A comprehensive semantic framework for data integration systems

A data integration system provides the user with a unified view, called global schema, of the data residing at different sources. Users issue their queries against the global schema, and the system computes answers to queries by suitably accessing the sources, through the mapping, i.e., the specification of the relationship between the global schema and the sources. Since sources are in general autonomous subsystems, the information provided by the data at the sources and the mapping is likely not to be consistent with the knowledge expressed by the global schema. Therefore, the question arises of how to interpret user queries in such a situation, i.e., in the presence of data contradicting the global schema and the mapping. In this paper, we provide an in-depth analysis of the problem of dealing with inconsistencies in data integration systems. In this respect, we highlight the central role played by the mapping, and propose a general “mapping-centered” semantics that allows for computing significant answers to user queries even in the presence of inconsistent information. Based on such a semantic analysis, we define a general formal framework for data integration. Then, we argue that our semantic approach formalizes a very reasonable way of handling inconsistency in such systems, since practically all the existing proposals in the literature can be reconstructed in our framework. This allows for comparing and evaluating the different existing proposals.     

Decision-making competence in younger and older adults: which cognitive abilities contribute to the application of decision rules?

Older adults perform worse than younger adults when applying decision rules to choose between options that vary along multiple attributes. Although previous studies have shown that general fluid cognitive abilities contribute to the accurate application of decision rules, relatively little is known about which specific cognitive abilities play the most important role. We examined the independent roles of working memory, verbal fluency, semantic knowledge, and components of executive functioning. We found that age-related decline in applying decision rules was statistically mediated by age-related decline in working memory and verbal fluency. Our results have implications for theories of aging and decision-making.     

Guest Editors’ Introduction

Journal of Philosophical Logic -     

Perceptual multistability in figure-ground segregation using motion stimuli

In a series of experiments using ambiguous stimuli, we investigate the effects of displaying ordered, discrete series of images on the dynamics of figure-ground segregation. For low frame presentation speeds, the series were perceived as a sequence of discontinuous, static images, while for high speeds they were perceived as continuous. We conclude that using stimuli varying continuously along one parameter results in stronger hysteresis and reduces spontaneous switching compared to matched static stimuli with discontinuous parameter changes. The additional evidence that the size of the hysteresis effects depended on trial duration is consistent with the stochastic nature of the dynamics governing figure-ground segregation. The results showed that for continuously changing stimuli, alternative figure-ground organizations are resolved via low-level, dynamical competition. A second series of experiments confirmed these results with an ambiguous stimulus based on Petter’s effect.     

Mental models and language registers in the psychoanalysis of psychosis: An overview of a thirteen‐year analysis2

The author suggests that the use of mental models and language registers may help an analysis to proceed, especially in psychosis, when the patient has not yet developed a mental space that will allow him/her the functions of knowledge and containment of emotions. Models, according to Bion, are a primitive approach to abstraction and a manifestation of the analyst's reverie that enables him/her to transform sense data into alpha‐elements. Ferrari, in a further development of Bion's theories, hypothesises a relationship between the transference and the internal level of body‐mind communication, and proposes the use of language registers to sustain the psychoanalytic process. The author presents several clinical examples from a thirteen‐year, four‐session‐a‐week analysis of a psychotic analysand who was initially confused, paranoid and altogether unable to bring self‐reflective thought to bear on her overwhelming emotions and had, by the end of the analysis, completely recovered from her psychotic symptoms. The clinical material shows how the technical tools of mental models and language registers helped in the construction of a mental space and spatio‐temporal parameters, permitting the patient to tolerate overwhelming concrete emotions and finally to recognise and work through the emotions of an intense transference.     

Symmetric frenzy and catastrophic change: A consideration of primitive mental states in the wake of Bion and Matte Blanco

The author explores the connections between Matte Blanco's notion of symmetric frenzy, i.e. the turbulence characteristic of the deepest levels of mental functioning, and Bion's concept of catastrophic change. For Bion, mental links are retrieved from the formless darkness of infinity. With catastrophic change, emotional violence and the confining nature of representation come into conflict, leaving the subject prey to an explosiveness that paralyses mental resources. Matte Blanco identifies indivisibility as the abyss in which all differentiation ceases; he bases his model on the conflict between symmetry and asymmetry. Infinity, he maintains, is where the first forms of mentalization develop. Both Bion and Matte Blanco emphasize the contrast between the immensity of mental space and the spatio-temporal order introduced by the activation of thinking functions. The author presents clinical material from the analysis of a psychotic patient, stressing the need to encourage both working through the defect of thinking (Bion) and 'unfolding' manifestations of symmetry (Matte Blanco) so as to foster the activation of the resources of thought, meanwhile postponing transference interpretation. He concludes with two later sessions, in which recognition of the analyst in the transference allows the analysand to develop his capacity for containment and asymmetric differentiation.     

Personality traits and endocrine response as possible asymmetry factors of agonistic outcome in karate athletes

Individual variations of plasma levels of hormones testosterone (T) and cortisol (C), before (pre) and after (post) Kumite (real fight) and Kata (ritualized fight) were measured in male karate athletes and analyzed in relation with the agonistic outcome (i.e. winning or losing the fight) and personality trait measures. T and C increased only during Kumite contest and pre‐ and post‐competition C levels were higher in losers than winners. Losers showed higher levels of harm avoidance and anxiety as well as lower level of novelty seeking than winners. Importantly, novelty seeking negatively correlates with pre C and the higher the level of risk assessment, emotionality and insecurity indexes the higher the pre C level. In conclusion, personality traits might be an important factor asymmetry between athletes influencing both the probability of winning or losing an agonistic interaction and the different anticipatory endocrine response to the incipient fight. Aggr. Behav. 35:324–333, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Causal cognition and causal realism

Recent research on “causal cognition” in adults and infants shows that we can perceive singular causal relations not previously experienced. In particular, infants that are able to perceive causality seem to rely on innate beliefs and principles that allow a priori inference of a connection between cause and effect. Can causal cognition in infants justify the thesis of causal realism? On the one hand, it weakens the central pillar of the Humean arguments: the impossibility of a synthetic a priori causal inference. On the other hand, if perception is the privileged way of justifying the reality of objects of the external world, that is valid in the case of causal relations as well. Moreover, the perception of causal relations, based on innate principles and beliefs, reflects the selective results of the interaction between the real constraints of the physical structure of the world and the evolution of the human mind.     

Psychophysical judgment of curvatures

In this study we explored psychophysical judgments (magnitude estimation) of the curvature of visual lines. Prior research has lacked a rigorous definition of curvature, but here it was defined as the reverse of the ray of the osculating circle tangent to the curve in the given point. Four different functions were evaluated: hyperbole, sinusoid, parabola, and a cubic function. Using the method of magnitude estimation to judge 20 exemplar curves from each of the families, three respondents made a total of 1440 estimations each. Responses to all four families of curves were fit well by Stevens' power function with an exponent less than 1. One application of this research is the use of such curves as variables in assessing illusions of curvature.     

On the psychoanalytic treatment of a psychotic breakdown

The author discusses the four-session-a-week psychoanalysis of a patient in psychotic breakdown with outbursts of violence. The analyst's first appearance in the transference was as a "rattle" (the noise made by his shifting in his chair), which constituted undeniable evidence of corporality--first the analyst's and then the patient's--leading eventually to the awareness of there being two separate persons in the psychoanalytic relationship. This case highlights the analyst's need to function in a particular way, and to allow him- or herself to be used in a particular way, in working with very disturbed patients, where issues of the body-mind relationship and of separation from the other are often central to the analytic work.