Approaches to analysis of handwriting as a task of coordinating a redundant motor system

We consider problems of motor redundancy associated with handwriting using the framework of the uncontrolled manifold (UCM) hypothesis. Recent studies of finger coordination during force production tasks have demonstrated that the UCM-hypothesis provides a fruitful framework for analysis of multi-finger actions. In particular, it has been shown that during relatively fast force changes, finger force variance across trials is structured such that a time pattern of total moment produced by the fingers with respect to a point between the two most lateral fingers involved in the task is stabilized while the time pattern of total force may be destabilized. The findings of selective moment stabilization have been interpreted as being conditioned by the experience with everyday motor tasks that commonly pose more strict requirements to stabilization of total moment than to stabilization of total force. We discuss implications of these findings for certain features of handwriting seen in elderly, children, patients with neurological disorders, and forgers.     

The advantage of simple symbols for learning and transfer

A goal of successful learning is the transfer of learned knowledge to novel situations. However, spontaneous transfer is notoriously difficult to achieve. In this research, we argue that learning and transfer can be facilitated when knowledge is expressed in an abstract, generic form. In Experiments 1 and 2, undergraduate students learned two isomorphic domains, which were based on the same algebraic group, with one domain expressed in a more abstract, generic form and the other expressed in a more concrete form. In both experiments, transfer from more abstract to more concrete was greater than the reverse. In Experiment 3, undergraduate students learned the same algebraic group under varying degrees of concreteness. Our results demonstrate that the use of perceptually rich, concrete symbols may hinder learning. This research indicates that concreteness may have substantial learning and transfer costs, whereas abstractness may have benefits.     

Processing of logically valid and logically invalid conditional inferences in discourse comprehension

Two competing theories of processing of conditionals (if-then) were tested. Syntactic theories posit that people only draw inferences conforming to the logically valid modus ponens (MP) schema. Mental models theories predict that people draw MP and invalid affirming-the-consequent (AC) inferences. Three experiments tested these predictions. Participants read short stories that conformed to either the MP or AC form but without conclusions, and they completed either priming or recognition tasks. Results indicate that both MP and AC inferences occur during discourse processing: MP and AC premise forms prime their respective conclusions, participants erroneously judged that they had read the conclusions to MP and AC arguments, and AC inferences did not stem from a biconditional interpretation of conditionals. Findings support mental models theories.     

Implicit affectivity and rapid processing of affective body language: An fMRI study

Previous research has revealed affect‐congruity effects for the recognition of affects from faces. Little is known about the impact of affect on the perception of body language. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship of implicit (versus explicit) affectivity with the recognition of briefly presented affective body expressions. Implicit affectivity, which can be measured using indirect assessment methods, has been found to be more predictive of spontaneous physiological reactions than explicit (self‐reported) affect. Thirty‐four healthy women had to label the expression of body postures (angry, fearful, happy, or neutral) presented for 66 ms and masked by a neutral body posture in a forced‐choice format while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants' implicit affectivity was assessed using the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test. Measures of explicit state and trait affectivity were also administered. Analysis of the fMRI data was focused on a subcortical network involved in the rapid perception of affective body expressions. Only implicit negative affect (but not explicit affect) was correlated with correct labeling performance for angry body posture. As expected, implicit negative affect was positively associated with activation of the subcortical network in response to fearful and angry expression (compared to neutral expression). Responses of the caudate nucleus to affective body expression were especially associated with its recognition. It appears that processes of rapid recognition of affects from body postures could be facilitated by an individual's implicit negative affect.     

Empathy and contextual social cognition

Empathy is a highly flexible and adaptive process that allows for the interplay of prosocial behavior in many different social contexts. Empathy appears to be a very situated cognitive process, embedded with specific contextual cues that trigger different automatic and controlled responses. In this review, we summarize relevant evidence regarding social context modulation of empathy for pain. Several contextual factors, such as stimulus reality and personal experience, affectively link with other factors, emotional cues, threat information, group membership, and attitudes toward others to influence the affective, sensorimotor, and cognitive processing of empathy. Thus, we propose that the frontoinsular-temporal network, the so-called social context network model (SCNM), is recruited during the contextual processing of empathy. This network would (1) update the contextual cues and use them to construct fast predictions (frontal regions), (2) coordinate the internal (body) and external milieus (insula), and (3) consolidate the context–target associative learning of empathic processes (temporal sites). Furthermore, we propose these context-dependent effects of empathy in the framework of the frontoinsular-temporal network and examine the behavioral and neural evidence of three neuropsychiatric conditions (Asperger syndrome, schizophrenia, and the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia), which simultaneously present with empathy and contextual integration impairments. We suggest potential advantages of a situated approach to empathy in the assessment of these neuropsychiatric disorders, as well as their relationship with the SCNM.     

The spatial metaphor of Utopia in Russian culture and in analysis

The spatial metaphor of Utopia is considered from a Jungian perspective along with its role in Russian culture and in analysis. Such post‐Jungian concepts as the cultural complex and the archetypal story pattern of a victim are used in considering the desperate longing for a rescuer in patients' narratives and in Russian society. A clinical vignette is provided to illustrate these ideas.     

Knowledge‐lies re‐examined

Sorensen says that my assertion that p is a knowledge‐lie if it is meant to undermine your justification for believing truly that ～p, not to make you believe that p and that, therefore, knowledge‐lies are not intended to deceive. It has been objected that they are meant to deceive because they are intended to make you more confident in a falsehood. In this paper, I propose a novel account according to which an assertion that p is a knowledge‐lie if it is intended not to provide evidence that p but to make you stop trusting all testimonies concerning whether p (in a room full of obvious liars, you will trust no one), which is how they undermine your testimonial knowledge. Because they are not intended to provide evidence that bears on the truth of p, they are not intended to make you more confident in a falsehood; therefore, knowledge‐lies are not intended to deceive. This makes them a problem for the traditional account, which takes the intention to deceive as necessary for lying, and an interesting example of Kant's idea that allowing lies whenever one feels like it would bring it about that statements in general are not believed.     

Effects of social and affective content on exogenous attention as revealed by event-related potentials

The social content of affective stimuli has been proposed as having an influence on cognitive processing and behaviour. This research was aimed, therefore, at studying whether automatic exogenous attention demanded by affective pictures was related to their social value. We hypothesised that affective social pictures would capture attention to a greater extent than non-social affective stimuli. For this purpose, we recorded event-related potentials in a sample of 24 participants engaged in a digit categorisation task. Distracters were affective pictures varying in social content, in addition to affective valence and arousal, which appeared in the background during the task. Our data revealed that pictures depicting high social content captured greater automatic attention than other pictures, as reflected by the greater amplitude and shorter latency of anterior P2, and anterior and posterior N2 components of the ERPs. In addition, social content also provoked greater allocation of processing resources as manifested by P3 amplitude, likely related to the high arousal they elicited. These results extend data from previous research by showing the relevance of the social value of the affective stimuli on automatic attentional processing.