Paradoxical choice and the reinforcing value of information

Animal Cognition - Signals that reduce uncertainty can be valuable because well-informed decision-makers can better align their preferences to opportunities. However, some birds and mammals display...     

Lutheran Preaching and the Quest for Humanization and Planetary Justice: A Perspective from Brazil

Abstract :  Since economic globalization hides the roots of injustice and internationalizes its consequences, any attempt to preach (which necessarily means to preach justice) must address the local church and at the same time the wider global context, hence the term "planetary justice." This article describes the current approach to Lutheran preaching in Latin America and specifically the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Brazil (IECLB). The article offers the following suggestions for Lutheran preaching throughout the world: hold form and content in creative tension; present justification as liberation; strive for a biocentric, gender conscious, and planetary symbiotic homiletic.     

Total number of MMPI-2 clinical scale elevations predicts premature termination after controlling for intake symptom severity and personality disorder diagnosis

Premature termination of therapy by patients is a common phenomenon that can be deleterious to treatment outcome for patients and also negatively affect therapists, treatment centers, and research programs. Therefore, a method of identifying patients at risk for premature termination could have widespread benefits. This study investigated whether patients’ MMPI-2 profiles, including clinical scale elevations and Negative Treatment Indicator (TRT) scores, could predict premature termination in an outpatient sample, controlling for personality disorder diagnosis and symptom severity at intake. Results indicated that while TRT scores were not incrementally predictive of premature termination, the total number of clinical scale elevations was significantly incrementally predictive of dropout. Clinical implications are discussed.     

BIOLOGY TEACHERS’ CONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF LIFE IN BRAZIL,ARGENTINA, AND URUGUAY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Teachers’ conceptions about the origin of life in three Latin American countries with contrasting levels of secularism were analyzed: Argentina (Catholic constitution), Brazil (formally secular but not in practice), and Uruguay (consolidated secularism). A European survey questionnaire was used and the interpretation of the results drew on Barbour's four categories concerning the relationships of science and religion. A large majority of Argentinian and Uruguayan teachers were clearly evolutionist, even when believing in God (Independence or Dialogue category), with no difference between Argentina and Uruguay. The majority of Brazilian teachers assumed a religious position about the origin of life, being creationist (Conflict or Independence categories) or evolutionary creationist (Dialogue or Integration categories). Differences of Brazilian teachers’ conceptions may result from the higher percentage of evangelicals and lower proportion of agnostics/atheists. Brazilian Catholic teachers were more creationist than their Catholic colleagues in Argentina and Uruguay. Distinct patterns were found, but further research is needed to understand possible classroom impacts.     

Psychopathic Traits Associate Differentially to Anger,Disgust and Fear Recognition among Men and Women

Psychopathy is characterized by deficits in empathy and violation of the rights of others. Recent data link psychopathy-based lack of empathy to deficits in emotion recognition (ER), in particular fear and sadness. However, questions remain about emotions like anger and disgust and some studies even report a positive relationship between psychopathy and ER. Notably, the overwhelming majority of these studies have been conducted only with men, and studies in the general population suggest that women have better ER than men. To our knowledge, only two small studies have explicitly examined ER and psychopathy among women and they did find deficits in anger and disgust recognition. Therefore, mixed findings about ER and psychopathy may be due to gender differences that need to be clarified. This study aimed at bridging this gap using a large sample of 129 male (49 %) and 132 female (51 %) participants who completed psychopathy self-reports, and a computerized facial ER task. Among women there were deficits and advantages in ER: High social dominance and lack of anxiety traits were related to decreased fear and anger recognition respectively. Traits characterized by impulsiveness and rebelliousness were associated with better disgust and anger recognition respectively. For men, psychopathic traits characterized by ruthless manipulation of others, as well as lack of fear, were related to deficits recognizing anger. These results suggest that among women some psychopathic traits may confer an advantage in ER and give impetus for studies examining gender differences in the neurobiological substrates and manifestation of the syndrome.     

The contributions of visual and central attention to visual working memory

We investigated the role of two kinds of attention—visual and central attention—for the maintenance of visual representations in working memory (WM). In Experiment 1 we directed attention to individual items in WM by presenting cues during the retention interval of a continuous delayed-estimation task, and instructing participants to think of the cued items. Attending to items improved recall commensurate with the frequency with which items were attended (0, 1, or 2 times). Experiments 1 and 3 further tested which kind of attention—visual or central—was involved in WM maintenance. We assessed the dual-task costs of two types of distractor tasks, one tapping sustained visual attention and one tapping central attention. Only the central attention task yielded substantial dual-task costs, implying that central attention substantially contributes to maintenance of visual information in WM. Experiment 2 confirmed that the visual-attention distractor task was demanding enough to disrupt performance in a task relying on visual attention. We combined the visual-attention and the central-attention distractor tasks with a multiple object tracking (MOT) task. Distracting visual attention, but not central attention, impaired MOT performance. Jointly, the three experiments provide a double dissociation between visual and central attention, and between visual WM and visual object tracking: Whereas tracking multiple targets across the visual filed depends on visual attention, visual WM depends mostly on central attention.     

On the dynamics of institutional agreements

In this paper we investigate a logic for modelling individual and collective acceptances that is called acceptance logic. The logic has formulae of the form A_G:x j{\rm A}_{G:x} \varphi reading ‘if the agents in the set of agents G identify themselves with institution x then they together accept that j{\varphi} ’. We extend acceptance logic by two kinds of dynamic modal operators. The first kind are public announcements of the form x!y{x!\psi}, meaning that the agents learn that y{\psi} is the case in context x. Formulae of the form [x!y]j{[x!\psi]\varphi} mean that j{\varphi} is the case after every possible occurrence of the event x!ψ. Semantically, public announcements diminish the space of possible worlds accepted by agents and sets of agents. The announcement of ψ in context x makes all \lnoty{\lnot\psi} -worlds inaccessible to the agents in such context. In this logic, if the set of accessible worlds of G in context x is empty, then the agents in G are not functioning as members of x, they do not identify themselves with x. In such a situation the agents in G may have the possibility to join x. To model this we introduce here a second kind of dynamic modal operator of acceptance shifting of the form G:x-y{G:x\uparrow\psi}. The latter means that the agents in G shift (change) their acceptances in order to accept ψ in context x. Semantically, they make ψ-worlds accessible to G in the context x, which means that, after such operation, G is functioning as member of x (unless there are no ψ-worlds). We show that the resulting logic has a complete axiomatization in terms of reduction axioms for both dynamic operators. In the paper we also show how the logic of acceptance and its dynamic extension can be used to model some interesting aspects of judgement aggregation. In particular, we apply our logic of acceptance to a classical scenario in judgment aggregation, the so-called ‘doctrinal paradox’ or ‘discursive dilemma’ (Pettit, Philosophical Issues 11:268–299, 2001; Kornhauser and Sager, Yale Law Journal 96:82–117, 1986).     

Ambivalent Sexism and Attitudes Toward Wife Abuse in Turkey and Brazil

Men and women in Turkey and Brazil completed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1996) and measures of attitudes about wife abuse. In both nations hostile sexism (HS) and benevolent sexism (BS) positively correlated with attitudes that legitimize abuse. Regression analyses revealed that HS accounted for unique variance, but BS (once HS was controlled) was unrelated to wife abuse attitudes. These results: (a) add to the evidence for the cross–cultural validity of ambivalent sexism, (b) suggest that HS supports the justification of violence against wives, and (c) imply that the ostensible protectiveness of BS is contingent, failing to shield women from abuse if they are deemed to have challenged a husband's authority or violated conventional gender roles.     

NK(3) receptor agonism promotes episodic-like memory in mice

The mammalian tachykinins are a family of closely related peptides including substance P, neurokinin A, neurokinin B and, recently, also hemokinin-1. They are present in the peripheral and central nervous systems, and bind to three known neurokinin (NK) receptors, the NK(1)-, NK(2)- and NK(3) receptors. In both rodents and humans, NK(3) receptors are expressed in brain structures which have been associated with learning and memory. Evidence for a role of NK(3) receptors in learning and memory has been found in NK(3) receptor knockout mice. Here, we investigated the influence of the NK(3) receptor agonist, senktide (0.1, 0.2 and 0.4 mg/kg), on the performance of C57BL/6 mice in a recently developed episodic-like memory task. Since a promnestic effect of senktide was expected, we employed an experimental protocol that provided sub-optimal learning conditions for episodic-like memory. The results indicate that senktide promotes episodic-like memory in mice in a dose-dependent manner, providing, for the first time, evidence for an involvement of NK(3) receptors in episodic-like memory.     

Perceived behavioral changes in early multiple sclerosis

Acquired behavioral changes have essentially been described in advanced multiple sclerosis (MS). The present study was designed to determine whether behavioral modifications specifically related to the MS pathological process could be identified in the initial phase of the disease, as compared to control patients with chronic, relapsing and progressive inflammatory disorders not involving the central nervous system (CNS). Eighty-eight early MS patients (Expanded Disability Status Scale score 相似文献