THE EMERGENCE OF TRANSCENDENTAL NORMS IN HUMAN SYSTEMS

Terrence Deacon has described three orders of emergence; Arthur Peacocke and others have suggested four levels of human systems and sciences; and Philip Clayton has postulated an additional, transcendent, level. Orders and levels describe distinct aspects of emergence, with orders characterizing topological complexity and levels characterizing theoretical knowledge and causal power. By using Deacon's orders to analyze and relate each of the four "lower" levels one can project that analysis on the transcendent level to gain insight into the teleodynamic emergence of transcendent-level systems. I argue that cross-cultural interactions among human cultural-level systems results in the emergence of the "universal" transcendental norms historically characterized as the Greek Good, Beauty, and Truth. These norms require a dynamic existence that I characterize as the emergence of Spirit, using Josiah Royce's community of interpretation, and that I suggest provides a pragmatic clarification of Clayton's transcendent level. An understanding of those emergent norms clarifies ethical systems, highlights the importance of aesthetics in understanding scientific systems, and suggests the necessity of community in fruitful science-and-religion dialogue on human systems.     

Different ways of looking at unpleasant truths: How construal levels influence information search

When not knowing the negative outcome of past decision, people search for more information even when it confirms their negative suspicion. What drives this information search is the hope that the unpleasant state of “not knowing” ends when one faces the truth [Shani, Y., Tykocinski, O. E., &; Zeelenberg, M. (2008). When ignorance is not bliss: How distressing uncertainty drives the search of negative information. Journal of Economic Psychology, 29, 643–653; Shani, Y., &; Zeelenberg, M. (2007). When and why do we want to know? How experienced regret promotes post-decision information search. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 20, 207–222]. Previous research suggests that adopting high- or low-level construals of a situation can increase or decrease the affective value of experiences [Metcalfe, J., &; Mischel, W. (1999). A hot/cool-system analysis of delay of gratification: Dynamics of willpower. Psychological Review, 106, 3–19, Mischel, W., Ayduk, O., &; Mendoza-Denton, R. (2003). Sustaining delay of gratification over time: A hot–cool systems perspective. In G. Loewenstein &; D. Read (Eds.), Time and decision: Economic and psychological perspectives on intertemporal choice (pp. 175–200). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation; Trope, Y., Gervey, B., &; Bolger, N. (2003). The role of perceived control in overcoming defensive self-evaluation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 407–419]. We propose that the need to know the potentially hurtful truths about one’s own decision increases when people adopt a low-level construal, but it decreases when people adopt a high-level construal. In five experiments, we manipulated construal levels and assessed the effects on information search and the underlying psychological process.     

高水平视觉表征中客体与位置的联系

从两个方面综述了高水平视觉表征中客体与位置的联系,即客体信息影响位置记忆和客体-位置捆绑。其中,客体信息影响一般的位置记忆及其偏向（如位置估计偏向于区域中央或偏向客体的功能部位）。而有关客体-位置捆绑,以往研究发现确实存在这种捆绑,它离不开背景客体的参与,并且背景客体间的空间关系影响它的形成。未来的研究应关注客体信息影响位置记忆的其他证据及背景捆绑改变条件下客体-位置捆绑的存在与否,并探讨位置信息对客体记忆的影响。     

Social cues and verbal framing in risky choice

We examined how people use social and verbal cues of differing priorities in making social decisions. In Experiment 1, formally identical life – death choice problems were presented in different hypothetical group contexts and were phrased in either a positive or negative frame. The risk‐seeking choice became more dominant as the number of kin in an endangered group increased. Framing effects occurred only in a heterogeneous group context where the lives at risk were a mixture of kin and strangers. No framing effect was found when the same problem was presented in the context of a homogeneous group consisting of either all kin or all strangers. We viewed the framing effects to be a sign of indecisive risk preference due to the differential effects of a kinship cue and a stranger cue on choice. In Experiment 2, we presented the life – death problem in two artificial group contexts involving either 6 billion human lives or 6 billion extraterrestrial lives. A framing effect was found only in the human context. Two pre‐conditions of framing effects appear to be social unfamiliarity of a decision problem and aspiration level of a decision maker. In Experiment 3, we analyzed the direction of the framing effect by balancing the framing. The direction of the framing effect depended on the baseline level of risk preference determined by a specific decision context. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

发展性阅读障碍与脑异常的因果关系:研究范式及发现

关于阅读障碍神经机制的研究已经有很多,但到目前为止,研究者仍不完全清楚,阅读障碍者脑区的异常,究竟是阅读障碍的原因还是结果。研究者发展出不同的研究范式来探究此问题,包括学龄前研究、双对照组研究、纵向研究等。文中综述了这些研究范式各具的优势、不足和研究结果之间的一致性,并分析了确认因果关系之所以困难的原因。在此基础上,提出如下建议：（1）细致区分阅读障碍的亚类型;（2）以成熟和完善的阅读认知-神经模型为指导;（3）通过不同的研究范式进行交叉印证;（4）综合考虑脑的动态发展变化特点,和基因、环境、经验的作用等多种因素的影响。     

高校教师教学水平评价多元概化理论权重效应分析

探讨高校教师教学水平评价多元概化理论合成信度的权重效应。使用"高校教师教学水平评价问卷",要求534名学生对16名教师进行评价,对收集到的数据作嵌套设计的多元概化理论分析。结果表明：（1）在高校教师教学水平评价中,多元概化理论合成信度估计权重、先验权重和效果权重产生不同效应;（2）结合高校教师教学水平评价,在充分分析三种权重对合成信度影响的基础上,提出了多元概化理论"合成信度三种权重效应分析模式图",能为正确使用多元概化理论权重提供科学参考。     

Exploring the trajectory of personal,moral and spiritual values of 16- to 18-year-old students taking religious studies at A level in the UK

This study set out to explore the trajectory of personal, moral and spiritual values of students taking Religious Studies at A level in the UK. A sample of 150 students completed a battery of measures at the beginning of their period of A level study and again at the end. The data found no difference over this period of time in personal values (purpose in life, self-esteem, and empathy) in some moral values (concerning anti-social behaviour and concerning substance use) and in levels of religious exclusivism or frequency of private prayer. The areas in which significant differences were observed were concerned with attitude toward sex and relationships, religious pluralism, belief in life after death, and mystical orientation. Between the ages of 16 and 18 years, following two years’ engagement with Religious Studies at A level, the participants became more liberal in their approach toward sex and relationships, less convinced about the truth claims of religious pluralism, less likely to adhere to traditional Christian teaching on life after death, and less open to mystical experience. They are also less certain of ever having had a religious experience, and less frequent in their practice of religious attendance.     

Does physical pain impair abstract thinking?

The ability to think abstractly constitutes a fundamental dimension of human cognition. Although abstraction has been extensively studied, its emotional and affective antecedents have been largely overlooked. One experiment was conducted to examine whether physical pain affects abstraction. Drawing on Construal Level Theory [Trope, Y., &; Liberman, N. (2010). Construal-level theory of psychological distance. Psychological Review, 117, 440–463] and Loewenstein’s [(1996). Out of control: Visceral influences on behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 65, 272–292] visceral factors theory, we hypothesised that pain impairs abstraction because pain constricts people’s mental horizons and lead to a concrete, inward-focus toward oneself in the here and now. Physical pain was manipulated between subjects (N?=?150). The participants either kept their left hand immersed in cold (painful) water or neutral (painless) water while we measured abstract versus concrete behaviour identification, categorisation, and perceptual processing. Bayesian statistical analyses indicate substantial evidence against the hypothesis that pain impairs abstraction. In contrast to many other previously studied cognitive outcomes (e.g. attention), abstraction appears to be largely immune to acute, experimentally induced pain.     

Agendas,Relevance and Dialogic Ascent

E. C. W. Krabbe characterizes a metadialogue as a dialogue about a dialogue, which in turn, is characterized as a ground level dialogue. Krabbe raises a number of interesting questions about this distinction, of which the most pressing is whether the difference between ground level and metadialogues can be drawn in a principled and suitably general way. In this note, I develop the idea that something counts as a metadialogue to the extent that it stands to its ground level counterpart in a relation of irrelevance. The irrelevance in question subsumes a triple of subconcepts: strategic relevance, agenda-relevance and irredundancy-relevance.