原子研究和因果律

现代原子物理学的最引人注目的普遍结果,就是在其影响下自然规律在概念上所发生的变革。     

Book reviews

History of Islamic Philosophy Seyyed Hossein Nasr & Oliver Leaman, Editors, 1996 London, Routledge Part I, xx+ 780 pp., Part II, xiv + 428 pp., hb ISBN 0415 05 6675, £120.00

Early Advaita Vedānta and Buddhism: the Mahāyāna context of the Gaudapādiya‐Kārikā Richard King, 1995 Albany, State University of New York Press xii + 341 pp., pb $19.95

Vaisnavism: its philosophy, theology and religious discipline S.M. Srinwasa Chari, 1994 Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass xxxviii + 383 pp., pb Rs. 350

Vaisnavism: contemporary scholars discuss the Gaudiya tradition Steven J. Rosen (Ed.), 1992 Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1994 ix + 354 pp., pb Rs. 160

Cultural Realism: strategic culture and grand strategy in Chinese history Alastair Iain Johnston, 1995 Princeton, Princeton University Press xiii + 367 pp., hb ISBN 0691029962, $39.50

Laughing at the Tao: debates among Buddhists and Taoists in medieval China Livia Kohn, 1995 Princeton, Princeton University Press xii + 281 pp. hb (price not given)

Pantheism. A Non‐theistic Concept of Deity Michael P. Levine, 1994 London, Routledge xii + 388 pp., hb £45 ISBN 0415070643     

Neuroendocrine hemisphere asymmetries: Salivary cortisol secretion during lateralized viewing of emotion-related and neutral films

The study set out to examine whether the cerebral hemispheres differ in their ability to regulate cortisol secretion during emotion-related situations. One hundred twenty-three adult subjects were shown either an emotionally aversive or a neutral film in the left or right hemisphere by means of a technique for lateralizing visual input that allows prolonged viewing while permitting free ocular scanning. The film-related changes of cortisol secretion were determined by salivary cortisol radioimmunoassay. Right hemispheric viewing of the emotionally aversive film resulted in a significantly higher increase of cortisol secretion than left hemispheric viewing of the same film. No such differences were observed with respect to the neutral film. Comparing the effects of the two films separately for each hemisphere revealed that only the right hemisphere was able to respond neuroendocrinologically in a different manner to the emotional and the neutral film. Therefore, it is concluded that cortical regulation of cortisol secretion in emotion-related situations is under primary control of the right hemisphere. The potential implications of asymmetric control of cortisol secretion with respect to the pathogenesis of psychosomatic and immunological disorders are discussed.     

Transfer of a response controlling stimulus duration across discrimination problems

In the acquisition phase, pigeons learned to peck at a changeover key to shorten the duration of S? but not of S+ presented on the food key in a discrimination problem. In the transfer phase, the significance of S+ and S? was changed through extinction of both, equal reinforcement, or discrimination reversal, while the changeover key was not available. Transfer tests then showed appropriate modification of the changeover response. Similar transfer was demonstrated across orthogonal stimulus dimensions. Further analytic studies showed that this transfer of the changeover response did not depend upon mediation due to differential response rates to the food key. This research strategy enriches the study of the “second learning process” by providing an indicator of stimulus control in all phases of the procedure. Direct transfer between different problems also indicates that discriminative stimuli, although physically dissimilar, have the same “psychological value” for the subject.     

The intervals at which homogeneous flashes recover masked targets

The recovery effect may be induced by the introduction of a homogeneous blank flash after a patterned mask. It is not clear which parameters optimize the effect. In this study, the effect of systematical variation of the different interstimulus intervals on performance was investigated. Conditions in which the blank flash preceded the patterned mask were included. The important parameter is shown to be the interval between Mask 1 and Mask 2. For optimal recovery, this value has to be 0–20 msec. It is argued that these results, as well as a number of other recovery findings, can be explained by the suppressing influence of homogeneous flashes on contour processing channels in the visual system.     

Differential effects of visual-spatial attention on response latency and temporal-order judgment

Summary Theorists from both classical structuralism and modern attention research have claimed that attention to a sensory stimulus enhances processing speed. However, they have used different operations to measure this effect, viz., temporal-order judgment (TOJ) and reaction-time (RT) measurement. We report two experiments that compared the effect of a spatial cue on RT and TOJ. Experiment 1 demonstrated that a nonmasked, peripheral cue (the brief brightening of a box) affected both RT and TOJ. However, the former effect was significantly larger than the latter. A masked cue had a smaller, but reliable, effect on TOJ. In Experiment 2, the effects of a masked cue on RT and TOJ were compared under identical stimulus conditions. While the cue had a strong effect on RT, it left TOJ unaffected. These results suggest that a spatial cue may have dissociable effects on response processes and the processes that lead to a conscious percept. Implications for the concept of direct parameter specification and for theories of visual attention are discussed.