Implicational Paradoxes and the Meaning of Logical Constants

I discuss paradoxes of implication in the setting of a proof-conditional theory of meaning for logical constants. I argue that a proper logic of implication should be not only relevant, but also constructive and nonmonotonic. This leads me to select as a plausible candidate LL, a fragment of linear logic that differs from R in that it rejects both contraction and distribution.     

Buying a passport to heaven: Usury,restitution, and the merchants of medieval Genoa

Historians have argued that the ecclesiastic ban on loans at interest delayed the development of capital markets in the middle ages, and have supported this by pointing to well-documented cases of restitutions of usurious gains by famous moneylenders. Strictly, however, such evidence does not prove that usury laws affected lending, because donations by rich bankers may reflect other motivations. If usury laws had an impact, we have to exclude the Medicis or the Fuggers from the sample, and look for it among the small moneylenders of medieval Europe. Data from late medieval Genoa show that donations by merchants were no greater than those of the population at large once personal wealth is accounted for. However, among merchants the value of pious bequests correlates more closely with mercantile activity than personal wealth, a finding that supports the view that usury laws created an effective constraint on medieval capital markets.     

Picture‐IAT versus Word‐IAT: level of stimulus representation influences on the IAT

The Implicit Association Test is a paradigm designed to assess individual differences in implicit cognition. The goal of this report was to examine the reasons for discrepant effect magnitudes obtained with two presumably interchangeable versions: Picture‐IAT (P‐IAT) and Word‐IAT (W‐IAT). We show that this discrepancy is due to the relation between stimuli and referent category: the level of representation (LR) at which a stimulus represents an intended category. Experiment 1 replicates the discrepancies found in previous research. Experiments 2–4 show that increasing the LR of stimuli increases the IAT effect. LR affects the magnitude of the IAT effect even when modality and other features of the stimuli are kept constant. The utility of LR for future investigations examining the IAT paradigm is discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Time processing in children with Tourette’s syndrome

Background

Tourette syndrome (TS) is characterized by dysfunctional connectivity between prefrontal cortex and sub-cortical structures, and altered meso-cortical and/or meso-striatal dopamine release. Since time processing is also regulated by fronto-striatal circuits and modulated by dopaminergic transmission, we hypothesized that time processing is abnormal in TS.

Methods

We compared time processing abilities between nine children with TS-only (i.e. without major psychiatric comorbidities) and 10 age-matched healthy children, employing a time reproduction task in which subjects actively reproduce different temporal intervals, and a time comparison task in which subjects judge whether a test interval is longer or shorter than a reference interval. IQ, sustained and divided attention, and working memory were assessed in both groups using the Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised, and the Digit Span sub-test of the WISC-R.

Results

Children with TS-only reproduced in an overestimated fashion over-second, but not sub-second, time intervals. The precision of over-second intervals reproduction correlated with tic severity, in that the lower the tic severity, the closer the reproduction of over-second time intervals to their real duration. Time reproduction performance did not significantly correlate with IQ, attention and working memory measures in both groups. No differences between groups were documented in the time comparison task.

Conclusions

The improvement of time processing in children with TS-only seems specific for the over-second range of intervals, consistent with an enhancement in the ‘cognitively controlled’ timing system, which mainly processes longer duration intervals, and depends upon dysfunctional connectivity between the basal ganglia and the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex. The absence of between-group differences on time comparison, moreover, suggests that TS patients manifest a selective improvement of ‘motor’ timing abilities, rather than of perceptual time abilities. Our data also support an enhancement of cognitive control processes in TS children, probably facilitated by effortful tic suppression.     

Burden, depression, and anxiety in caregivers of people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disease caused by the degeneration of motor neurons. The burden for ALS caregivers is quite high. There are still few studies that have investigated the emotional impact of ALS care. We conducted a cross-sectional study among 40 ALS caregivers, assessing general worries, burden of care, depression, anxiety, perception of social support, and patients' severity of disease. Caregiver burden, depression, and anxiety were positively related with each other, and all these variables had a negative relation with social support. Patient's loss of physical functions was positively related with caregiver burden, anxiety, and somatic expression of depression. Caregivers expressed worries for their own health conditions. Given these results, we consider the hypothesis of an emotional-somatic impact of ALS care. The implications and limitations are discussed.     

The influence of responsibility and guilt on naive hypothesis-testing

Three experiments were used to investigate individuals' hypothesis-testing process as a function of moral perceived utilities, which in turn depend on perceived responsibility and fear of guilt. Moral perceived utilities are related to individuals' moral standards and specifically to people's attempt to face up to their own responsibilities, and to avoid feeling guilty of irresponsibility. The results showed that responsibility and fear of guilt in testing hypotheses involved a process defined as prudential mode, which entails focusing on and confirming the worst hypothesis, and then reiterating the testing process. In particular, the results showed that responsible and guilt-fearing individuals: (1) tended to search prudentially for examples confirming the worst hypothesis and to search for counter-examples falsifying the positive hypothesis; (2) focused on the worst alternative, and tended to confirm it; (3) prudentially kept up the testing process, even if faced with initial positive evidence. Our discussion of the results emphasises how people are largely pragmatic in their hypothesis testing, using efficient cognitive strategies that focus on error minimisation rather than on truth detection. In a context of responsibility and guilt, the errors are linked to people's failure to face up to their own responsibilities, and are thus moral errors.     

Feelings of error in reasoning—in search of a phenomenon

Recent research shows that in reasoning tasks, subjects usually produce an initial intuitive answer, accompanied by a metacognitive experience, which has been called feeling of rightness. This paper is aimed at exploring the complimentary experience of feeling of error (FOE), that is, the spontaneous, subtle sensation of cognitive uneasiness arising from conflict detection during thinking. We investigate FOE in two studies with the “bat-and-ball” (B&B) reasoning task, in its standard and isomorphic control versions. Study 1 is a generation study, in which participants are asked to generate their own response. Study 2 is an evaluation study, in which participants are asked to choose between two conflicting answers (normative vs. intuitive). In each study, the FOE is measured by the FOE questionnaire. Results show that the FOE is significantly present in the standard B&B task when participants give a wrong answer, that our questionnaire can measure it, and furthermore, that it is diagnostic of genuine error.