Relative category-specific preservation in semantic dementia? Evidence from 35 cases

Category-specific deficits have rarely been reported in semantic dementia (SD). To our knowledge, only four previous studies have documented category-specific deficits, and these have focused on the living versus non-living things contrast rather than on more fine-grained semantic categories. This study aimed to determine whether a category-specific effect could be highlighted by a semantic sorting task administered to 35 SD patients once at baseline and again after 2 years and to 10 Alzheimer’s disease patients (AD). We found a relative preservation of fruit and vegetables only in SD.This relative preservation of fruit and vegetables could be considered with regard to the importance of color knowledge in their discrimination. Indeed, color knowledge retrieval is known to depend on the left posterior fusiform gyrus which is relatively spared in SD. Finally, according to predictions of semantic memory models, our findings best fitted the Devlin and Gonnerman’s computational account.     

The Sex and Race of Satire: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Charlie Hebdo</Emphasis> and the Politics of Representation in Contemporary France

This essay argues that we cannot fully grasp what has been at stake in discussions following the January 2015 attacks in Paris, nor the symbolic place Charlie Hebdo has subsequently come to hold in French society, unless we pay attention to the ways in which gender, sex, and race have shaped both Charlie Hebdo’s visual register and contemporary representations of Frenchness and difference. Within the French context, difference has historically been assigned to bodies that are imagined to disrupt the proper gendered and sexual ordering of the nation, focusing recently on “Arab” and “Muslim” gendered bodies, just as Jewish bodies had been caricatured earlier in the twentieth century. This essay therefore argues that understanding Charlie Hebdo’s satire requires examining how the sexualization of race in representations of those deemed different, especially Muslims, has become incredibly banal in contemporary France. The magazine participated in rather than exposed what came to be seen as commonsense beliefs that both Left and Right relied on and that marginalized Muslims from the republican order.     

Inhibitory control of threat remembering in PTSD

ABSTRACT

Intrusive traumatic recollections suggest an inability in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to control and notably to inhibit memories for trauma-related information. Supported by inhibitory deficits found on experimental settings in PTSD, memory functioning and memory biases in the disorder were usually explained through inhibitory and control deficits in the processing of trauma-related information. The present study aimed to directly assess this hypothesis by investigating memory control abilities for emotional information in PTSD. For this purpose, 34 patients diagnosed with PTSD were compared to 37 non-PTSD controls on an item-cued directed forgetting paradigm for emotional words combined with a Remember/Know recognition procedure. Results revealed enhanced amounts of Remember recognitions for trauma-related words in PTSD. Moreover, we replicated findings of memory control impairments in the disorder. However, such impairments only occurred for non-trauma-related words. Accordingly, it appeared that PTSD patients presented preserved memory control abilities for trauma-related words, at the expenses of other emotional valences. Surprisingly, PTSD patients presented a preserved ability to control and notably to inhibit their memory functioning for trauma-related material. In addition to potential theoretical and clinical relevance, these results are discussed in the light of resource reallocation hypotheses and vigilant-avoidant theories of information processing in PTSD.     

Liking for happy- and sad-sounding music: Effects of exposure

We examined liking for happy- and sad-sounding music as a function of exposure, which varied both in quantity (number of exposures) and in quality (focused or incidental listening). Liking ratings were higher for happy than for sad music after focused listening, but similar after incidental listening. In the incidental condition, liking ratings increased linearly as a function of exposure. In the focused condition, liking ratings were an inverted U-shaped function of exposure, with initial increases in liking (after 2 exposures) followed by decreases (after 8 or 32 exposures). The results documented that: (1) sad music is liked as much as happy music in some instances; (2) frequency of exposure causes both familiarity (positive) and over-familiarity (negative) effects; and (3) effects of exposure on liking differ for focused and incidental listening.     

"Time flies in the presence of angry faces"… depending on the temporal task used!

A number of studies have reported that the perception of an arousing emotional stimulus, such as an angry face, results in temporal overestimations which are probably due to the speeding up of a clock-like system. The aim of the present study was to examine whether this emotional effect can be generalized to all temporal tasks irrespective of the underlying cognitive processes involved in each task. Five different temporal tasks involving the presentation of neutral and angry faces were therefore tested: bisection, generalization, verbal estimation, production and reproduction. Our results showed an overestimation of time for the angry compared to the neutral faces in the temporal bisection, verbal estimation and production tasks but not in the temporal generalization and reproduction tasks. Moreover, the results obtained in the temporal verbal estimation and production tasks suggest that this temporal overestimation of the angry faces was associated with relatively more accurate estimates. The involvement of both arousal and attention mechanisms in the effect of emotional facial expressions on time perception is discussed in the light of the differences in the impact of the same emotional stimulus as a function of the temporal task considered.     

Mapping numerical processing, reading, and executive functions in the developing brain: an fMRI meta-analysis of 52 studies including 842 children

Tracing the connections from brain functions to children's cognitive development and education is a major goal of modern neuroscience. We performed the first meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data obtained over the past decade (1999-2008) on more than 800 children and adolescents in three core systems of cognitive development and school learning: numerical abilities, reading, and executive functions (i.e. cognitive control). We ran Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) meta-analyses to obtain regions of reliable activity across all the studies. The results indicate that, unlike results usually reported for adults, children primarily engage the frontal cortex when solving numerical tasks. With age, there may be a shift from reliance on the frontal cortex to reliance on the parietal cortex. In contrast, the frontal, temporo-parietal and occipito-temporal regions at work during reading in children are very similar to those reported in adults. The executive frontal regions are also consistent with the imaging literature on cognitive control in adults, but the developmental comparison between children and adolescents demonstrates a key role of the anterior insular cortex (AIC) with an additional right AIC involvement in adolescents.     

The effect of expectancy of a threatening event on time perception in human adults

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of a threatening stimulus in human adults in a temporal bisection task. In Experiment 1, for two anchor duration conditions (400/800 vs. 800/1600 ms), the participants completed trials in which the probe duration was followed by an aversive stimulus or a nonaversive stimulus. The results showed that the duration was judged longer when the participants expected an aversive rather than a nonaversive stimulus. In Experiment 2, the effect of the temporal localization of the aversive stimulus was also tested, with the aversive stimulus being presented at the beginning or at the end of the probe duration. The results revealed a temporal overestimation in each condition compared to the trials in which no aversive stimulus was presented. Furthermore, the temporal overestimation was greater when the expectation for the forthcoming threatening stimulus was longer. This temporal overestimation is explained in terms of a speeding-up of the neural timing system in response to the increase in the arousal level produced by the expectation of a threatening stimulus.     

Predicting the Personal Appeal of Marketing Images Using Computational Methods

Images play a central role in digital marketing. They attract attention, trigger emotions, and shape consumers’ first impressions of products and brands. We propose that the shift from one‐to‐many mass communication to highly personalized one‐to‐one communication requires an understanding of image appeal at a personal level. Instead of asking “How appealing is this image?” we ask “How appealing is this image to this particular consumer?” Using the well‐established five‐factor model of personality, we apply machine learning algorithms to predict an image's personality appeal—the personality of consumers to which the image appeals most—from a set of 89 automatically extracted image features (Study 1). We subsequently apply the same algorithm on new images to predict consequential outcomes from the fit between consumer and image personality. We show that image‐person fit adds incremental predictive power over the images’ general appeal when predicting (a) consumers’ liking of new images (Study 2) and (b) consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions (Study 3).     

Interaction with a high-versus low-competence influence source in inductive reasoning

Literature on inductive reasoning shows that when testing hypotheses, people are biased toward the use of confirmatory strategies (P. C. Wason, 1960). In the present article, the authors presented 2 studies showing how people use confirmation and disconfirmation strategies during actual interaction in problem solving. Study 1 showed that participants were able to learn to use disconfirmation when confronted with a low-competence, nonthreatening partner. When the partner was high in competence (thereby threatening the participant's competence), participants used confirmation, even when the partner used disconfirmation. In Study 2, the authors aimed at generalizing the aforementioned results by exploring the hypothesis that disconfirmation stems from the possibility of diverging from norms. Participants who were confronted with the violation of a conversational norm used a high proportion of disconfirmation, whatever the source of influence. When there was no violation but there was a low-competence partner, the proportion of disconfirmation was high; when there was no violation but there was a high-competence partner, the proportion of disconfirmation was low. The authors discussed the interpersonal functions of confirmation and disconfirmation.     

loneliness and belonging: is stoic cosmopolitanism still defensible ?

In view of recent articles citing the Stoics as a defence or refutation of cosmopolitanism it is legitimate to ask whether the Stoics did in fact have an argument for cosmopolitanism which may be useful to contemporary political philosophers. I begin by discussing an interpretation of Stoic views on cosmopolitanism by Martha Nussbaum and A.A. Long and show that the arguments they attribute to the Stoics are not tenable in the light of present day philosophy. I then argue that the Stoics did offer a very different argument for cosmopolitanism which is both more interesting and more plausible in that it draws on a conception of human nature similar to Aristotles and contemporary virtue ethics. Lastly I consider an objection made to their particular brand of cosmopolitanism by Martha Nussbaum, namely that a Stoic cosmopolitan life is devoid of personal affiliation and therefore unbearably lonely. I argue that this objection is in fact unfounded.I would like to thank William Wringe, Annick Jaulin, the members of the Bilkent Seminar Group and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments.