A psycho-ethical approach to personality disorders: The role of volitionality

The rupture between psychology and ethics has led to an oversimplification of the study of personality disorders (PD). We claim that an integrated view could enrich and widen the study of PD. This article is an attempt to reconceptualize PD from a psycho-ethical perspective, which includes the dimension of volitionality, to clarify how moral decisions can undermine psychological capacities and contribute, to a greater or lesser degree, to a progressive depersonalization. It is proposed that behaviors with a strong similarity with types of classical vicious character can be categorized into different typical PDs. Using the contributions of theorists who have described types of cognitive biases, in light of virtue epistemology and the underling motivation, we present an understanding of how vicious cognition develops, which is a step in the crystallization of vicious character. This approach, also, offers a distinction between disharmonic and fragmented personality that allows establishing different levels of severity from the psychological and ethical perspective.     

Delta plots do not reveal response inhibition in lying

The role of response inhibition in lying is debated. By using the delta-plot method applied to the Sheffield Lie Test, Debey, Ridderinkhof, De Houwer, De Schryver, and Verschuere (2015) provided evidence supporting the role of inhibition in lying. In the study of Debey et al., inhibitory skill was measured in terms of the size of the lie effect. However, to provide convincing evidence that delta plots highlight the role of response inhibition in lying, inhibitory ability must be evaluated independently from the size of the lie effect. After replicating original findings, this article shows that a delta plot analysis does not differentiate individuals with different inhibitory abilities, when inhibitory skill is measured by means of the Stop Signal Task, instead of the size of the lie effect. This suggests that researchers should be cautious when making conclusions about cognitive mechanisms based on the sole analysis of delta plots.     

Visual cognitive algorithms for high-dimensional data and super-intelligence challenges

In the long run the cognitive algorithms intend to make super-intelligent machines and super-intelligent humans. This paper presents a technical process to reach specific aspects of super-intelligence that are out of the current human cognitive abilities. These aspects are inabilities to discover patterns in large numeric multidimensional data with a naked eye. This is a long-standing problem in Data Science and Modeling in general. The major obstacle is in human inability to see n-D data by a naked eye and our needs in visualization means to represent n-D data in 2-D losslessly. While these means exist their number and abilities are limited. This paper expands the class of such lossless visual methods, by further developing a new concept of Generalized Shifted Paired Coordinates. It shows the advantages of proposed reversible lossless technique by representing real data and by proving mathematical properties.     

Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgicencephalomyelitis as a twentieth-century disease: analytic challenges

The challenges of chronic fatigue syndrome (often called myalgic encephalomyelitis, especially in the UK) (CFS/ME) to analytical and medical approaches are connected with our inability to understand its distressing somatic symptoms in terms of a single identifiable and understandable disease entity. The evidence for the roles of viral aetiologies remains inconclusive, as does our understanding of the involvement of the immune system. The history and social context of CFS/ME, and its relation to neurasthenia and psychasthenia are sketched. A symbolic attitude to the condition may need to be rooted in an awareness of psychoid levels of operation, and the expression and spread of CFS/ME may sometimes be aided by the ravages of projective identification. Psychic denial, sometimes violent, in sufferers (especially children and adolescents) and their families may be important in the aetiology of CFS/ME. We draw out common threads from psychodynamic work with five cases, four showing some symptomatic improvement, analytic discussions of three cases being presented elsewhere in this issue of JAP.     

Interruption of phonological coding in conduction aphasia

A case study of conduction aphasia, investigating single word repetition, phonological coding, and short-term memory, is reported. Evidence from intact adults suggests that repetition can occur through either a lexical route or a direct auditory-articulatory link. For this conduction aphasic, E.A., the direct link was impaired, although the lexical route could be used to produce accurate single word repetition. Several experiments demonstrated a significant impairment in the generation and maintenance of an abstract phonological code. The consequences of a disruption of phonological coding on speech perception and on verbal short-term memory are discussed.     

Event-related potentials in phonological matching tasks

Two experiments investigated Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) in matching tasks. In Experiment 1 subjects judged, in separate conditions, whether two words rhymed or were written in the same case. The CNV developing between the two words was larger in the latter task compared to the former at the right temporal site. In the rhyme judgment task, an increased late negativity differentiated the ERPs to nonrhyming words from those that rhymed with the previously presented word. This difference was maximal at the midline and over the right hemisphere. Experiment 2 further investigated ERPs in the rhyme judgment task, increasing memory demands with an extended interstimulus interval (ISI) and varying the number of items subjects had to hold in memory during this period (one vs. three). Irrespective of memory load, CNVs during the ISI were more negative from the left hemisphere, and the ERPs to the rhyming and nonrhyming words showed the same differences as in Experiment 1. The CNV asymmetries are interpreted as being associated with the engagement of lateralized short-term memory processes. The rhyme/nonrhyme differences are possibly related to the “N400” component elicited by semantically incongruous words. Possible reasons for their scalp distribution are discussed.     

Recovery of single word comprehension: CT-scan correlates

9tory comprehension for single words, as measured by the BDAE Word Discrimination subtest, was studied longitudinally in a group of 37 aphasic patients. The majority of the patients had impaired performance at 1 month postonset, but recovery by Month 6 postonset was quite striking. Damage to Wernicke's area did not preclude recovery of single word comprehension to within the normal range. Only patients with very extensive left hemisphere lesions had incomplete recovery of single word comprehension.     

Developmental differences in memory for temporally neutral and temporally tagged information

Forty children (ages 7 and 11 years) listened to stories and then answered questions about temporally neutral and temporally tagged information appearing in them (e.g., “Linda is smart” vs “Linda ate an apple”). Number of presentations and free recall of the stories were manipulated to study age-related changes in the effects of additional processing on memory for the two kinds of information. Older children exhibited overall better memory, but with additional processing that difference was larger for temporally neutral than for temporally tagged information. The observed interactions among age, additional processing, and kind of information demonstrated the importance of the distinction between temporally neutral and temporally tagged information for developmental studies of memory for prose.     

Keeping track of locations during movement in 8- to 10-month-old infants

Infants of $\text{8}\text{1}\text{2}$ and $\text{9}\text{1}\text{2}$ mo of age were tested for the ability to “keep track,” i.e., to determine the location of an object hidden in one of two covered containers before their left-right positions were reversed. Infants in both age groups for whom the covers were the same color and younger infants for whom the covers were different colors were generally unable to keep track. Only the older infants provided with different colored covers were able to do so. An analysis which separated keeping track from the sensorimotor stage 4 error indicated that (a) there was no contingency between the two and (b) there were developmental differences in the nature of the error.