Differential dynamics of spatial and non-spatial stimulus-response compatibility effects: a dual task LRP study

Choice reaction times are shorter when stimulus and response features are compatible rather than incompatible. Recent studies revealed that spatial compatibility effects in Simon tasks are strongly attenuated when there is temporal overlap with a different high-priority task. In contrast, non-spatial variants of the Simon task appear to be unaffected by task overlap. The present study used the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) within a dual task design to elucidate the dynamics underlying these differential effects for a color and a spatial variant of the Simon task. In the color version there was no sign of early response priming by irrelevant stimulus features in the LRP. The color compatibility effect was independent of task overlap and reflected in the LRP onset latency. In contrast, in the spatial version, priming by irrelevant stimulus location showed up and was mirrored by early LRP activation. Response priming and the corresponding Simon effect, however, were present only in case of little temporal overlap with the primary task. The absence of spatial compatibility effects at strong temporal overlap suggests that response conflicts due to stimulus-related priming depend on the availability of processing resources.     

Context-outcome associations mediate context-switch effects in a human predictive learning task

Four experiments explored the role of contexts in information retrieval after different levels of acquisition training in human predictive learning. Participants were trained where cue (X) was followed by an outcome in context A while a different cue (Y) was followed by the absence of the outcome in context B. When 4 training trials with each cue were conducted, testing the stimuli in the alternative contexts decreased predictive judgments to X and increased predictive judgments to Y. These effects disappeared both when training was increased up to 18 trials (Experiments 1a and 1b), and when the outcome was presented in both contexts A and B (Experiments 2 and 4). When the outcome was presented in both contexts, the nonreinforced cue Y, trained in the presumably excitatory context B, became a conditioned inhibitor (Experiment 3). Additional experience with one of the contexts, but not with both, made the context-switch effect reappear (Experiment 4). These results suggest that irrelevant contexts may enter into direct associations with the outcome before prolonged training leads participants to discard them as predictors.     

The Word was Not Made Flesh: Theological Reflections on the Banning of Seksualiti Merdeka 2011

Abstract : In November 2011, the Malaysian sexuality rights festival Seksualiti Merdeka was banned after being labelled immoral and subversive. The organizers insisted that the festival was a forum for the voices of sexual minorities and that the ban was politically motivated. By examining the rhetoric surrounding this festival in the Malaysian media, this article aims to uncover how the tensions between Malaysian politics and religion affect the lives of queer Malaysians in terms of human rights before providing a Christian theological response.     

The index of autonomous functioning: Development of a scale of human autonomy

A growing interest in the functional importance of dispositional autonomy led to the development and validation of the Index of Autonomous Functioning (IAF) across seven studies. The IAF provides a measure of trait autonomy based on three theoretically derived subscales assessing authorship/self-congruence, interest-taking, and low susceptibility to control. Results showed consistency within and across subscales, and appropriate placement within a nomological network of constructs. Diary studies demonstrated IAF relations with higher well-being, greater daily satisfaction of basic psychological needs, and more autonomous engagement in daily activities. Using an experimental approach, the IAF was shown to predict more positive interactions among dyads. The studies provided a systematic development and validation of a measure of autonomy that is brief and reliable.     

Emotion development system by interacting with human EEG and natural scene understanding

In this paper, we propose a mental development system for understanding the emotional status of humans, and sharing emotions with human subjects. According to the relationship between emotional factors and characteristics of an image, we incorporate the fuzzy concept to extract emotional features using L^*C^*H^* color and orientation information. On the other hand, we also consider the EEG signals which are stimulated by natural stimuli to form the semantic emotional features as well. Emotionally relevant features are firstly clustered into two categories with degrees of belongingness to each cluster to initialize the membership functions of a neuro-fuzzy system. The IF-THEN rules of a neuro-fuzzy system to understand the positive and negative human emotions will be constructed by interacting with human. Then the system attempts to extend the number of understandable emotion. Through the time, the system sub-clusters the emotional features so that the number of membership function of the neuro-fuzzy network will increase to incorporate more complicated human expertise considering more human emotions. Using such a developmental process, the proposed system can develop a mental ability to understand more complex human emotions by mining the characteristics of emotional features and interacting with its environment.     

NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF'S JUSTICE: RIGHTS AND WRONGS: AN INTRODUCTION

This introduction sets the stage for four papers on Nicholas Wolterstorff's Justice: Rights and Wrongs , written by Harold Attridge, Oliver O'Donovan, Richard Bernstein, and myself. In his book, Wolterstorff defends an account of human rights. The first section of this introduction distinguishes Wolterstorff's account of rights from the alternative account of rights against which he contends. The alternative account draws much of its power from a historical narrative according to which theory and politics supplanted earlier ways of thinking about justice. The second section sketches that narrative and Wolterstorff's counter-narrative. The third section draws together the main points of Wolterstorff's own account.     

A review of definitions of fatigue – And a step towards a whole definition

Despite its importance to health and safety, there is a long history of disagreement about how to operationalize fatigue when studying exertion in human transport operators. The current article reviews existing definitions, and consequently proposes a new definition as a step forward. A consideration of everyday use of the term finds that people often seem to use fatigue to describe a sensation related to exertion. Formal definitions of fatigue can be divided into a few broad definitions, capturing experiential, physiological and performance aspects of the construct, and many narrow definitions, focusing only on one or two of these aspects. Most existing definitions do not account explicitly for the role of sleep drives and sleepiness. They also fail to account for a wide range of factors associated with transport operator exertion, such as motivation and individual, organizational and environmental factors. Each of these points is assimilated in the derivation of a new “whole definition” of fatigue, in which the experience of human operator fatigue is a central aspect of the fatigue process. Although multidimensional and diffuse, the evolved definition does not detract from the measurement and study of limited aspects of fatigue. Rather, by describing the dynamic complexity of fatigue, it may help make explicit what different studies do or do not measure or account for in terms of the different aspects of fatigue. It is claimed that the proposed definition could be used to help harmonise attempts to study and tackle fatigue in transport health and safety contexts.     

Should Inherent Human Dignity Be Considered Intrinsically Heuristic?

What are “human rights” supposed to protect? According to most human rights doctrines, including most notably the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), human rights aim to protect “human dignity.” But what this concept amounts to and what its source is remain unclear. According to Glenn Hughes (2011), human rights theorists ought to consider human dignity as an “intrinsically heuristic concept,” whose content is partially understood but is not fully determined. In this comment, I criticize Hughes's account. On my view, understanding inherent human dignity as an intrinsically heuristic concept tethers it to an “indeterminateness of sense,” which leaves it open to exploitation from theorists unsympathetic to the moral salience of rights and what rights are supposed to protect.     

A reexamination of mental arithmetic models and data: A reply to Ashcraft

In a review of the chronometric literature, M. Ashcraft (1982, Developmental Review, 2, 213–236) concludes that adults store each basic arithmetic fact in a table-like retrieval network. In my commentary (1983, Developmental Review, 3, 225–230), I argued that procedural knowledge (stored rules, principles, or heuristics) might be a cognitively more economical basis for generating many number combinations. In this paper, I draw an analogy between this alternative model of number fact representation and how computers efficiently reconstruct arithmetic combinations, note that the research findings do not clearly support any one model of mental arithmetic, and attempt to address Ashcraft's (1983, Developmental Review, 3, 231–235) criticisms of my model.     

Letters, Notes, and Comments

Letter: Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the World's Religions
Commenting on "Leaping into the Boundless: A Daoist Reading of Comparative Religious Ethics" by Francisca Cho, "Moral Reason, Risk, and Comparative Inquiry" by Robin W. Lovin, "Heuristic Power as the Test of Theory" by Ronald M. Green, and "The Author Replies" by Francisca Cho