms of the implications of transitions on adolescent friendships.     

Non-violence: An imperative for a flourishing collective life

Editorial

Non-violence: An imperative for a flourishing collective life     

Body Composition And Human Sleep

It has been reported that fit atheletes have more slow wave sleep (SWS), sleep longer and have shorter sleep onset latencies than unfit individuals. However, we have shown that these differences are not a direct consequence of physical fitness. This suggests that the effect is due to more enduring characteristics of individuals. We report two experiments designed to test the hypothesis that individual differences in sleep are related to differences in body composition. The hypothesis was tested in two different experiments, each comparing independent groups of fit athletes with unfit non-athletes. In each experiment both sleep and a number of anthropometric variables were measured. Twenty-five fit and 22 unfit subjects were run in Experiment 1 and 17 fit and 17 unfit in Experiment 2. In Experiment 1 percentage fat was estimated from a skin fold method, while in Experiment 2 lean body mass (LBM) was estimated from 24 h. urinary creatinine. The results showed that percentage LBM was negatively related to SWS in fit subjects, while the amount of LBM and weight were negatively related in the unfit groups. When all subjects were combined within each experiment, significant negative correlations were found between SWS and both LBM and percentage LBM in Experiment 2. The results suggest that body composition influences SWS levels, but not other components of sleep.