The Gettier Intuition from South America to Asia

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - This article examines whether people share the Gettier intuition (viz. that someone who has a true justified belief that p may nonetheless fail...     

Making judgments in a two‐sequence cue environment: The effects of differential cue strengths,order sequence,and distraction

Consumers frequently evaluate multiple sequential cues of varying strengths in order to draw inferences about a product's quality. The results of three experiments show that when consumers are not distracted, they judge a product's quality more favorably following a strong–weak cue sequence relative to a weak–strong sequence (a primacy effect). However once consumers are distracted from the evaluation task, the primacy effect reverses to a recency effect, whereby consumers judge a product's quality more favorably following a weak–strong cue sequence. Process tests suggest that distraction crowds consumers' short-term working memory and inhibits the spontaneous rehearsal and the subsequent recall of the cue presented first in the information sequence.     

The differential processing of price in gains and losses: the effects of frame and need for cognition

Perhaps the most fundamental principle of decision theory is that more money is preferred to less: the principle of desired wealth. Based on this and other principles such as reference dependence and loss aversion, researchers have derived and demonstrated mental accounting (MA) rules for multiple outcome situations. Experiment 1 tested the invariance of the desired wealth principle and two mental accounting rules (mixed gain, e.g. $100 gain and a $50 loss; mixed loss, e.g. $100 loss and a $50 gain) across types of decision maker and frame. The desired wealth principle and the MA rule for mixed gains were found to vary depending upon (1) the thoughtfulness of the decision maker (need for cognition, NC), and (2) the frame used to describe gains and losses (e.g. a gain of $x versus a gain of y%). The MA rule for mixed losses, however, was found to be immune to framing effects, even among people who are generally less thoughtful. The differential processing of gains and losses across frames (dollar versus percentage) and individuals (less versus more thoughtful) was tested further in Experiment 2 where evaluations of mixed losses were made at the level of the gestalt as well as the constituent (the gain and the loss being evaluated separately). Framing effects were evidenced only among subjects lower in NC and only when the constituent gain was evaluated. Evaluations of the overall mixed loss and the constituent loss were comparable across situation and individual, suggesting that losses motivate greater processing among people otherwise inclined toward cognitive miserliness. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Deriving ultrametric tree structures from proximity data confounded by differential stimulus familiarity

This paper presents a new procedure called TREEFAM for estimating ultrametric tree structures from proximity data confounded by differential stimulus familiarity. The objective of the proposed TREEFAM procedure is to quantitatively filter out the effects of stimulus unfamiliarity in the estimation of an ultrametric tree. A conditional, alternating maximum likelihood procedure is formulated to simultaneously estimate an ultrametric tree, under the unobserved condition of complete stimulus familiarity, and subject-specific parameters capturing the adjustments due to differential unfamiliarity. We demonstrate the performance of the TREEFAM procedure under a variety of alternative conditions via a modest Monte Carlo experimental study. An empirical application provides evidence that the TREEFAM outperforms traditional models that ignore the effects of unfamiliarity in terms of superior tree recovery and overall goodness-of-fit.     

Energetic effects of stimulus intensity on prolonged simple reaction-time performance

The efficiency of cognition is modulated by energetic factors like effort, fatigue or circadian variation, which affect even the most basic cognitive operations. For instance, speeded detection in simple reaction-time (SRT) tasks usually slows down over time. The literature suggests that either mindlessness due to routinization or mental fatigue due to attentional resource depletion might underlie this decrement. We tested these assumptions in three 25-min visual SRT tasks using easy-to-detect high-intensity and hard-to-detect low-intensity stimuli presented in both blocked and mixed fashion. Mindlessness theory predicts that less monotonous stimulation (i.e. the mixed presentation) would mitigate the time-related decrement for high- and low-intensity stimuli alike, whereas resource-depletion theory predicts opposite effects of mixed presentation on high- versus low-intensity stimuli. Indeed, stimulus intensity and presentation mode cross-interacted significantly, indicating that the performance decline was steeper for high-intensity stimuli but less steep for low-intensity stimuli during mixed compared to blocked presentation, respectively. These results strongly suggest that the time-related efficiency decrement during prolonged SRT performance is related to accumulating mental fatigue. A conjecture is put forward that explains both resource depletion and mindlessness from the perspective of self-regulation. Our study underscores the need to incorporate energetic factors into models of cognition to facilitate their translation into real-world applications.     

Effects of pre-learning stress on memory for neutral, positive and negative words: Different roles of cortisol and autonomic arousal

Stress can have enhancing or impairing effects on memory. Here, we addressed the effect of pre-learning stress on subsequent memory and asked whether neutral and emotionally valent information are differentially affected by specific stress components, autonomic arousal and stress-induced cortisol. Ninety-six healthy men and women underwent either a stressor (modified cold pressor test) or a control warm water exposure. During stress, participants showed comparable autonomic arousal (heart rate, blood pressure), while 60 percent showed an increase of cortisol (responders vs. 40 percent non-responders). Ten minutes after the cold pressor test neutral, positive and negative words were presented. Free recall was tested 1 and 24 h later. Overall, positive and negative words were better recalled than neutral words. Stress enhanced the recall of neutral words independently of cortisol response. In contrast, the free recall of negative words was enhanced in cortisol responders in the 1-h but not 24-h test which might suggest different effects of cortisol on consolidation and reconsolidation processes. Recall for positive words was unaffected by stress-induced cortisol. To summarize, (i) pre-learning stress can enhance memory for neutral words independently of cortisol and (ii) stress effects on memory for negative words appear to rely on stress-induced cortisol elevations, the absence of this effect for positive words might be at least partly due to differences in arousal evoked by positive vs. negative words.     

Stimulus needs are a moving target: 240 additional matched literal and metaphorical sentences for testing neural hypotheses about metaphor

As the cognitive neuroscience of metaphor has evolved, so too have the theoretical questions of greatest interest. To keep pace with these developments, in the present study we generated a large set of metaphoric and literal sentence pairs ideally suited to addressing the current methodological and conceptual needs of metaphor researchers. In particular, the need has emerged to distinguish metaphors along three dimensions: the grammatical class of their base terms, the sensorimotor features of their base terms, and the syntactic form in which the base terms appear. To meet this need, we generated nominal metaphors (and matched literal sentences) using entity nouns as the base terms, with the intention that they be used in concert with already published sets of predicate metaphors or nominal metaphors using event nouns. Using the results of three norming experiments, we provide 120 pairs of closely matched metaphoric and literal sentences that are characterized along 14 dimensions: 11 at the sentence level (length, frequency, concreteness, familiarity, naturalness, imageability, figurativeness, interpretability, ease of interpretation, valence, and valence judgment reaction time), and three related to the base term (visual, motion, and auditory imagery). These items extend previously published stimuli, filling an extant gap in metaphor research and allowing for tests of new behavioral and neural hypotheses about metaphor.     

The Grotesque Female in Malaysian Poems: Shaping the Migrant��s Psyche

The works of Malaysian poet, Wong Phui Nam's Against the Wilderness (vii) China bride and Variations on a Birthday Theme (iv) Kali, illustrate a bride and a mother in terrifying images. Wong's stylistic form of representing the female body through startling images of inversion and degradation evoke feelings of unease. The suspension between the known and the unknown causes a bewildering reality verging on madness. Interpreted through the lens of the carnivalesque, specifically, the grotesque body, festive language and parody, I attempt to reconstruct the psyche of the Chinese migrant which underpins these poems. The migrant who arrived in Malaya during the colonial era in the early nineteenth century faced political and social struggles in adapting to a new land. In the poems, the migrant juxtaposes his position to a female and uses the female body as a site of contention to intensify the torment of the psyche and to reflect the despair of the Chinese in Malaysia.