Interaction of knowledge-driven and data-driven processing in category learning

The present paper argues that category learning is both a data-driven and a knowledge-driven process. This is described in a generic model that distinguishes between categorical knowledge, conceptual knowledge, and implicit cognitive theories. The model assumes that each of these knowledge aspects may affect the process of category learning by affecting the way similarities between objects are perceived. This central assumption of the model is tested in two experiments. The first experiment shows that the presence or absence of prior categorical and conceptual knowledge affects the psychological stimulus space by changing the saliency of the stimulus dimensions. The second experiment uses these weights to predict the distribution of errors over the stimuli and the number of trials to criterion in category learning by other participants under the same knowledge conditions. We conclude that prior categorical and conceptual knowledge affect category learning by mediation of similarity perception, and discuss the implications of these results.     

The Lateral Coding of Rotations

A number of experimental studies have consistently shown the locus of spatial S-R compatibility effects to be the selection of the response within an abstract memory code. The purpose of the present study was to test, in the particular case of wheel rotations, the general proposition that any response that a subject internally codes in terms of left and right may be interfered with by the lateral location of the stimuli in a Simon paradigm. Experiment 1 showed that the auditory Simon effect occurred in a task where the subjects had to rotate a steering wheel bimanually either clockwise or counterclockwise according to sound pitch, despite the fact that responses of this kind are undefined with respect to laterality. Experiment 2 confirmed this result in a unimanual rotation condition and suggested that the ear-rotation compatibility effect may be added to the effect of a biomechanical factor, pronation versus supination, supporting the idea of an abstract motor code. In Experiment 3, subjects rotated the steering wheel with their hands on the lowest part of the wheel. When the response movement made the spot of a C.R.T. move laterally in accordance with the performed rotation, the subjects coded their response directly in terms of its effect on the visual display. For subjects not receiving visual feedback, no compatibility effect occurred. However, the individual data were compatible with the notion that some subjects in this group coded their responses in terms of wheel rotations, and others in terms of hand movements.     

The Emergence and Evolution of the Expression “Conflict of Interests” in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Science</Emphasis>: A Historical Overview, 1880–2006

The tendency is strong to take the notion of "conflict of interests" for granted as if it had an invariant meaning and an ethical content independent of the historical context. It is doubtful however, from an historical and sociological point of view, that many of the cases now considered as instances of "conflicts of interests" would also have been conceived and perceived as such in, say, the 1930s. The idea of a "conflict of interests" presupposes that there are indeed interests in conflict. Conversely, as long as there is a consensus among the different groups involved, they will not conceive and even less denounce a given practice as being an instance of a "conflict of interests". In this article we will show that the content of the discussions over conflicts of interests has changed over time in close relation with the transformations of the research system. In other words: there are social conditions for the emergence of "conflicts of interests". The changing meaning of the notion is assessed by analyzing the presence of the expression "conflicts of interests" in the magazine Science over the past century. Three different meanings emerge and their content has evolved in close link with the changing structure of the relations between the scientific community first with the State and then with industry. It moved from a situation external to the scientific community to a debate going on inside the scientific community generated by the growing relations between university and industries.     

Language-induced motor perturbations during the execution of a reaching movement

In a recent study Boulenger et al. (2006) found that processing action verbs assisted reaching movement when the word was processed prior to movement onset and interfered with the movement when the word was processed at movement onset. The present study aimed to further corroborate the existence of such cross-talk between language processes and overt motor behaviour by demonstrating that the reaching movement can be disturbed by action words even when the words are presented delayed with respect to movement onset (50 ms and 200 ms). The results are compared to studies that show language-motor interaction in conditions where the word is presented prior to movement onset and are discussed within the context of embodied theories of language comprehension.     

What is learned from experience in a probabilistic environment?

Three experiments explored what is learned from experience in a probabilistic environment. The task was a simulated medical decision‐making task with each patient having one of two test results and one of two diseases. The test result was highly predictive of the disease for all participants. The base rate of the test result was varied between participants to produce different inverse conditional probabilities of the test result given the disease across conditions. Participants trained using feedback to predict a patient's disease from a test result showed the classic confusion of the inverse error, substituting the forward conditional probability for the inverse conditional probability when tested on it. Additional training on the base rate of the test result did little to improve performance. Training on the joint probabilities, however, produced good performance on either conditional probability. The pattern of results demonstrated that experience with the environment is not always sufficient for good performance. That natural sampling leads to good performance was not supported. Further, because participants not trained on joint probabilities did, however, know them but still committed the confusion of the inverse error, the hypothesis that having joint probabilities would facilitate performance was not supported. The pattern of results supported the conclusion that people learn all the necessary information from experience in a probabilistic environment, but depending upon what the experience was, it may interfere with their ability to recall to memory the appropriate sample set necessary for estimating or using the inverse conditional probability. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A turning point in religious evolution in europe1>

The 1981 and 1990 European Values surveys largely supported the thesis of increasing secularisation in Western Europe. Almost all the variables showed a religious decline, which was even deeper among young people, except for beliefs in an afterlife. Peter Berger and Grace Davie have underlined the ‘European exception’ in contrast to the rest of the world. However, the last survey in 1999 revealed significant changes. The downward trend is now counterbalanced by two new tendencies: a Christian renewal and the development of religiosity without belonging, especially among young people. In particular, beliefs in an afterlife are spreading. These tendencies vary according to country. Post-socialist Europe shows an even more developed religious renewal, in particular among the young.     

“Big eye” surgery: the ethics of medicalizing Asian features

The popularity of surgical modifications of race-typical features among Asian women has generated debates on the ethical implications of the practice. Focusing on blepharoplasty as a representative racial surgery, this article frames the ethical discussion by viewing Asian cosmetic surgery as an example of medicalization, which can be interpreted in two forms: treatment versus enhancement. In the treatment form, medicalization occurs by considering cosmetic surgery as remedy for pathologized Asian features; the pathologization usually occurs in reference to western features as the norm. In the enhancement form, medicalization occurs by using medical means to improve physical features to achieve a certain type of beauty or physical appearance. Each type of medicalization raises slightly different ethical concerns. The problem with treatment medicalization lies in the pathologization of Asian features, which is oppressive as it continues to reinforce racial norms of appearance and negative stereotypes. Enhancement medicalization is ethically problematic because cosmetic surgery tends to conflate beauty and health as medical goals of surgery, overemphasizing the value of appearance that can further displace women’s control over their own bodies. I conclude that in both forms of medicalization, cosmetic surgery seems to narrowly frame a complex psychosocial issue involving physical appearance as a matter that can be simply solved through surgical means.     

A simple technique to study embodied language processes: the grip force sensor

Research in cognitive neuroscience has shown that brain structures serving perceptual, emotional, and motor processes are also recruited during the understanding of language when it refers to emotion, perception, and action. However, the exact linguistic and extralinguistic conditions under which such language-induced activity in modality-specific cortex is triggered are not yet well understood. The purpose of this study is to introduce a simple experimental technique that allows for the online measure of language-induced activity in motor structures of the brain. This technique consists in the use of a grip force sensor that captures subtle grip force variations while participants listen to words and sentences. Since grip force reflects activity in motor brain structures, the continuous monitoring of force fluctuations provides a fine-grained estimation of motor activity across time. In other terms, this method allows for both localization of the source of language-induced activity to motor brain structures and high temporal resolution of the recorded data. To facilitate comparison of the data to be collected with this tool, we present two experiments that describe in detail the technical setup, the nature of the recorded data, and the analyses (including justification about the data filtering and artifact rejection) that we applied. We also discuss how the tool could be used in other domains of behavioral research.     

Modelling aspects of face processing in early infancy

The aim of this work is to understand how face processing develops from birth to 4 months by modelling some face processing abilities of infants between these ages. The neural model reproduces experimental data regarding both visual preferences at birth and right hemisphere behaviour in 4‐month‐old infants. The model shows that two basic properties may be sufficient to simulate face preference at birth: (a) tuning selectivity of visual neurons for spatial frequencies and (b) limited vision (CSF) of newborns. Three additional properties are sufficient to match experimental data on face processing at 4 months: (c) plasticity of lateral connections as modelled by Bayesian networks, (d) amplification of eye importance and (e) mother bias induced by the high probability of seeing mother’s face. These conditions suggest that the neural substratum for face processing could be, at birth, the retina‐V1/V2‐colliculus system, and at 4 months, the activation of the RH face‐Fusiform area, with configural representations stored in lateral connections.