Attributionism and Counterfactual Robustness

In this journal (AJP 2016), Vishnu Sridharan presents a novel objection to attributionism, the view according to which agents are responsible for their conduct when it reflects who they are or what they value. The key to Sridharan's objection is that agents can fulfil all attributionist conditions for responsibility while being under the control of a manipulator. In this paper, we show that Sridharan's objection falls prey to a dilemma—either his manipulator is counterfactually robust, or she is not—and that neither of its horns undermines attributionism.     

Approach-avoidance responses to infant facial expressions in nulliparous women: Associations with early experience and mood induction

Infant expressions are important signals for eliciting caregiving behaviors in parents. The present study sought to test if infant expressions affect adults’ behavioral response, taking into account the role of a mood induction and childhood caregiving experiences. A modified version of the Approach Avoidance Task (AAT) was employed to study nulliparous female university students’ implicit responses to infant faces with different expressions. Study 1 showed that sad, neutral and sleepy expressions elicit a tendency for avoidance, while no tendency for approach or avoidance was found for happy faces. Notably, differences between approach and avoidance response latencies for sad faces and participants’ negative caregiving experiences were positively correlated (r = 0.30, p = 0.04, Bonferroni corrected), indicating that individuals who experienced insensitive parental care show more bias toward sad infant faces. In Study 2, we manipulated participants' current mood (inducing sad and happy mood by asking to recall a happy or sad event of their recent life) before the AAT. Results showed that sad mood enhanced the bias toward sad faces that is buffered by positive mood induction. In conclusion, these findings indicate that implicit approach avoidance behaviors in females depend on the emotional expression of infant faces and are associated with childhood caregiving experiences and current mood.     

DENNETT ON FREEDOM

Abstract: In his Freedom Evolves (2003) Daniel Dennett criticizes a view I defend in Autonomous Agents (1995) about the importance of agents' histories for autonomy, freedom, and moral responsibility and defends a competing view. Our disagreement on this issue is the major focus of this article. Additional topics are manipulation, avoidance, and avoidability.     

青少年脊柱侧弯的临床诊治进展

青少年特发性脊柱侧弯（AIS）既对患儿及家庭所造成的痛苦,也对患者家庭和国家财政都造成沉重的经济负担,引发各国及各级政府的高度关注。但是,随着对AIS了解的深入,质疑和犹豫也逐渐产生。本文回顾当前关于AIS的临床和基础研究结果,发现其中许多研究结论都充满了临床悖论。本文还通过总结作者单位的临床经验,提出的AIS诊治新原则。该原则利用脊柱对于AIS的充分代偿能力,改变聚焦于纠正脊柱畸形的传统理念,尽量维护脊柱的代偿平衡,同时避免对AIS患儿的歧视性宣传,避免诱导其发生心理自卑感。通过借鉴“代偿稳定、阴阳自和”等中医哲学理念可以在AIS等脊柱损伤退变性疾病的临床诊治过程中为患者争取最为实效的临床利益。     

Mirror Mirror: The role of self-monitoring and sincerity in emotional manipulation

This study examined for the first time the relationships between self-monitoring, sincerity, and emotional manipulation, by investigating whether sensitivity to social cues and to appropriate emotional expression would facilitate the use of emotion in malevolent contexts. Participants (N = 170 student and community members) completed online measures of self-monitoring, sincerity, and emotional manipulation in a cross-sectional, correlational design. As predicted, high self-monitoring (of self-presentation) and low sincerity were significantly associated with emotional manipulation. Lower levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness also predicted emotional manipulation. Although the current research is exploratory, it is concluded that attention to, and control of, emotional expression, in combination with an insincere approach, are central to emotional manipulation.     

工作家庭冲突研究综述

随着职业女性的不断增加,越来越多的人们开始调整自己在工作和家庭上的责任与投入,由此日益凸显的工作家庭冲突问题近年来得到大量管理者和研究者的关注。该文从工作家庭冲突的概念、理论、相关研究等方面总结了对工作家庭冲突的研究结果,并在此基础上探讨了该领域未来的研究趋势。     

Finger drawing by infant chimpanzees (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pan troglodytes</Emphasis>)

We introduced a new technique to investigate the development of scribbling in very young infants. We tested three infant chimpanzees to compare the developmental processes of scribbling between humans and chimpanzees. While human infants start to scribble on paper at around the age of 18 months, our 13- to 23-month-old infant chimpanzees had never been observed scribbling prior to this study. We used a notebook computer with a touch-sensitive screen. This apparatus was able to record the location of the subjects touches on the screen. Each touch generated a fingertip-sized dot at the corresponding on-screen location. During spontaneous interactions with this apparatus, all three infants and two mother chimpanzees left scribbles with their fingers on the screen. The scribbles contained not only simple dots or short lines, but also curves and hook-like lines or loops, most of which were observed in the instrumental drawings of adult chimpanzees. The results suggest that perceptual-motor control for finger drawing develops in infant chimpanzees. Two of the infants performed their first scribble with a marker on paper at the age of 20–23 months. Just prior to this, they showed a rapid increase in combinatory manipulation of objects. These findings suggest that the development of combinatory manipulation of objects as well as that of perceptual-motor control may be necessary for the emergence of instrumental drawing on paper.     

Altering the timing of academic prompts to treat destructive behavior maintained by escape

Following a functional analysis showing that destructive behavior was reinforced by escape, we altered the aversiveness of task demands by interspersing easy and difficult tasks and by presenting a corrective prompt as an antecedent event the next time a previously failed item was presented; this procedure was compared with one in which the corrective prompt was provided as an immediate consequence. Results of a reversal design showed that the antecedent prompt acted as an establishing operation and reduced destructive behavior to zero.     

Indicatives,Subjunctives, and the Falsity of the Antecedent

It is widely held that there are important differences between indicative conditionals (e.g., “If the authors are linguists, they have written a linguistics paper”) and subjunctive conditionals (e.g., “If the authors had been linguists, they would have written a linguistics paper”). A central difference is that indicatives and subjunctives convey different stances toward the truth of their antecedents. Indicatives (often) convey neutrality: for example, about whether the authors in question are linguists. Subjunctives (often) convey the falsity of the antecedent: for example, that the authors in question are not linguists. This paper tests prominent accounts of how these different stances are conveyed: whether by presupposition or conversational implicature. Experiment 1 tests the presupposition account by investigating whether the stances project—remain constant—when embedded under operators like negations, possibility modals, and interrogatives, a key characteristic of presuppositions. Experiment 2 tests the conversational-implicature account by investigating whether the stances can be cancelled without producing a contradiction, a key characteristic of implicatures. The results provide evidence that both stances—neutrality about the antecedent in indicatives and the falsity of the antecedent in subjunctives—are conveyed by conversational implicatures.     

Deliberating in the presence of manipulation

According to deliberation compatibilism, rational deliberation is compatible with the belief that one’s actions are causally determined by factors beyond one’s control. This paper offers a counterexample to recent accounts of rational deliberation that entail deliberation compatibilism. The counterexample involves a deliberator who believes that whichever action she performs will be the result of deterministic manipulation. It is further argued that there is no relevant difference between the purported counterexample and ordinary doxastic circumstances in which a determinist deliberates.