Chimpanzee (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pan troglodytes</Emphasis>) and orangutan (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pongo abelii</Emphasis>) forethought: self-control and pre-experience in the face of future tool use

Planning for future needs has traditionally been considered to be restricted to human cognition. Although recent studies on great ape and corvid cognition challenge this belief, the phylogenesis of human planning remains largely unknown. The complex skill for future planning has not yet been satisfactorily established in any other extant primate species than our own. In humans, planning for future needs rely heavily on two overarching capacities, both of which lie at the heart of our cognition: self-control, often defined as the suppression of immediate drives in favor of delayed rewards, and mental time travel, which could be described as a detached mental experience of a past or future event. Future planning is linked to additional high complexity cognition such as metacognition and a consciousness usually not attributed to animals. In a series of four experiments based on tool use, we demonstrate that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and orangutans (Pongo abelii) override immediate drives in favor of future needs, and they do not merely rely on associative learning or semantic prospection when confronted with a planning task. These results suggest that great apes engage in planning for the future by out competing current drives and mentally pre-experiencing an upcoming event. This suggests that the advanced mental capacities utilized in human future planning are shared by phylogenetically more ancient species than previously believed.     

大学生偶发和外显编码中的自我参照效应

在自我参照范式中加入偶发编码加工方式,并采用R/K判断范式考察中国大学生在偶发编码和外显编码方式中的记忆成绩.结果发现:在R指标上,偶发编码方式和外显编码方式中均出现了自我参照效应和母亲参照效应;参照自我加工的记忆成绩显著高于参照母亲加工的记忆成绩;外显编码方式中的记忆成绩显著高于偶发编码方式的记忆成绩.结果提示,当需提高对信息的记忆成绩时,只要呈现自我线索就足够了,并不需要对其进行外显编码加工.     

Agents of Reform?: Children’s Literature and Philosophy

Children’s literature was first published in the eighteenth century at a time when the philosophical ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on education and childhood were being discussed. Ironically, however, the first generation of children’s literature (by Maria Edgeworth et al) was incongruous with Rousseau’s ideas since the works were didactic, constraining and demanded passive acceptance from their readers. This instigated a deficit or reductionist model to represent childhood and children’s literature as simple and uncomplicated and led to children’s literature being overlooked and its contribution to philosophical discussions being undermined. Although Rousseau advocates freeing the child to develop, he does not feel that reading fiction promotes child development, which is a weakness in an otherwise strong argument for educational reform. Yet, rather ironically, the second generation of children’s writers, from Lewis Carroll onwards, more truly embraced Rousseau’s broader philosophical ideas on education and childhood than their predecessors, encouraging and freeing readers to imagine, reflect and actively engage in ontological enquiry. The emphasis had changed with the child being embraced in education and society as active participant rather than passive or disengaged recipient. Works deemed to be seminal to the canon of children’s literature such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan and The Chronicles of Narnia challenge readers to work through conflicts many of which can be identified retrospectively as exhibiting postmodern characteristics. By exploring moral and spiritual dilemmas in their writing, Carroll, Barrie and Lewis’s works can be regarded as contributing to discussions on theodical postmodernism. The successes of The Lord of the Rings and Narnia films suggest that there is an interest in exploring moral dilemmas, fulfilling a need (perhaps for tolerance and understanding) in society at large. Children’s literature has an almost divine power to restore, to repair and to heal, all characteristics of theodical postmodernism but differing from the more widely held conception of postmodernism which pulls apart, exacerbates and exposes. Children’s literature therefore offers a healthy and constructive approach to working through moral dilemmas. In their deconstruction of childhood, these authors have brought children’s literature closer to aspects of enquiry traditionally found in the domain of adult mainstream literature. As the boundaries between childhood and adulthood become more fluid, less certain, debate is centring around whether the canon of children’s literature itself has become redundant or meaningless since there are no longer any restrictions on which subjects can be treated in children’s literature. Despite the fact that children’s literature clearly engages with difficult issues, it continues to be left out of the critical equation, not given serious attention, disregarded as simplistic and ignored in contemporary philosophical discussions concerning morality, postmodernism and the future of childhood. With children’s literature coming closer to mainstream literature, and exhibiting prominent features of postmodernism, however, it is only a matter of time before philosophical discussions actively engage with children’s literature and recognise its contribution to the resolution and reconciliation of ontological dilemmas. When this occurs, philosophy and children’s literature will re-engage, enriching contemporary investigations of existence, ethics and knowledge and fruitfully developing thought in these areas. This paper aims to contribute to this process.

Robots and the Sacred in Science and Science Fiction: Theological Implications of Artificial Intelligence

In science-fiction literature and film, human beings simultaneously feel fear and allure in the presence of intelligent machines, an experience that approximates the numinous experience as described in 1917 by Rudolph Otto. Otto believed that two chief elements characterize the numinous experience: the mysterium tremendum and the fascinans. Briefly, the mysterium tremendum is the fear of God's wholly other nature and the fascinans is the allure of God's saving grace. Science-fiction representations of robots and artificially intelligent computers follow this logic of threatening otherness and soteriological promise. Science fiction offers empirical support for Anne Foerst's claim that human beings experience fear and fascination in the presence of advanced robots from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AI Lab. The human reaction to intelligent machines shows that human beings in many respects have elevated those machines to divine status. This machine apotheosis, an interesting cultural event for the history of religions, may—despite Foerst's rosy interpretation—threaten traditional Christian theologies.     

加工深度和元记忆训练对多重记忆系统监测的影响

这项研究探讨元记忆判断对情节记忆系统、语义记忆系统和ＰＲＳ（ｐｅｒｃｅｐｔｕａｌｒｅｐｒｅｓｅｎｔａｔｉｏｎ）系统的监测问题。已有的研究表明,元记忆对情节记忆的监测好于对语义记忆的监测。这项研究在深度加工和元记忆训练的条件下,进一步比较了Ｒ反应（Ｒｒｅｓｐｏｎｓｅｓ）项目、Ｋ反应（Ｋｒｅｓｐｏｎｓｅｓ）项目以及成功补笔项目的ＦＯＫ幅度（ＭＦＯＫ,ｍａｇｎｉｔｕｄｅｏｆＦＯＫ）。结果表明,无论是在深度加工的条件下,还是在元记忆训练的条件下,Ｒ项目的ＭＦＯＫ明最高于Ｋ项目和成功补笔项目。这说明元记忆系统的监测模式具有相对的稳定性,它不受记忆痕迹的性质与元记忆判断策略的影响。     

Infant irritability and early mother–infant reciprocity patterns

This study investigated how various forms of neonatal irritability (at 3 days) and irritability at 10 weeks are related to reciprocal interactions between mothers and their infants. Fifty‐six fullterm, first‐born male infants were examined using the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS‐K) at 3 days postpartum. Each infant was rated for irritability to aversive stimuli, general irritability, consolability and responsiveness to visual–auditory stimuli. At 10 weeks of age, during a home visit, mother–infant reciprocity was scored for gaze, smile, vocalization and hold behaviors. Based upon maternal reports and behavioral observations, infant irritability was scored at 10 weeks using the NBAS‐K scoring system. Findings revealed that: (1) there were two distinct forms of reciprocity: social and physical; (2) general irritability at 3 days was negatively related to reciprocal hold interaction and positively related to reciprocal social interaction at 10 weeks, and (3) neonatal irritability to aversive stimuli (at 3 days) was positively related to subsequent reciprocal social interaction. Regression analyses showed that neonatal variables were the foremost predictors of reciprocal hold at 10 weeks. Findings are discussed in terms of (1) the need to differentiate between social and physical behavioral patterns, and (2) time‐lag effects with respect to mother–infant interactions. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improving payment of traffic fines with financial incentives: Discounts vs. penalties

The effective enforcement of traffic laws is critical for improved road safety outcomes. Decisions to follow traffic rules and pay fines are influenced by formal institutions (e.g. laws, court summons, and fines) as well as informal institutions (e.g. norms and aspects of culture). Formal and informal institutions create incentives that should be designed to steer individuals’ behaviour towards desired outcomes. Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that the institutions to deal with traffic violations in South Africa currently create effective incentives. This paper discusses the findings of a controlled laboratory experiment, conducted with a sample of university students, that tested the efficacy of different financial incentives that may influence the payment of traffic fines. An early payment discount was compared to a late payment penalty (used in other countries, for example, some states in the USA), and to the absence of any incentives. Furthermore, we examined whether the willingness to settle fines is sensitive to the likelihood of detection by the authorities. We found that introducing financial incentives significantly increases voluntary payment of fines, irrespective of whether immediate payment is encouraged with a discount or late payment is discouraged with a surcharge. In addition, subjects are more sensitive to the likelihood of detection when financial incentives are present.     

International Language and the Everyday: Contact and Collaboration Between C.K. Ogden,Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath

Although now largely forgotten, the international language movement was, from the 1880s to the end of the Second World War, a matter of widespread public interest, as well as a concern of numerous scientists and scholars. The primary goal was to establish a language for international communication, but in the early twentieth century an increasing accent was placed on philosophical considerations: wanted was a language better suited to the needs of modern science and rational thought. In this paper, we examine the example of the English scholar C.K. Ogden's international language Basic English and his efforts to win the Vienna Circle philosophers Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap over to the project. Basic is shown to be an implementation of key ideas in Ogden's philosophy of language, ideas shared to a large extent with Neurath and Carnap. This we see through an examination of their unpublished correspondence, as well as through the collaboration that emerged between Ogden and Neurath, in which Neurath's Isotype, a system for graphically representing statistical data, became closely aligned with Basic. Through the ideas and endeavours we investigate here, we gain a new perspective on this crucial period in the history of analytic philosophy.     

Sign-tracking behavior in aversive conditioning: Its acquisition via a Pavlovian mechanism and its suppression by operant contingencies

When rats are presented with Pavlovian backward pairings in which shock is the unconditioned stimulus (US) and an elevated platform the conditioned stimulus (CS), they show a strong tendency to approach the platform. Attempts were made at evaluating the nature of the associative mechanisms responsible for the acwuisition and maintenance of the approach behavior. In Experiment 1, following a baseline period when platform presentations were given in the absence of shocks, first (training I), approach to the platform was prevented and subjects were exposed to either backward, forward, or random presentations of shock and platform: this procedure attempted to minimize the effects of response learning on the acquisition of approach behavior. Then (training II), all subjects received backward shock-platform pairings and had access to the platform. Approach to the platform was stronger in animals previously exposed to backward pairings than in the animals of the other two groups. Also, animals preexposed to forward platform-shock pairings showed suppression of approach behavior on the first trial of training II relative to their performance on the last trial of baseline. These data suggest that a stimulus-reinforcer learning mechanism alone is sufficent for the acquisition of approach. Experiments 2a and 2b evaluated the effects of “punishing” operant contingencies on Pavlovian-produced approach behavior. The results showed that approach can be eliminated, but only after repeated exposure to an operant contingency which consisted of the immediate closure of the platform upon approach responding. These data suggest that approach behavior produced by Pavlovian contingencies can be modified by operant contingencies. Taken together, these data provide additional support for a sign-tracking notion in aversive conditioning.     

Structured personality test item characteristics and validity

Using the structured personality test item as the unit of analysis, the purpose of this research was to evaluate the relationship between validity and a variety of other test item parameters. Of particular interest was the relationship of test item criterion validity to negative keying and to negative wording. By drawing a distinction between negative keying and negative wording it was demonstrated that the use of balanced scales to control acquiescence need not result in a reduction in item criterion validity. Whereas the use of negative wording has in the past reduced validity, data demonstrated that positively worded, negatively keyed items did not. In addition, results indicated that clear, moderately short, relevant test items tended to be the most empirically valid.