Artificial Moral Agents: A Survey of the Current Status

Science and Engineering Ethics - One of the objectives in the field of artificial intelligence for some decades has been the development of artificial agents capable of coexisting in harmony with...     

Eye movements and spoken language comprehension: effects of visual context on syntactic ambiguity resolution

When participants follow spoken instructions to pick up and move objects in a visual workspace, their eye movements to the objects are closely time-locked to referential expressions in the instructions. Two experiments used this methodology to investigate the processing of the temporary ambiguities that arise because spoken language unfolds over time. Experiment 1 examined the processing of sentences with a temporarily ambiguous prepositional phrase (e.g., "Put the apple on the towel in the box") using visual contexts that supported either the normally preferred initial interpretation (the apple should be put on the towel) or the less-preferred interpretation (the apple is already on the towel and should be put in the box). Eye movement patterns clearly established that the initial interpretation of the ambiguous phrase was the one consistent with the context. Experiment 2 replicated these results using prerecorded digitized speech to eliminate any possibility of prosodic differences across conditions or experimenter demand. Overall, the findings are consistent with a broad theoretical framework in which real-time language comprehension immediately takes into account a rich array of relevant nonlinguistic context.     

Mental fatigue influence on effort-related cardiovascular response: difficulty effects and extension across cognitive performance domains

Two experiments investigated cardiovascular effects of mental fatigue as a function of (1) the difficulty of the cognitive challenge with which participants were confronted, and (2) the relevance of that challenge to the activity that instigated the fatigue. In the first, participants performed an easy (fatigue low) or difficult (fatigue high) counting task and then were presented an arithmetic challenge (task B relevance high) or a scanning challenge (task B relevance low) with instructions that they would avoid a noise if they attained a modest performance standard. Analysis of blood pressure responses assessed during the work periods revealed fatigue main effects, reflecting stronger responses for High Fatigue participants, regardless of the character of the second task. In the second, the procedure was the same except that it included a high performance standard and provided the chance to win a prize. Analysis of the pressure data revealed fatigue x work period interactions, reflecting relatively stronger responses among High Fatigue participants in work period 1, but relatively weaker responses among these participants in work period 2. Results confirm previous findings and support an analysis of fatigue influence on effort and associated cardiovascular responses. They also argue against the idea that mental fatigue influence may be confined to relevant cognitive performance realms.

Dissociative tendencies and memory performance on directed-forgetting tasks

The current article presents two studies that aimed to replicate DePrince and Freyd's (2001, 2004) studies demonstrating that high and low dissociators differentially recall neutral and trauma words under conditions of varying cognitive load. We did not find this effect. This lack of replication was apparent for both free recall and word recognition memory and in both studies. In effect, we found little evidence to support betrayal trauma theory, yet observed increased memory fallibility, as demonstrated by lower general recall and (in one study) commission errors, in high dissociators.     

Evaluation of communicative and linguistic development using the Spanish version of the MacArthur-Bates inventories

The MacArthur-Bates Inventories are a valid and reliable method for assessing communicative and linguistic skills in infants (8-15 months) and young children (16-30 months), and have been adapted to many languages. This paper presents their adaptation to Spanish. Structure, innovations included in the Spanish version, and the standardisation process are described, and some results obtained from the analysis of a sample of 1150 children are presented. The advantages and limitations of the use of parental report inventories are highlighted. For children before three years of age, there are very few assessment tools of language and communicative development with sufficient guarantees produced and edited in Spain. The Spanish version of the MacArthur-Bates Inventories represents an important contribution for early identification of language delays or disorders, and for follow-up of these cases.     

Psychophysiological mechanisms involved in the affective regulation and food restriction of women at risk of suffering from bulimia nervosa

The aim of the study was to explore the effect of visualizing food images under different mood states and food restriction conditions on the emotional modulation of two defense reflexes (startle reflex and cardiac defense). 72 women at risk of suffering from bulimia nervosa were assigned to two groups: 1) a group under induced positive, neutral, or negative mood state and, 2) a 6-hour-food-deprived group or a non-deprived group. Second-by-second heart rate and electromyogram activity from the orbiculari oculi region were recorded after the auditory stimulus. The results showed that, while viewing food images, non-deprived women under negative mood state potentiated the cardiac defense response and the startle motor reflex. Results are discussed in the context of emotional eating theories and Peter Lang's motivational priming model.     

Disorders in planning and strategy application in frontal lobe lesion patients

The aim of this study was to investigate deficits in planning ability using an adapted version of the Modified Six Elements Test, from the Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome—BADS [Wilson, B. A., Alderman, N., Burgess, P. W., Emslie, H., & Evans, J. J. (1996). Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS). Bury St Edmunds, U.K.: Thames Valley Test Company. Trans. Ricardo O Souza, Sergio L Schmidt. Rio de Janeiro: Cognição]. Subjects were left- and right-frontal lobe lesion patients. Other measures of executive dysfunctions used were verbal fluency, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, and the Trail Making Test. These other instruments were sensitive to detect executive deficits in the left frontal lobe lesion group, except the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, which showed impairment only for the frontal lobe lesion group as a whole. The Modified Six Elements Test detected planning disorders in left frontal lobe lesion patients. The deficit of these patients was due to a greater likelihood to break the rules of the task, that is, in plan-following processes, rather than in planning the strategic approach to solve it.     

How do we code the letters of a word when we have to write it? Investigating double letter representation in French

How do we code the letters of a word when we have to write it? We examined whether the orthographic representations that the writing system activates have a specific coding for letters when these are doubled in a word. French participants wrote words on a digitizer. The word pairs shared the initial letters and differed on the presence of a double letter (e.g., LISSER/LISTER). The results on latencies, letter and inter-letter interval durations revealed that L and I are slower to write when followed by a doublet (SS) than when not (ST). Doublet processing constitutes a supplementary cognitive load that delays word production. This suggests that word representations code letter identity and quantity separately. The data also revealed that the central processes that are involved in spelling representation cascade into the peripheral processes that regulate movement execution.