The biographical approach in Karl Jaspers’ work: From philosophy of life to autobiography

This study considers the origins and characteristics of Karl Jaspers’ biographical approach. Specifically, we analyse how this approach manifests itself in Jaspers’ work, namely, in his understanding of psychology, his psychology of worldviews, his views on the history of philosophy and his philosophical method. The biographical approach was a central strategy in Jaspers’ work as an appeal to life and was closely linked with how Jaspers understood both philosophy and his thought. For Jaspers, biography could restore mental unity and reveal the existence behind creativity.     

Thinking love: Heidegger and Arendt

“Thinking Love: Heidegger and Arendt” explores the problematic nature of romantic love as it developed between Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, whom Heidegger later called “the passion of his life.” I suggest that three different ways of understanding love can be found at work in Heidegger and Arendt’s relationship, namely, the perfectionist, the unconditional, and the ontological models of love. Explaining these different ways of thinking romantic love, this paper shows how the distinctive problems of the perfectionist and unconditional models played out in Heidegger and Arendt’s relationship and how that relationship eventually gave rise to the third, ontological understanding of love. This ontological vision of love combines some of the strengths of the perfectionist and unconditional views while avoiding their worst problems, and so emerges as perhaps the most important philosophical lesson about romantic love to be drawn from studying the lifelong love affair between two of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers.     

Preliminary validation study of the 3-min wrist-worn psychomotor vigilance test

The 10-min psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) is a widely used tool to assess behavioral alertness. In operational environments, however, the 3-min version of the PVT is more practicable. Under controlled laboratory conditions, we compared performance on the 3-min PVT on a wrist-worn device with the 3-min PVT on a laptop computer. We conducted two repeated measures experiments (72 participants) to assess the effects of PVT device type (laptop or wrist-worn), backlight on the wrist-worn device (on or off), ambient light (low or normal levels), and interstimulus interval (ISI). First, we compared the wrist-worn PVT (ISI of 2–10 s) with the laptop-based PVT (ISI of 1–4 s). Participants performed six PVT trials counterbalanced for order of ambient light and device type. In both ambient-lighting conditions, the median differences in PVT metrics (reaction time, response speed, and percentage of 355-ms or 500-ms lapses combined with false starts) between the laptop and the wrist-worn PVT with the backlight on were less than 4.5 %. Specifically, the median difference in reaction times was less than 10 ms. However, the standard deviation in most metrics using the wrist-worn PVT was twice that of the laptop. In a second experiment, we compared the wrist-worn and laptop PVTs with the same ISIs (1–4 s) in normal light conditions. The results suggest that PVT data can be collected reliably in the field using the wrist-worn device with the backlight on and an ISI of 2–10 s.     

Testing the generality of the zoom-lens model: Evidence for visual-pathway specific effects of attended-region size on perception

There are volumes of information available to process in visual scenes. Visual spatial attention is a critically important selection mechanism that prevents these volumes from overwhelming our visual system’s limited-capacity processing resources. We were interested in understanding the effect of the size of the attended area on visual perception. The prevailing model of attended-region size across cognition, perception, and neuroscience is the zoom-lens model. This model stipulates that the magnitude of perceptual processing enhancement is inversely related to the size of the attended region, such that a narrow attended-region facilitates greater perceptual enhancement than a wider region. Yet visual processing is subserved by two major visual pathways (magnocellular and parvocellular) that operate with a degree of independence in early visual processing and encode contrasting visual information. Historically, testing of the zoom-lens has used measures of spatial acuity ideally suited to parvocellular processing. This, therefore, raises questions about the generality of the zoom-lens model to different aspects of visual perception. We found that while a narrow attended-region facilitated spatial acuity and the perception of high spatial frequency targets, it had no impact on either temporal acuity or the perception of low spatial frequency targets. This pattern also held up when targets were not presented centrally. This supports the notion that visual attended-region size has dissociable effects on magnocellular versus parvocellular mediated visual processing.     

Validation of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy—Spiritual Well-being (FACIT-Sp12) on French Old People

The study aimed to develop a French version of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy—Spiritual Well-being short version (FACIT-Sp12), in order to provide a self-reported measure for French people in the field of gerontology. The study involving 63 nursing home residents was conducted to evaluate the construct validity, reliability, and convergence validity of the FACIT-Sp12. A confirmatory factor analysis corroborated a three-factor model (Meaning, Peace and Faith) with modifications for two items, also valid among people with cognitive impairment. Subscales showed good internal consistency and are correlated with quality of life and depression. In conclusion, the validated French version is an suitable instrument to study the maintenance and promotion of quality of life in the elderly.