Environmental influences on psychological restoration

Research on psychological restoration and restorative environments is a needed complement to work on stress and environmental stressors. Two laboratory experiments tested the utility of two restorative environments theories, one concerned with directed attention capacity renewal and the other with stress reduction and associated changes in emotion. Various strategies were employed to distinguish restorative effects from other effects, to limit the role of arousal reduction in attentional restoration, and to begin mapping the time course for the emergence of outcomes. Both experiments tested for differential emotional and performance effects as a function of photographic environmental simulation (natural or urban environment). Across the experiments the natural environment simulation engendered generally more positive emotional self-reports. That consistent performance effects were not found in either study suggests that attentional restoration as reflected in performance is a more time-intensive process.     

Acquisition of locational information about reference points during locomotion: The role of central information processing

The role of central information processing for the acquisition of information about locations in a large-scale environment was investigated in two experiments. Subjects with and without a concurrent backwards counting task traversed a locomotion path repeatedly attempting to learn the locations of six reference points designated along the path, then estimated direction and distance numerically to these reference points when traversing the same path further times in a subsequent test phase. The main dependent measures were the latencies and the constant and variable errors of the estimates. The results indicated that acquisition of information about the locations was disrupted when central information processing was interfered with. However, central processing seemed to be less critical for long-term storage of information about the locomotion path. The latter type of information could thus be used by the subjects with the concurrent task when estimating the locations. Finally, the results suggested that information about the path was used also by the subjects without any concurrent task when the test phase required them to remain oriented relative to several reference points at the same time.     

Marble burying and spontaneous motor activity in mice: interactions over days and the effect of diazepam

Spontaneous motor activity of mice was studied in the presence or absence of 24 coloured glass marbles with and without treatment with different doses of the anxiolytic compound, diazepam. The three parameters of motor activity, locomotion, rearing and total activity, were measured in automated test cages. All the groups exposed to the marbles exhibited considerable and comparable marble burying, but there was an important interaction between marble burying and locomotor activity over test days. The "marbles" group performed fewer locomotion counts than the "no marbles" group on Day 1 but more counts on Day 3. The "marbles" group performed more rearing and less total activity than the "no marbles" group generally and this relationship was not altered over test days. Diazepam caused a dose-dependent decrease of both marble burying and the three parameters of motor activity but did not cause further increases in motor activity in the groups exposed to the marbles. These results are discussed with regard to the effects of "coping" behaviours on measures of motor activity. In conclusion, the present motor activity-marble burying test appears to be a suitable animal model for testing potential anxiolytic compounds.     

The informational value of dreams and associations

The manifest dream has usually been the object of study by researchers, while psychotherapists mainly have paid attention to the latent content of the dream, reached through free associations. The question is which aspects of the dream, manifest content or associations, yield information about the dreamer's psychic life. In the present study it is suggested that the manifest dream to a large extent maintains thematic continuity with the dreamer's associations. However, with regard to emotions, there is no clear overlap between the information contained in the manifest dream and in its associations. The associations make the dream into the dreamer's own personal dream. Associating to a dream changes strangers into known people in the life of the dreamer. The dreamer comes to recognize aspects of himself or herself in these people. In associations, the dreamers portray themselves as more responsible of emotions, while they in dreams rather ascribe emotions to others, and they themselves become objects of these emotions. The author argues for the value of both the manifest dream in its own right and the enhanced experiental closeness afforded by the dreamer's associations.     

Determinants of everyday time allocation

Two experiments examined the role of intentions in people's allocation of time to everyday activities (e.g., talcing a shower, running for exercise). In Experiment 1 32 subjects rated their intentions of, preferences for, and perceived control over performance of 10 activities at different frequencies during the following month. In Experiment 2 another 36 subjects performed the same ratings for the following week, then returned after that week to report how frequently they had been engaged in the activities. The results of both experiments showed that either the ratings of preference, of perceived control, or both combined linearly, predicted the intentions. However, intentions did not predict performance particularly well. This probably reflected (1) that some activities are performed routinely without intentions being formed; (2) that intentions to perform some other, more impulsively timed activities are formed late when appropriate actual situations are encountered; and (3) that for still other activities intentions are formed but not maintained.     

Not Giving the Skeptic a Hearing: Pragmatism and Radical Doubt

Pragmatist responses to radical skepticism do not receive much attention in contemporary analytic epistemology. This observation is my motivation for undertaking a search for a coherent pragmatist reply to radical doubt, one that can compete, in terms of clarity and sophistication, with the currently most popular approaches, such as contextualism and relevant alternatives theory. As my point of departure I take the texts of C. S. Peirce and William James. The Jamesian response is seen to consist in the application of a wager argument to the skeptical issue in analogy with Pascal's wager. The Peircean strategy, on the other hand, is to attempt a direct rejection of one of the skeptic's main premises: that we do not know we are not deceived. I argue that while the Jamesian attempt is ultimately incoherent, Peirce's argument contains the core of a detailed and characteristically "pragmatic" rebuttal of skepticism, one that deserves to be taken seriously in the contemporary debate.