Voters, Emotions, and Memory

In this paper we argue that emotional response to information encountered in campaigns has implications for the likelihood of remembering that information at the time of the vote. Most voting models are built on what voters remember—whether it is the placement of candidates on issues, or opened ended responses to prompts. That recall of memory is biased is well-known, but the extent to which those biases are driven by affective response to candidate information has not been studied. Using dynamic process tracing, we examine voters' emotional responses, information search, and candidate evaluations during a simulated presidential primary campaign. By manipulating anxiety and the amount of incongruent information that voters encounter, we can detect the direct influence of affect in information processing. We find evidence that voters are more likely to remember information that generates any affective reaction as opposed to information for which the subjects report no emotional response. However, we find little evidence that anxiety has a special role, compared to enthusiasm or anger, in increasing the likelihood that an individual item is remembered. This challenges a primary contention of the theory of Affective Intelligence that anxiety leads to more memories for campaign information.     

Experiencing and regulating sadness: Physiological and cognitive effects

No prior study has examined the two most prominent response-focused regulation strategies (suppression and exaggeration) using a within-subjects design. Utilizing this design allows for a direct comparison of physiological patterns and cognitive impairment associated with such efforts. One hundred and nine participants were asked to view a series of three films, each preceded by a 10-second instructional slide which indicated the regulation strategy they were to perform (natural-watch, exaggerate, or suppress). Exaggeration was associated with increased sympathetic activation as indicated by an increase in galvanic skin conductance level (GSL) and shortened pre-ejection period (PEP). Suppression, much like the natural-watch condition, was associated with greater sympathetic withdrawal (i.e., decreased GSL, longer PEP). Both suppression and exaggeration led to reduced memory for the emotional movie, with exaggeration causing more impairment than suppression. Results suggest that exaggeration and suppression not only have very different behavioral manifestations, but physiological outcomes as well when utilized during a sad context.     

Global Model Analysis of Cognitive Variability

Residual fluctuations produced in typical experimental methodologies are examined as correlated noises. The effective range of the correlations was assessed by determining whether the decay over look-back time is better described as a power law or exponential. Both of these decay laws contain free parameters and it is argued that it is not possible to distinguish their models on the basis of simple measures of goodness-of-fit. Global analyses that evaluate models on the basis of how well they generalize are conducted. The models are examined in terms of three constructs that all bear on generalization: cross-validity, flexibility, and representativeness. Quantitative assessment of a large ensemble of data suggests that the correlations decay over time as a power law. The conclusion is that human residual fluctuation is a correlated fractal.     

Specialization effect and its influence on memory and problem solving in expert chess players

Expert chess players, specialized in different openings, recalled positions and solved problems within and outside their area of specialization. While their general expertise was at a similar level, players performed better with stimuli from their area of specialization. The effect of specialization on both recall and problem solving was strong enough to override general expertise—players remembering positions and solving problems from their area of specialization performed at around the level of players 1 standard deviation (SD) above them in general skill. Their problem-solving strategy also changed depending on whether the problem was within their area of specialization. When it was, they searched more in depth and less in breadth; with problems outside their area of specialization, the reverse. The knowledge that comes from familiarity with a problem area is more important than general purpose strategies in determining how an expert will tackle it. These results demonstrate the link in experts between problem solving and memory of specific experiences and indicate that the search for context-independent general purpose problem-solving strategies to teach to future experts is unlikely to be successful.     

Verbal predicates foster conscious recollection but not familiarity of a task-irrelevant perceptual feature – An ERP study

Research on the effects of perceptual manipulations on recognition memory has suggested that (a) recollection is selectively influenced by task-relevant information and (b) familiarity can be considered perceptually specific. The present experiment tested divergent assumptions that (a) perceptual features can influence conscious object recollection via verbal code despite being task-irrelevant and that (b) perceptual features do not influence object familiarity if study is verbal-conceptual. At study, subjects named objects and their presentation colour; this was followed by an old/new object recognition test. Event-related potentials (ERP) showed that a study-test manipulation of colour impacted selectively on the ERP effect associated with recollection, while a size manipulation showed no effect. It is concluded that (a) verbal predicates generated at study are potent episodic memory agents that modulate recollection even if the recovered feature information is task-irrelevant and (b) commonly found perceptual match effects on familiarity critically depend on perceptual processing at study.     

Memory issues pertaining to social marketing messages about behavior enactment versus non-enactment

This article examines efficiency issues pertaining to social marketing messages about behavior enactment (e.g., smoker) vs. non-enactment (e.g., nonsmoker). Building on a wealth of psycholinguistics research, we posit that underlying differences in the processing and storage of word concepts with affixal negations affect learning and memory for these concepts (i.e., associations with non-enactment concepts will be harder to learn and remember than associations with enactment concepts). Two experiments support our predictions, suggesting that messages about enactment will demonstrate superior efficiency. Implications of study findings are discussed in terms of possibilities for improving the efficiency of social marketing messages about non-enactment.     

Metaphysics and Morality in Neo-Confucianism and Greece: Zhu Xi, Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus

If Zhu Xi had been a western philosopher, we would say he synthesized the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus: that he took from Plato the theory of forms, from Aristotle the connection between form and empirical investigation, and from Plotinus self-differentiating holism. But because a synthesis abstracts from the incompatible elements of its members, it involves rejection as well as inclusion. Thus, Zhu Xi does not accept the dualism by which Plato opposed to the rational forms an irrational material principle, and does not share Aristotle’s irreducible dualism between form and prime matter, or his teleology. Neither does he share Plotinus’ indifference to the empirical world. Understanding how these similarities and differences play out against one another will help us discover what is at stake in their various commitments.     

高中二年级学生双字词阅读知觉广度的眼动研究

采用“呈现随眼动变化技术”对12名高中二年级学生的双字词阅读知觉广度进行了眼动研究。结果发现：（1）高中二年级学生的双字词阅读知觉广度具有不对称性。（2）高中二年级学生的双字词阅读知觉广度为注视点左侧一个双字词到右侧两个双字词的空间。     

Methodische Grundlagen der Kriminalprognose

Zusammenfassung   Gesetzestexte sehen bei bestimmten strafrechtlichen Entscheidungen die Unterstützung des Richters durch Prognosegutachter vor. Ihre Aufgabe ist es, die Rechtsentscheidung in ihren prognostischen Aspekten auf eine rationale, wissenschaftlich fundierte Grundlage zu stellen. Methodisch lassen sich dabei wissenschaftlich fundierte Prognosen auf unterschiedlichen Wegen erstellen. Der eine Weg beruht auf empirisch gesicherten Erfahrungen über die Rückf?lligkeit von T?tern und über die die Rückfallwahrscheinlichkeit beeinflussenden Tat- und T?termerkmale. Prognosemethoden nach diesem Modell bemühen sich, diese Erfahrungen auch für individualprognostische Zwecke nutzbar zu machen. Der andere Weg führt über eine systematische retrospektive Analyse der individuellen Ursachen der bisherigen Delinquenz des T?ters und schreibt diese individuellen Bezüge prognostisch fort. Prognosemethoden nach diesem Modell bemühen sich vor allem, den erforderlichen Urteilsbildungsprozess zu systematisieren und eine hinreichende Beurteilungsgrundlage zu gew?hrleisten. Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt beide Ans?tze in ihren methodischen Grundzügen und wissenschaftlichen Bew?hrungen vor und diskutiert ihre jeweiligen Vorzüge und Begrenzungen im Kontext der Mindestanforderungen für Prognosegutachten im Strafrecht.      

The Muslimwoman

In the 6 years that have elapsed since the events of 9/11 Muslims have become the Other and veiled Muslim women have become their visible representatives. Standing in for their communities, they have attracted international media attention. So intertwined are gender and religion that they have become one. I have coined the term the Muslimwoman to describe this erasure of diversity. Some women reject this label. Others use it to empower themselves and even to subvert the identification. In the process they are constructing a new kind of cosmopolitanism. This essay asks how women can derive agency from an ascribed identity that posits their invisibility and silence.